It has been said “The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.” How apt that Victoria Towers gardens, and its statue of Emmeline Pankhurst is but a placards throw from the Tory HQ occupied by the disaffected student population yesterday.
Revolt was hardly surprising, the unions always try to empower people just enough to make them feel like they are ‘fighting’ whilst simultaneously reducing them to marching like good boys and gals from a to b, doing nothing more than covertly pacifying the masses and providing public speaking work experience for the careerist leaders as they try to climb their slimy way on to the labour gravy train. People soon tire of ineffective action, and such an unnecessary all encompassing ideological attack of the working classes will raise more than a few placards and chants.
Did you hear about the ‘Education Camp’ occupation of the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills? Thought not. It was a peaceful occupation dismissed with little coverage incorrectly as a break in.
Smashing windows during an occupation or protest is not mindless violence; it is a symbolic act of destruction, the manifestation of a palpable anger felt not only by a tear away group of two hundred, but by the thousands of people both outside cheering on the occupiers and of those sitting at home watching the events unfold on news channels across the world. Your eagerness to abandon and denounce your members and the occupation on the BBC only days after you told students at the People and Planet conference that you would support direct action stinks of the same deviousness of Cleggs betrayal. I bet you rubbed your hands with glee at the opportunity of getting your face out there, a shame you didn’t use it to support the students instead of Browne nosing.
Your outside agitator argument is a tired and failed one. A union is not simply its representatives, it is its members, and despite the stewards best attempts to quell the action, the NUS were outside that building cheering the students at the front on, burning the meaningless pathetic placating placards. A testament to the ineffectiveness and almost novelty value of a peaceful march being the humorous nonsensical or generic placards now favoured at student rallies decorated with slogans like ‘ANGRY SIGN’.
It was an engineering student, from one of the world’s elitist universities who opened the door to the stairwell allowing the second group of students up to the roof. When the door was opened to the stairs, the students stopped and held back the crowd of hundreds to enable the St Johns Ambulance found behind the door to exit the building along with the protesters and officers that were being treated before heading straight for the roof. One determined lad walked the umpteen flights of stairs supported by a group of friends, one of whom was carrying the wheelchair. This hardly sits with the media version of the ‘old school anarchist hijack’. One attempt at looting by a young student was quickly stopped by a few words of reason by the more mature. Yes a few people were idiots, and did idiotic things, but this is neither implicitly the action of anarchists nor any other social activist; the individual acts of violence were more an expression of the sudden, rushing emancipation than the theory. The marginalised voice of youth had suddenly found that people were listening to them for the first time and due to their piss poor union, had not a clue what to do in an occupation. With no creative direction, what else was there to do?
The various forms of nihilistic behaviour seen are easily explained in terms of the students prior frustrations, it is the failure of the unions that these frustrations turned to destructive and not creative channels. It was an amazing opportunity to send a clear, unified message of resistance and solidarity. If only students had been prepared and supported for peaceful occupation and resistance. Yet more political casualty of ineffective unions.
The mass media coverage of this, including the coverage from the so-called liberal media is nothing short of marginalisation of the voices of protest. The real cancer of the left is the abandonment of the movement by many of its figureheads, both the political and commentariat, every time organic development flowers. An elite fearful of any movement they cannot control; la trahison des clercs. How can you preach solidarity yet practice abandonment? The many times repeated ‘they weren’t students’, however untrue this statement is, reeks of division in what is supposed to be a time of solidarity. The students protesting are not the ones affected by the proposed reform, they
“… oppose all cuts and we stand in solidarity with public sector workers, and all poor, disabled, elderly and working people. We are occupying the roof in opposition to the marketisation of education pushed through by the coalition government, and the system they are pushing through of helping the rich and attacking the poor. We call for direct action to oppose these cuts. This is only the beginning of the resistance to the destruction of our education system and public services."
Perhaps it’s about time someone other than the confused, brave abandoned students did the same.
Sign the unity statement.
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