STUDENT PROTESTS REMIND US ‘PEOPLE POWER’ IS ALIVE AND WELL IN 2010
Graduates struggling to find work after university have been reminded that young people do have a (very loud) voice in this country – as an estimated 50,000 took to the streets of London yesterday to protest against the planned rise in tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year.
Window-smashing, Millbank-storming and placard-burning aside, yesterday was a phenomenal show of ‘people power’ – not seen in this country since the Stop the War rally in 2003.
Nobody expected protesters to turn out in such large numbers – and Graduate Fog was tickled pink to see so many young people marching against coalition’s insistence that students and graduates should pick up the bill for the funding ‘black hole’ in the university system, caused by cuts in the education budget and years of poor management.
I was particularly struck by the size of the protests because just this Saturday I read a piece in the Times called ‘What’s up with twentysomethings?’ in which one graduate remarked that his generation felt ‘powerless’, despite being politically engaged.
(I’d link to it, but apparently Rupert Murdoch has tucked it behind his paywall – apparently doesn’t want anybody under the age of 50 to read it…)
Oxford University graduate Michael Donkor, 25, said:
“We’re not apathetic. We’re well informed because of different ways of accessing information, but we don’t feel particularly powerful. It still feels like power lies in the hands of the generation before us.”
On occasion, I am struck by this sense of powerlessness from Graduate Fog’s users in your comments – particularly when it comes to the corrosive practice of unpaid internships, which are blocking many of you from opportunities that you should all have fair access to. “What can we do?” you say. “This is just the way it is.”
But it seems that things could be about to change.
The Times also spoke to the journalist Thomas Viney, 27, who wrote on Platform that after a delayed start, his generation was finally ready to “grow up and face the music” and engage with the reality of the world you find yourselves in.
For me, what yesterday’s protest showed was that young people have more power than you think you do. Even without the violence, the march would still have been the top story on the BBC and all over the front pages today.
You are young, strong, articulate – and there are are hundreds of thousands of you. When you get it together, there’s no stopping you.
Reading today’s coverage in the press, the coalition will feel very uncomfortable. They clearly have a big problem on their hands. You are a force to be reckoned with. You just need to believe it.
I really hope that when this generation gets it’s hands on power, as the genreations before have the power now, we won’t forget the struggles we face and how we feel now.
I hope we don’t treat the generations of the future the way we have been treated, we are essentially the victims of short-sighted self-serving politics. If we treat future generations in this way, what kind of future will Britain have?
I truly hope that ‘bright young Britain’ coming together and letting their voices be heard will lead to actions to back up the words expressing how we feel. Sticking it to the man is all well and good but it doesn’t change the difficulties we face.
Students won’t do this on their own, they need to link up with graduates, trade unionists, environmentalists, social reformists – the country needs to be brought to a standstill in one big overall general strike. Why? Because its quite obvious that the Tories are favouring the wealthiest in society over the masses, bowing down to the corporations by enabling a society in which graduates can be ‘cherry picked’ while the remainder are confined to the dole queue or have to work in rubbish jobs like call centres and door to door sales jobs, selling off the national forests to the highest bidder irrespective of damage to the environment that could result and laying off people left, right and centre, never mind trashing the public sector. Enough is enough, this bunch have to be brought to task and now is the time to do it.
I agree that this was a major protest, but I’m not sure that this equates to true power to change because unfortunately the window smashing and violence has been spectacularly useful for the government. What is all over the news today? Is it that the students have a legitimate argument about fees?
Tragically no. The government’s response to the protest is that they deplore the violence (and completely sidestepping the issue of tuition fees). The media’s response is to ask whether we are going back to the thatcher days of riots.
I find it extremely frustrating that a tiny number of violent thugs have potentially derailed a major legitimate protest by tens of thousands of students.
Really? Interesting that many of the students I saw interviewed on the tv thought that the window smashing was a good thing, a sign of just how angry they all feel…
Fantastic article in London’s Evening Standard by City Editor Chris Blackhurst, who is a friend of Graduate Fog and seems to be one of the few mainstream journalists fighting your cause…
EXPECT MORE RAGE IF THE RICH AND POOR DIVIDE GETS BIGGER
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23896708-expect-more-rage-if-the-rich-and-poor-divide-gets-bigger.do
I agree, well done for posting that link Tanya!