Why They Hate the Protesters, Why They Hate the Greens.
For the past few weeks I have been wrestling with my conscience. Have I abandoned my roots? Have I completely forgotten where I come from? Am I still that working class lad from a northern, industrial town? I still feel the same.
My worries stem from the frequency with which I have had to defend the student protests to my friends and acquaintances back up home. Have I really become that out of touch? What are your objections? Why aren’t you behind the students – they’re doing this for you?!
I have had plenty of time to reflect and I really do understand the problems my friends are having in accepting the student movement.
We all shudder when we hear the likes of Cameron and Clegg talking about the poor. “What the hell would they know about it?” We sneer. Trust-fund millionaires trying to pretend they understand or care about our plight. We are rightfully hostile.
What I hadn’t considered fully – and what the middle classes don’t realise – is that they are subjected to the same treatment. Regardless of whether or not the students are in the right, the people I’ve spoken to dislike them immensely. They don’t pick faults with the arguments at hand; instead they focus on the individuals. Some choice comments:
“Half of the ‘hooray Henrys/Its Ronnie not Veronicas’ in that crowd will be fucking Tories once they grow out (of) there (sic) socialist/Michal Moore/Noam Chomsky phase.”
“I’m sort of a self-loathing student. The majority are pretty down to earth but there are so many Nathan Barleys.”
“I’m obviously generalising here, but all the students that were true cunts that I encountered at uni were loudmouths with moppy hair some form of jack wills hoody, maybe with a bodywarmer on. “
The language maybe coded and ad hominem but the implication is quite clear. ‘They too are privileged; they don’t look like us, sound like us and definitely do not represent us.’
A parody entitled “BRITAIN BACKS MIDDLE CLASS CHILDREN WHO WANT THE MOON ON A STICK” from the Daily Mash summed up feelings quite nicely.
When I take a look around at the people I know involved in the protests I struggle to disagree. From visiting the UCL occupation I garnered quite quickly that I was surrounded by a bunch of middle class kids. Listening to conversations from drunk 17-year-olds about whether they are going to opt for Oxford or Cambridge pretty much sealed it. Add to it the fact that the son of the mega-rich Dave Gilmour was one of the more prominent figures at Thursday’s demonstration and, frankly, I’m wasting my time arguing with my northern brethren: The protests HAVE been led by the middle classes.
So what? What if the protests aren’t made up of working class kids, does it really matter? Yes, yes it does. It matter immensely. These demonstrations rely on public support. A recent article by an excellent Green Party blogger managed to get it entirely wrong. He crowed success at receiving approval from a well-to-do lady on the train. As heartening as any support can be, that’s not the key demographic we’re missing. We are missing the support of the very people we want to help.
This, I feel, is not just a problem of student protests. I would go further and say that it is a problem of the progressive politics movement as a whole. There is a reason why the Green Party’s policies receive massive public approval (23.66% of the vote on voteforpolicies.org.uk) then fail to perform in General Elections (Just 1% of the vote nationally, half that of the BNP). We are failing to get our message across. We are inaccessible to the public.
We do have the best policies, and the protesters are in the right, but until our message is one that is representative of the people we will remain marginal, despised, and irrelevant.
