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.
Hitting Home
I come from a small industrial town in the north east of England surrounded by farms and old pit villages. I had a fairly typical upbringing; I played football, had a paper round, and went to the local comprehensive. The most remarkable thing about me is how utterly unremarkable I am. The epitome of average.
Today, as I write, I’m back in the north-east for a few days. A ‘holiday,’ if you can call it that. My return to the land of terrace houses is a social one. Not only would I like to see some more of my 4 month old nephew, but also my increasingly-frail granny fell and broke a rib this week so I needed to pay her a visit in hospital, and an old friend recently discovered his mother has an aggressive form of leukaemia for which she’s currently having chemotherapy.
While I’m enjoying London’s bright lights, beers, and madness sometimes real life does make an appearance.
As a member of the Green Party I am already well aware of the devastating impact of the Tory spending cuts. I have read enough on the subject to know that they are damaging to the country both socially and economically. However, these worries had always been abstract concepts. Coming home brings all of these worries out of the abstract and makes them a reality.
Upon getting home I stuck the kettle on and launched into the usual mono-syllabic conservation with my mother.
“Hi son, how was your journey?”
“Fine… your job safe?”
“Well…”
My mum is a manager in the NHS, you see. One of those middle managers who add no value to the service whatsoever and eat up all our taxes by creating red tape. Evil creatures… except she’s not. She manages a sexual assault unit which allows victims of sexual violence to receive medical attention and testing, counselling, and police interviews in a sympathetic, anonymous environment (as opposed to using a police interview room making the victim feel like a criminal).
My mum’s contribution to society is worthwhile. She coordinates efforts between the NHS, police, and voluntary sector, has to deal with horrific crimes, and all for a salary that is already below the national average.
With Tory cuts to police funding (25% across the board) my mum’s job, and the centre as a whole, could be in jeopardy. With NHS restructuring, once again, my mum’s job, and the centre, could be in jeopardy. This is not the “eliminating waste” that the Tories promised pre-election. These are cuts that could potentially wipe out a service that makes a real difference to people’s lives.
After my tea (milk, no sugar – just in case I visit any of you) I dragged my granddad over my brother’s place. Granddad hasn’t been feeling all that sociable with my grandma in hospital but I thought it might take his mind off things, so we went over and I got to play with my nephew some more. The kid is great. He makes no noise whatsoever. He dribbles a bit too much for my taste but as far as babies go, not bad at all.
Here’s a photo of my nephew with his great-granddad for you all to coo over.
My visit lasted no longer than half an hour. My brother had to go back to work that evening. In the day he works as an electrician but with the lack of work currently in the north-east of England he’s had to take on a second job in the evening working in a kebab shop in order to provide adequately for his family (fast food and booze are recession-proof in my part of the world). The lack of cash isn’t because they spend a great deal. They have no Sky TV, he doesn’t smoke, rarely drinks, no expensive hobbies, they rent so there’s no massive mortgage either. Quite simply, the guy is living from morning until night to provide for his family.
With the government’s proposed cuts, unemployment in the area is set to rise, and to make matters worse he will receive less support in benefits as the Tories clamp down on the sponging, workshy, scum like my brother, his wife, and their layabout babies.
I was quite lucky. I managed to escape the north-east, the poor wages, and the higher unemployment that comes with it. I got my degree and managed to make myself more employable. As a single parent raising 3 kids there was no way my mum could have paid for me to go to university – especially not in London where I ended up. I was only able to go to university because the state paid my fees and provided me with a significant loan. Even then I still needed to work part-time in order to survive.
When I look to the future that others from my area will face I feel a sense of dread. The opportunities that were there for me are drying up fast. With less funding and fewer university places available even the most talented of the working class students are going to struggle to better themselves. These cuts discriminate against the poorest – the people that need government aid more than anyone else. The Tories aren’t eliminating waste so much as they are eliminating opportunities. They are restructuring society to favour the well-off and leaving the majority of us to go it alone.
The most unusual part about this is that cutting funding for education and university places is counterproductive. As a single guy with no dependants, earning above the national average, I pay a disproportionate amount in taxes every month. Surely it is beneficial to the economy to help people like me go to university and pickup whatever graduate jobs are available than it is for me to be a job seeker, lose those taxes, and have that gap in talent. It’s a wonder that the government is able to get away with it.
Yet they do! These cuts in government spending are justified by scaremongering and unfair representations in the media. All benefit recipients are just lazy! All NHS managers are a waste of money! There are too many students at uni doing worthless media studies degrees! The hyperbole and the stereotyping is all part of the war the Tories have waged against the people that elected them. They are trying to sell us a system whereby they can keep taxes low for themselves and their rich, corporate lobby friends, and cut the services that we all depend-upon. Yes, the books do need to be balanced eventually but a budget based on 80% cuts to 20% taxation is not a fair deal, and the time scale for the cuts is nothing short of an attack on the public sector and all those who work in it and depend upon it.
My mate’s mum can’t afford for standards in the NHS to slip. Likewise, if my grandparents need treatment again they can’t afford to go private – and neither should they have to – they worked their whole lives and are entitled to a decent standard of healthcare when they need it most.
The Tories and their new Lib Dem mates don’t care about public services because they don’t rely on them. It’s my family and yours that stand to bear the brunt of these cuts. It’s you, and I, and those worse off than us that will be hit hardest. The Tories in their ivory tower, and the corporate elite at the likes of Vodafone (who have a £6 billion unpaid tax bill), can sleep at night knowing their families are fine.
I no longer have that luxury and neither do you. We kid ourselves that these cuts won’t affect us directly, they will affect other people. That is simply not the case. The only people that are safe are the same people trying to bully us into accepting these cuts as inevitable.
