Sirs,
I was saddened, but a sadness tinged with considerable sympathy, to read Sam Page’s letter (marlborough.news September 27), outlining her reasons for leaving Marlborough and moving to Edinburgh.
Having been born, brought up and worked in Marlborough all my life (with a few periods of absence working internationally) it is hardly surprising that I regret hearing that the community that I have loved and which has bestowed so many benefits on me, is being shunned for its constant and overwhelming Conservative political affiliations, its “hour glass demography” and its absence of certain facilities e.g. public transport and low cost housing, all of which I deplore.
Sam Page has been a great campaigner on so many different issues (Human Rights, Green policies, Fuel Poverty, Public Transport, a Second Referendum, to name but a few) and her gains in finding herself in the undoubtedly more socially and politically diverse and culturally active community of Edinburgh will be Marlborough’s loss.
One can only hope that her legacy in Marlborough of political activism and challenging the status quo will provoke others, particularly younger members of the community, to take up the cudgel. Certainly, her departure and its causes raise questions in my mind.
One question is the extent to which our vital roles and responsibilities in maintaining the democratic process through voting and political activism are taught in schools. Certainly they were not subjects that were raised when I was at Marlborough College in the late 1950s / early 1960s other than as part of the history syllabus at ‘O’ Level.
It was reported by Sky News that only 36% of those in the 18-24 age group voted in the EU referendum (in contrast to the total turnout of 72% of the population at large) and that of those in that young age group that did turn out to vote, 71% voted to remain. Should not an intrinsic part of the curriculum be the teaching of the responsibility that we all should share in voting at elections, no matter how desperately we feel that in our particular constituency it is a lost cause.
Meanwhile, in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament it is recorded that only 43.09 % of the electorate turned out to vote for their MEPs. What does this say about our attitude to the role that MEPs play in the European Parliament? Perhaps, if we all showed more interest in that role and spent more time lobbying our MEPs on the issues we consider to be important and which caused so many to vote for Brexit, a greater proportion of us would have voted in favour of remaining in the EU.
It’s easy, as so many of the Brexiteers do, to carp on about the iniquities of the bureaucratic European Union and its impact on us in the UK, but do we not all have some share of responsibility for those deficiencies?
Yours,
Dr Nick Maurice
Marlborough