THE Bewdley Festival is in full swing and, I understand, doing very well with excellent attendances.

I don’t get much of a chance to get along to as much as I would like to, but I did get to see last Sunday’s event, a discussion between political titans of the 80s, Roy Hattersley and Douglass Hurd.

Both are now in their 80s but both still posses razor sharp minds and the evening was fascinating.

They chatted about a number of issues and took many questions from the audience.

Perhaps one of the inevitable questions, raised by a former mayor of Bewdley, was: Why did they think there was so little interest in politics these days?

Purely by chance, I bumped into Roy Hattersley earlier this week and, having said how much I enjoyed his performance, reminded him of this question. He told me it was a frequent one and that he used to do the same show with Michael Heseltine and they too received the same question.

The point behind our conversation was this: the 200-or-so people who came to see Sunday’s show, or the many hundreds and thousands of people who have been to see similar shows in the past, all take a keen interest in how things used be done by politicians.

Yet throughout the past few decades – including when Roy Hattersley and Douglas Hurd were standing for election – very few people would turn up to listen to what politicians have to say and how they were proposing to represent their electorate during the upcoming parliament after the election.

It seems, in short, that there is plenty of interest in political history, but very little interest in political future.

Perhaps this can be explained by the fact that people like to reminisce about earlier times, when the actions of people like Hurd and Hattersley made a difference to their lives.

But I suspect that the truth is that we, collectively, don’t know much about politics.

I did not benefit from any form of politics whilst at school. I freely admit that in the 2001 election, before I took any interest in politics, I had no idea what the Conservative (or any other) party stood for. But part of the problem lies in politicians being seen as a breed apart.

Yet the truth is, politicians are no more or less than simply a member of a community, selected by that community, to stand up for the interests of that community.

And the other question Roy Hattersley is always asked? What did he think of his Spitting Image puppet?

CONTACT YOUR MP

  • Email: mark.garnier.mp@ parliament.uk
  • Telephone: 020 7219 7198 or 01562 746771
  • Write: 9a Lower Mill Street, Kidderminster, DY11 6UU, or House of Commons, Westminster, London