Che jailing of five men, including two former Conservative Bradford councillors, for attempted vote-rigging in the 2005 General Election, was accompanied by a homily about democracy.

Judge Robert Bartfield told Leeds Crown Court: “Our way of life in this country is based on democracy. If the electoral system is contaminated by corruption and fraud, it would be rendered worthless.”

In July 1945, Winston Churchill, whose rousing speeches to the nation as Prime Minister had contributed mightily to Britain’s survival in the summer of 1940, was dumped from power by the electorate.

Churchill reportedly received the result of the General Election in the bath. “They have a perfect right to kick me out. That’s democracy,” he said.

Two years later, in November 1947, as leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, he told the House of Commons: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

He may have meant that unlike dictatorship, oligarchy and military junta, where rule is imposed and maintained by force, democracy is messy and open to abuse.

At the heart of democracy are three ideas.

l The subjection of the legislature – politicians who decide the laws – to the will of the people.

l Secret ballots, which stands for freedom of conscience.

l Representational governance.

This last point was explained by the late Edward Lyons, a Labour MP and then a Social Democratic Party MP for Bradford West. He told the T&A an MP was not a delegate speaking on behalf of sectional interests; he was a representative of an entire constituency, including those who voted for another candidate or did not vote at all.

Understanding these ideas is one thing – putting them into operation is another.

For the past 15 years, Ronnie Farley and his partner Marilyn Box, formerly a training officer with Bradford Council for 13 years, have travelled the country running non-party political seminars for prospective councillors.

In the mid-1980s, he was leader of Bradford Council’s Conservative Group – Eric Pickles, now the Government Minister for Local Government, was his deputy.

Mr Farley says: “One of the problems of local government democracy in Britain is that 54 per cent of councillors who do one term of three or four years don’t stand for election again.

“This is a major problem for political parties. My experience is at the present time none of the parties have waiting lists for candidates. They have to go out searching for them and these people are highly inexperienced.

“Prospective candidates are often selected a couple of months before an election and they are impressionable; they are advised by an older, more long-standing politician or agent and they do as they’re told. That exactly describes this situation in Bradford.”

Another of the problems in Bradford has been the influence of the family or clan among Muslims, superseding party political discipline and authority.

“It’s less of a problem now, but it was rife in the 1970s and 1980s,” Mr Farley adds. “Now there are Islamic banks; but in those days, if you wanted a loan, you had to go to someone in the community. Because of the financial obligation, you were then under his influence.”

Phil Beeley, Labour leader of Bradford Council from 1986 to 88, recalled the time when the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee suspended Toller Ward Constituency Party because of unexpected election results.

He says: “It was very prevalent in the mid-1980s. In inner-city wards and large urban areas you did get particular families trying to control the nominations for candidates and through that control non-party members – voters. It was a clan system.

“Why do people go to such lengths to influence elections? I suggest it’s not for the good of the electorate. What we have seen with this latest situation is blatant illegality.

“It’s not illegal to try to influence voters. It is illegality, filling in postal votes in the name of someone else, that’s got to be stopped; trust in politics is stretched to the limit.”

On the nature of democracy, Judge Bartfield could with justice have quoted from a speech made by Abraham Lincoln in 1856, five years before he was elected the 16th President of the United States.

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”