There are plenty of gems kicking around the political blogosphere, as well, of course, as plenty of ranting duds. One of the most interesting gems on the centre-right is the self explanatory ‘Letters From A Tory’. Recently, they have used the American example to suggest that the tool of the plebiscite should be used on social issues, specifically gay marriage and gay adoption. I find such an idea to be a pretty unsettling one, which undermines the importance of the protection of minority rights that is correctly at the core of British liberal democracy.
I am not fundamentally opposed to the use of referenda. Indeed, I feel that there should be a referendum whenever power is transferred from the House of Commons to another institution (be it the EU, WTO or any other body) which are not elected and can not be removed by a democratic vote. However, the concept of holding a referendum on social issues is a highly dangerous one. This is not the time or the place to talk about great liberal thinkers at length, but both de Tocqueville and Mill were right to emphasise the protection of minority rights against what they called a ‘tyranny of the majority.’
Rights should not be negotiable. Nor should they be subject to the approval of the majority of the public. If you check opinion polls at the time, you would find that most of the great social reforms of the 1960s were opposed by a majority of the public. Despite this, Parliament bravely overturned centuries of persecution against homosexuals and gave women the right to choose. The same could be said of many of the great reforms of recent centuries, such as Catholic Emancipation. Would Section 28 have been overturned by a public vote? Equality, the rights of majorities and individual rights should not be up for debate. They should be an automatic part of a liberal democracy – allowing all of its citizens to play a full an active role.
More to the point, I fear that using the plebiscite to decide matters of conscience would dramatically polarise the electorate and bring some of the most unsavoury elements of some overseas democracies into play in the UK. Some of the uglier elements that masquerade as ‘social conservatism’ in some parts of the US would be empowered by such an idea. As a strong believer in Macmillan’s adage that Priests should leave the soapbox to politicians and politicians should leave the pulip to the Priests, I am particularly uncomfortable with anything that sees organised religion taking an increasingly active and partisan role in political debate. Extremists on both sides of the argument have manipulated social issues ballots to suit their own ends – to the detriment of social cohesion. Juts a cursory glance at the some of the campaigns for social issues ballots in recent years in the US shows that some unsavoury and distasteful techniques are used and allegations are thrown by both sides of the debate. Part of the reason for the polarisation of US society in recent decades has been the prevalence of the ‘social issues’ lobby. This is the kind of polarisation we have avoided in the UK and should continue to avoid.
Personally, I value the fact that we live in such an open and tolerant society. I accept that Parliament has bravely often pushed this open and tolerant society when such a view may have made MPs and politicians personally unpopular. We should accept that protecting minority rights is something that may not always accord with the will of the majority and not open the door to the forces of social division through the use of unnecessary social issues referenda.
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Dave, it’s pretty obvious that you have not read Mill or at least if you have read him, you haven’t understood him. Mill was utterly convinced that freedom of speech and thought were the bedrock of liberty, even if the speech and thought were out of synch with the views of the moral majority. That is not the view of most Conservative “modernisers”, who like the modern left, are in fact secular authoritarians. They are poles apart from Mill on this issue.