AT a social event in my village during the 1992 general election, my presence was noted as being that of "the only man in this village who votes Labour". It wasn't true.

Not simply because even in the most red hot Tory stronghold more than one individual votes Labour. More to the point, I don't. I did last time because it seemed vital to give the certain-to-be-elected Labour Government as big a mandate as possible to reverse the disastrous policies of the Thatcher/Major years, which had bitterly divided the country and reduced it to little better than a slum.

But I'm not sure I've voted Labour in any other general election. I've certainly voted Tory at least twice - in my first general election, Harold Macmillan's "never-had-it-so-good" triumph of 1959 when, like perhaps most first-time voters before and since, I took my cue from my parents. Staunch Tory voters, they never forgave the country for what they saw as its betrayal of Churchill by electing Attlee's Labour Government in 1945 - even though the Welfare State it brought in provided a more secure future for them and millions like them. But here's what might surprise readers of this column.

I voted Tory when Prime Minister Ted Heath effectively went to the country against the excess of union power, particularly as wielded by the miners, in 1974. He lost because people lacked the stomach for the fight, ultimately taken up and won by Thatcher, whose curbs, while going too far, were the inevitable result of the abuses that were truly crippling Britain.

But only in the last election have I ever voted for a winning candidate. I invite voters who at least get the MP they want to consider the effect, in safe seats like the one where I live (Richmond) of always casting what the major parties are only too eager to dismiss as a wasted vote.

All parties are warning against apathy in this election. Apathy suggests indifference. But what will produce a probably record low turnout this time is despair, disillusion, disenchantment, call it what you will, by people who care greatly. As the Tory party chairman, Michael Ancram, has admitted, the election turns on the results of a handful of marginal seats. In the rest, the only votes that matter are those for the candidate destined to win.

In opposition, Labour spoke ever more keenly of proportional representation. In power it prefers the status quo. Hence the new phenomenon of tactical voting, by which people swap votes to give the party of their choice a chance of winning in another constituency.

The parties would do far better to address the frustration that is driving people to take matters into their own hands. The rise of protests like the May Day rally against capitalism is another expression of impotence. The traditional protest - a polite march culminating in the delivery of a petition No 10 - now cuts little ice. Governments are happy with it because it is largely invisible. To be effective nowadays a protest must be disruptive, a message grasped not only by so-called extremist groups like the anti-capitalists and animals-rights' campaigners.

I will vote Liberal Democrat because I believe in taxes, memorably described by the Lib-Dem former leader Paddy Ashdown as the "membership fee of a civilised society".

But I want fair taxes, just taxes, coupled with an end to the still-rolling fat-cat bandwagon. Remember the meal Labour made of that in opposition? In Government, it has done nothing to stop it, and Tony Blair now rules out a wealth tax on the ground that he prefers to level-up the bottom people. Reminiscent of Thatcher's trickle-down theory, meant to convey wealth from rich to poor but which left three million people unemployed, this is one reason for not voting Labour. I shall add a bundle in the coming weeks. Tony Blair is already quaking in his shoes.