In a statement on 10 June, David Cameron urged the five million British people living abroad to use the votes, which all of them now have for the first time, following the removal of the iniquitous 15-year limit on overseas voting. He himself promised to make them a full part of our parliamentary elections in the Conservative manifesto of 2015, and now at last this important reform has been achieved, bringing us into line with other Western democracies.
Much of the credit for turning the election pledge into legislation rests with the Party’s official organisation for expats, Conservatives Abroad, chaired by Heather Harper. She and her colleagues worked tirelessly in association with the great hero of the entire campaign, Harry Shindler OBE, a Labour-supporting veteran of Anzio who settled in Italy and took the case for full voting rights to the European Court of Human Rights.
When what is now the Elections Act 2022 was going through the Lords, I said that the sections dealing with overseas voters should be called the Shindler clauses. A few months before his death last year aged 101, Harry came—and spoke memorably—at a celebratory lunch in the Lords attended by Lord Cameron’s former chief of staff, Edward Llellwyn, now Lord Llewellyn of Streep, our ambassador in Rome who knew Harry well.
“Use your vote”: that is what this wonderful man would have said to his compatriots throughout the world today.
Alistair Lexden
