Think twice before abusing the right to vote that people fought for on your behalf - Jayne Dowle

She produced two stones which had been hurled at the windows of Buckingham Palace in May 1914, 14 years before women in England, Wales and Scotland received the full right to vote on the same terms as men. These stones were launched by members of the Women’s Social and Political Union, which led the campaign for universal suffrage. On each one was a message: “Constitutional methods being ignored drive us to window smashing”, and “If a constitutional deputation is refused, we must present a stone message.” The then monarchs, King George V and Queen Mary, saved these stones, which smashed through the glass and presumably landed on the carpet.

If the message was important to the monarchy, it was even more important to those denied the vote.

The suffragettes of more than a century ago might not have had today’s snappy sound bites to hand, but the point remains. The right to vote should never be under-estimated. The path towards universal suffrage in Britain was long and difficult; the Chartist movement of the 19th century, which campaigned for workers who didn’t own property to have the vote, was highly active in the mill towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire and often involved in clashes with authority.

We take the vote for granted now as soon as we reach 18, but this wasn’t the law until 1969, when the Representation of the People Act – following the liberalisation of society during the 1960s - lowered the voting age from 21, for men and women.

So easily in living memory, individuals who were allowed to fight for their country could not legally have a say in who ran their country.

I remind my two kids, aged 18 and 21, of this whenever a debate about voting comes up. My daughter, the 18-year-old, was first to sign up at college when the class had an extra-curricular session on registering to vote. My son is less keen; he can’t see the point, he says, of swapping one lot of politicians for another, but I’m doggedly working on him.

It is easy to see why - given the political situation of the last decade or so, where those in power have behaved in so many unaccountable ways – why so many young people find the idea of voting so unappealing.

Yet this forthcoming General Election, whenever it happens, will be so significant, all voters should be mobilised, including not just the young, but jaded older voters who believe that nothing will ever really change.

At the last General Election, in 2019, less than three quarters (67.3 per cent) of UK citizens eligible to vote turned out. This meant that 15.5m people did not use their right to make their voice heard, whilst 13.9m voted Conservative and 10.3m voted Labour.

Imagine, if all those millions of individuals had taken the step – voted online or made the trip to the polling booth – what a different political landscape we might be looking at now.

Voting is important even if you don’t think your candidate will win. And living in a safe seat constituency doesn’t mean your vote won’t make a difference.

There’s nothing like a reduced majority – and this works on all sides of the political divide – to give the sitting MP a kick up the you-know-what.

Labour parliamentary candidates who presume their constituents are so fed up of the Sunak show they’ll flock leftwards on polling day should take note that now is no time for complacency. Likewise safe-seat Conservatives under-estimating the power of a charismatic Reform or Liberal Democrat candidate.

If everyone just ‘gives up’ change will never happen. I know someone who has lived in what’s considered a safe Tory seat for more than 30 years. She was brought up in a Labour home and works for a local authority teetering on the brink of special measures.

Yet ask her how she might vote at the next General Election and she says she’ll either not vote at all, or support the Conservative candidate because no-one else stands a chance. Now imagine that self-defeating attitude extrapolated across the whole of the country. And come the General Election, think twice before abusing the right to vote that people fought for on your behalf.