For true democracy, bring back ostracism

1 May 2010

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Our electoral system does not answer the need for punishment, anger and rebellion, says Paul Johnson. What fun it would be to vote to get rid of our thoroughly bad eggs

Among the many complaints I have heard about this unsatisfactory election is this one: it is impossible for the general public to get rid of a thoroughly unpleasant, or corrupt, or dangerous politician if he (or she) sits in a safe party seat or in the Lords. Such people can thumb their noses at us, and do. But there could be a thoroughly satisfying way of meeting this need, and one with wider applications than mere politics. The new parliament, which we all trust will be more responsive than the last one, might consider going back 2,500 years in time and copying from the resourceful ancient Greeks the admirable institution of ostracism.

Most people understand the word but are unfamiliar with the process. I have been going into it while writing my present book, on Socrates and his world. Ostraka, a kind of rubbish, were broken potsherds, just big enough to make a cheap and convenient writing surface. Anyone who has studied ancient Egypt will know they form an important source for social history. They were used by schoolchildren for their exercises, officials for tax receipts, and the malevolent for casting spells — and for many other purposes. The Greeks used them too, but only in particular circumstances, as voting tablets.

Ostracism was probably introduced in 507 bc by Cleisthenes, the inventor of Athenian democracy, for precisely the reason it could be used to supplement our faltering democracy now. Under his law, the ecclesia or Assembly, the sovereign body of all Athenian citizens, could decide each year whether to hold a vote to ostracise anyone regarded as a public menace. If the vote was positive, the ostraka were piled up outside the entrance to the Assembly, and each citizen was allowed to write on the ostrakon the name of the person he wanted ostracised. These were deposited in a marked-off space in the Agora and counted.

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