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Young people are often patronised and dismissed as an apathetic blob, too dazzled by mass consumerism to give a toss about politics. But when powerful figures go through the motions of encouraging youth engagement, it is clear they mean little more than casting a vote every few years. Angry protest – let alone peaceful civil disobedience – is a definite no-no. If Britain’s young mount protests that are in any way appropriate to the scale of the government-directed attack on them, the state will make its disapproval firmly known.
Many of the students protesting at Warwick University will have had little experience in protest. Perhaps – for some of them – Wednesday’s day of action, which was called by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, was one of their first tastes of political activism. It will have proved a salutary experience. After the students staged a sit-in in support of free education, police officers stormed in, began manhandling students, sprayed students with CS gas and had Tasers at the ready.
This experience will be all too familiar to veterans of the many student protests that followed the coalition’s assumption of power and the trebling of tuition fees. In the aftermath of perhaps the largest student demonstration in a generation, the end of 2010 saw waves of student occupations of universities and protests. Often these were met with police repression: hours-long kettles in freezing temperatures, and officers swinging batons. At one protest in Parliament Square, I was among those who had to abruptly jump aside after police officers charged us on horseback.
When protestors were kettled on Westminster Bridge in December 2010, one doctor described it as “the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen – it must have been what Hillsborough was like. The crush was just so great.” In a democracy, police officers are meant to facilitate peaceful protest; instead they treat it as a problem to be contained. Such experiences undoubtedly strip many young people of any illusions about the neutrality of the state.
Perhaps some reading this have limited sympathy with students, and believe they should tone down the actions and the rhetoric; stick to politely lobbying their MP, that sort of thing. But when you look at what young people face, the wonder is that there are not more angry, defiant protests. Hundreds of thousands are out of work – a plight that often has life-long consequences, including increasing the risk of unemployment and lower wages for their entire working existence. Many of those who are in work are being driven into the insecurity of zero-hour contracts, and around half of recent graduates are in non-graduate work. Some of the poorest aspirational children who stayed on at sixth form had their educational maintenance allowances snatched away from them. The trebling of tuition fees has left students saddled with decades of debt, and perversely could cost the government more than the old system did.
Much of the new generation will struggle to get an affordable home, youth services are being hacked away at, and they face being the first generation to be worse off than their parents in a century. We live in a country where food banks and legal loan sharks have thrived. If they don’t protest now – and angrily, too – then when?
After a lull in the student movement, it may well be flexing its muscles again in the build-up to the election. Their activists are determined to build broad coalitions, linking up – for example – with demands for campus cleaners to be paid a living wage, and supporting the struggles of workers across the country. As their universities have been marketised, so the presence of police officers has grown more assertive: authoritarian neo-liberalism in action. But maybe – just maybe – the authorities have miscalculated. These attacks on protest will surely only draw more attention to the students’ cause. And if so, our courageous young protesters could give hope and inspiration to others tempted to stand up for their rights, too.