Quick reminder for everyone about tomorrow.

For people who are my age or around, this will be the first general election we've been legally allowed to vote in. Some of us might have had pre-conceived political opinions for a while, some of us might have only just started to really pay attention, and others might still be undecided on where they stand. Regardless of your certainty or position about who should be in parliament, the one crucial thing to remember is that voting is not the be-all and end-all of democratic participation.

The origin of the vote itself is quite confusing and I won't go into the exact historic details of when exactly "universal suffrage" was granted in Britain because it came in stages - first granted to a select few white males but later extended to working class white men, then women, then black men, then black women. The point is, the vote was not given to us by our oh-so charitable rulers or because the nobles and monarchs of the day believed the serfs were finally ready for democracy. We have the right to vote because ordinary people fought for it, because collectively the people knew that en masse they could demand their rights from those who controlled the country (and at the time most of the world). In fact, most of the services we now take for granted like the NHS, the welfare state, workplace safety rights, and the minimum wage were fought for by movements who believed that working people had the right to live dignified lives regardless of their ability to produce profit for a boss. Hell, even the bloody weekend, your leisure time on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday was fought for by American trade unions up until the 1940s when the 40-hour work week was officially put into law. That's right, working people have only had the full weekend since the 1940's.

For their 1987 election special, the satirical comedy show 'Spitting Image' ended their skit with a parody of the famous scene from Cabaret where a Nazi fanatic sings "Tomorrow belongs to me", a song about Hitlers plans for the future. Without changing a single word, Spitting Images version shows a theoretical dystopian future in Britain where: privatisation, corporate rule, environmental destruction, racist police, military hegemony, and ultra-nationalism are the prevailing values. At the time, Spitting Image thought they were over-exaggerating.

Tomorrow, we have another general election, and it seems pretty grim to be perfectly honest. Each of the 3-4 major parties march in varying degrees of lockstep to the tune of neoliberalism, imperialist war, and punishing the poor for the crimes of the rich by selling off the services working people fought so bravely for to their mates in the private sector. I completely empathise with those who have rejected the entire process outright, casting their vote away as pointless because they see all parties as tools for the rich and powerful. Even a day away i'm not even sure if I want to vote at all, and if I do it will be nothing more than to try and dilute the system. But like the Kings of old, the politicians and the business leaders know that if the people were to ever organise and agitate for change like we have many times before, the world could change over night. Every factory, mine, every mill, the financial sector, the police, the armies of all nations could at our command stand still.

So by all means put a piece of paper with an 'X' next to your preferred party in a ballot box tomorrow, but don't for a single second think that's where democracy ends. Regardless of whether we end up with a Labour, Liberal, Conservative or, God forbid, a UKIP dominated parliament. Remember that real change comes from being out on the streets, from organisation, from the constant struggle of working class people against those who make nothing but own everything. The ruling class trembles at the idea that you understand a simple truth; you don't need them, but they need you.