Why I’m standing for local government, and why you should too

Steve Miller of Northampton Left Unity on why he is planning to stand in the Blisworth and Roade ward of South Northamptonshire Council in the May 2015 local elections.

Let’s not beat around the bush: things are bad. We feel disconnected from our political masters in Westminster, we feel let down and betrayed by those that proclaim to represent us, we feel we are losing out, we feel powerless, we feel hopeless but most of all we feel like we cannot make a difference. Our money isn’t going as far as it used to, we are struggling to get by, our communities are being stripped of all their character, our lives are being dictated by how much profit this or that corporation is making, at the end of the day we are that tired and stressed out worrying where we are going to get the money for this bill, or the next. Not a day goes by where we do not hear more lies either coming directly from the mouths of politicians or in the media as they clutch at straws to justify our suffering while they get to live in luxury. Well enough is enough: things do not have to be this way, we can make a change, we can make a difference, we can take charge of our communities. What is stopping us?

I love my community. It is the place I grew up, it is where I went to school and it is where my family live. In the twenty years of living here, I have seen things change, not for the better but for the worse. We have lost an untold amount of employment opportunities, and we have lost an untold amount of services. The bank and the cricket ground were the first to go in my memory and more recently we have seen the stains on our landscapes which have come about on the George and Club sites. At the same time as losing all these, we are getting more houses, the majority of which are not affordable but homes which are there to profit a small number of individuals. We need to put the community at the heart of these decisions. Are decisions being made to benefit the community or are they being made to benefit self-interest? I look at the future of our village and I think unless we do something things are going to get worse. That is why I’m standing, not because I want to, but because I need to, we can all moan about how things are going but unless we actively try to change them, what is the point?

The people are the beating heart of any community. I do not want our community spirit to die out and become a shell of itself, and if we work together there is no limit to what we can achieve. I am standing because I want to do a new kind of politics, a politics that puts people at the heart of the decision-making process, a politics that builds communities from the bottom up, a politics that is engrained in the community, a politics which is there to help not hinder. That is why if I’m elected I will be doing things very differently to our current representatives, who got in unelected at the last election. Ultimately our democracy only works when power rests with the people, everything being in the public domain, the people should have a say in how and what their representative fights on, they should be approachable and accessible, but most importantly our representatives should inspire us to get involved in politics ourselves. This community is ours and its future is our future: what kind of future do we want to build?

The more people that stand on principle and conviction with a desire to improve and help their communities, the healthier our democracy will be. Participation doesn’t begin or end at the ballot box either, there are an untold number of ways to fight for what we want, and fundamentally that is the only way we will ever change things in our favour: if we fight for them. This change has to come from below because there is not the political will for it at the top. The top 1% have the same combined wealth as the bottom 50%, and the only people that know what is best for the community is that community itself. By having local representatives who live, breathe, eat and sleep in their communities, we can begin to effect change at a local level and in the long term we can transfer that to regional and national platforms. Without an active and engaged local level of participation, we have a democracy that does not function, a top-heavy regime which implements things not to improv, but to profit. Ultimately who should decide what is best for us: the people who live here, or the people who don’t?