This post first appeared in the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Inspires Magazine.
The rusting garden gate refuses to yield. I push, hard as I dare, and force myself through.
Rain water pooled on overhanging leaves spills and runs down my neck. As I crunch up the path I glimpse a figure peering out of a first floor window. I ring the bell. A distant radio plays. As I half expect no-one comes to the door.
I find a suitable angle of attack to force the bespattered leaflet through the bristling draught excluder. It is late afternoon. There are only 30 more houses on the list.
And I ask myself again: why am I, a pale introvert, a creature of books and coffee shops, out here, on another Saturday, canvassing for a political party. It’s a good question. This piece is my latest attempt to answer it.
I’m not a complete novice. I’ve long been interested in politics. Indeed I studied it at university. But I should emphasise the word ‘studied’: brief exposure to the intrigues of student politics was sufficient to provoke some distaste for the hard realities of political campaigning.
Those of a more pragmatic disposition enjoyed the rough and tumble. But I soon found that I was rather better at thinking about how to change the world than actually attempting in some small measure to do so.
Ideas, books and seminars I could handle: esoteric political philosophies, clear, logical policy programmes, utopian visions. Politics as science fiction. And that inclination for the abstract guided my subsequent path towards a career some way from the tangled business of politics.
I’m now working as a digital designer, immersed in a rational universe of disciplined grids, cursive typefaces, shimmering gradients, subdued colour palettes, crisp photography and smooth vectors. All framed within the neat rectangle of a softly glowing computer screen. A defined world whose elements can be snapped into shape to form perfect compositions. Or to put it in theological terms, a realm of pure spirit, unstained by matter, agreeable to those, like myself, of a gnostic disposition.
So how did this particular 21st century gnostic end up stuffing soggy political leaflets into recalcitrant letterboxes?
Well, any idealist who has not quite given up on the hope that another world is possible, whose utopianism hasn’t decayed into cynicism, is a kind of latent activist.
I have tried, but I cannot agree with the pessimist that things are as they are because that is just the way of things. If we can imagine something perhaps we can at least try to realise it. I have never quite given up the hope that the world can be fixed, that progress is possible, in spite of everything.
The problem is of course that it just seems so downright hard. So I stayed in front of my computer screen, with my books. Easier by far to look on, commenting on the efforts of others.
I can find all kinds of rationalisations for my decision a couple of years ago to finally get out and do something, but a curious little episode sticks in the mind.
While idly browsing a bookshop my eye was caught by a chapter heading: ‘Idiotism’. Reading on, I learned that the word was coined by the ancient Athenians to refer to the status of a private citizen disinclined to engage in the public life of the city state. Their ‘idiocy’ consisted not in their low intelligence, but in their passivity: a preparedness to leave the business of democracy to others, to do their own thing, to tend their own gardens.
Interesting, I thought, and continued browsing. But as I stepped out of the shop I realised the term described me perfectly: someone who takes the time to be well informed, who notes the world’s failings, who complains about ‘them’, the ‘political class’, and yet who does nothing.
Yes, I thought, that’s me: an idiot. And I knew the label would stick till I turned my eyes away from the newspaper and did something.
So I joined a party. I turned up for meetings and put my name down for things. And I was pleased to find there is still some opportunity to philosophise: there are policies to debate, opinion pieces to write, points of political doctrine over which to agonise.
But the day-to-day business of politics is just that: business. Committee and sub-committee meetings, the adoption of reluctant officebearers, the organisation of fundraisers, the purchase of raffle tickets, the designing of flyers, the setting up of rain sodden marquees, the manning of stalls on windy street corners.
And, above all, canvassing: the sisyphean task of meeting the electorate, the attempt to win the trust of strangers without which nothing else matters, without which the most carefully crafted policy programme is fit only for the recycling bin.
And the process of making contact, even in this digital age, remains resolutely analogue, an almost comically laborious process of knocking on doors, one-by-one, street-by-street, an endless business of cold fingers, missing number plates, barking dogs, broken service buzzers and sepulchral tenement stairwells.
And, of course, people. The summoned occupant, warily peering from behind the door.
Certainly, there is the occasional door slam. A smattering of ‘your-all-the-sames’, ‘anyone-but-yous’ and ‘not-after-what-you-did-last-times’. But to my pleasant surprise most people are polite, tolerant of being disturbed, and often quite willing to talk, pleased to that effort has been made to solicit their views.
And I don’t think it’s just a matter of common courtesy. Yes, there’s a pervasive disillusionment with mainstream politics, but people still recognise that the business of being canvassed is integral to life in a democracy, to being regarded as a citizen rather than a subject, with the right, and indeed obligation, to be consulted. There’s a recognition that our democracy, imperfect as it is, is a gift entrusted to us by previous generations, secured after much struggle.
This, I think, is the very essence of politics: the methodical grind of getting out and speaking to voters, seeking nothing more than to present a party’s position accurately, and to leave them to make of it what they will.
To dip into theology again, you might say politics is a thoroughly incarnational business: the clash of a political programme with reality, with the brute fact of a sceptical public that must be persuaded, with infinite pain. A tough stage for idealists.
But they are necessary. The visionary can see the city on a hill towards which political effort strives. For them the challenge is the simple recognition – so simple that it can be hard to see – that the world is not a blank canvas on which a new design can be sketched, or comprised of adaptable building blocks that can be taken apart and reconstructed.
Each new government inherits the world as it is, a fathomless confusion of traditions, prejudices, cultures, institutions and clashing ideologies that must be coaxed and charmed rather than directed. The state isn’t a gleaming iMac, awaiting reprogramming. It’s more like an old mainframe, a monstrous contraption patched together with thickets of cords and cables that must be painstakingly rewired.
That complexity is the price of democracy. Political reform is hard, compromising and implemented in the teeth of opposition from opponents who will look to reverse it when their time comes around again, as it will. But that is the way of it.
I’m writing this in a notebook, prior to another canvassing session, on a bitter February day, looking out of the cafe window, watching the passers-by on their way back to homes whose peace I may soon be disturbing.
It’s drizzling. Mist is obscuring a church spire, and there’s a sheen of water on the rooftops. But I can see some light on the horizon, a prospect of brighter weather. I pack up: it will soon be time to start again.