HOLDING ONE'S NOSE IN WISBECH

There has been a great deal of huffing and puffing on social media about alleged electoral fraud in Wisbech local elections. There have been anecdotal evidence of people carriers drawing up outside polling booths not long after the end of the afternoon shift in local factories, and Eastern European residents being decanted into the polling booth, clutching electoral leaflets published by one of the parties.

Perhaps the great conspiracy imagined by the writers of posts on Facebook and Twitter goes something like this:

• Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bulgarian (you take your pick) residents shown how to register to vote.

• On the day, friendly local taxi drivers and political activists collect the voters from the factory gates and drive them to the polling station.

So far, so good. Party workers offering transport to polling stations has been going on, if not for ever, then for as long as cars have been available to save people's legs. All within the bounds of accepted electoral practice. After all, once the elector is in the booth, who knows who he or she has voted for?

I suspect the dirty deed - if one exists - is rooted in the dark world of the relationship between vulnerable immigrants and the people who control their employment and housing. What if - and this is pure speculation - there were a person or persons who had a significant hold over the lives of certain immigrants? What if money lending were involved? What if the influential person or persons had ties to recruitment agencies or gangmasters?

It is a matter of fact that democracies in eastern Europe are relatively new. Voting in elections where candidates held widely different views has a very limited history. In the recent past, elections in these countries were neither free, confidential or fair. What if unscrupulous local politicians close to home were to take advantage of this?

We can only hope that allegations of fraud locally are just the result of defeated candidates lashing out and looking for someone or something to blame for their failure. The images below should offer friendly guidance to voters who may be participating in local elections for the first time.