Grahame Leon-Smith, Founder      Inauguration of the SCP at the Runnymede Memorial    Terry Pattinson, Co-Founder

The Senior Citizens Party was founded on 22 January 2004 to represent the needs and concerns of the 20.6 million Seniors, age 50 or over, who make up 43% of the voting population.  Grahame had been an active member of the Conservative Party all his life and Terry an active member of the Labour Party.  Both of them, like many other Seniors, had become disillusioned with the present generation of politicians many of whom, they feel, are largely disinterested in the opinions and wishes of their electorate and are mainly concerned with gaining and maintaining power for themselves.  Once they have been elected they rarely meet with or communicate with the people who voted for them.

Hypocrisy and "spin" are rife and promises made during election campaigns, even those laid down in their respective manifestos, are quickly forgotten.  When interviewed politicians refuse point-blank to give a straight answer to a straight question, and merely repeat their own views.  This sort of behaviour has led to a major decline in their moral and ethical standards and has resulted in the majority of the population becoming disillusioned with both politics and politicians, and the percentage of people voting has therefore declined.  The undemocratic "first-past-the-post" system which results in  the number of representatives of each party elected bearing very little relationship to the number of votes actually cast only adds to the feeling that it won't make any difference who you vote for, and leaders to fewer and fewer people bothering to vote (often no more than 25-30% in local elections).

Present-day Seniors were brought up to tell the truth, keep their promises and adhere to high moral and ethical standards and have no confidence in people who do otherwise.  Such a situation undermines democracy and plays directly into the hands of extremists, who feel able to justify anti-social, criminal and even terrorist activities on the grounds that democracy is seen not to be working.  We believe that Seniors, precisely because they form the largest demographic group in the UK, have a unique opportunity to reform democracy so that it does once again represent the will of the people and create a better and fairer society, not just for Seniors but for everyone.  To achieve this, however, they must unite, be prepared to stand up and be counted, and to form their own political party, as already exists in other European countries, and to stand for election at local, regional, national and European level.