Across Europe, students are protesting against the end of their entitlements
Daniel Korski 6:00pm
A month ago I found myself in the space of one week in two different countries, yet in
the midsts of what felt like the same phenomenon: the political awakening of a new generation. In both London and Rome, students took to the streets to protest against government policies in
numbers and in ways that those who graduated just a few years before would have found anachronistic, odd even.
Unsurprisingly, given the historical, political and even emotional differences between Britain and Italy, there were differences between the protests. But as I walked the packed streets, listened to the protests, read their slogans, I heard similar arguments - particularly about the lack of fairness. When both events were finished, Whitehall and Via del Corso looked similarly destroyed.
Were there things, I wondered, that tied the London and Rome protests together - besides the thrill of anti-Establishment violence. "The cuts," an old-timer told me in London, as we watched the students. "They've awakened a new generation." Perhaps - but in Italy the cuts are skin-deep while the nature of Silvio Berlusconi's government inspires more hatred than David Cameron could ever generate.
Yet the old-timer had a point. The cuts did unify the students, gave them a common language. For the cuts struck at what the protesters feel entitled to. This generation of students have a greater sense of entitlement than any that has come before them. They grew up with 500 channel TVs, cheap short-haul flights and inexpensive clothes. They never really had to work for it, it was always there, and they never really knew it could end. Theirs is a sense of entitlement born of a combination of affluence and ignorance - ignorance of how hard it was to create the modern-day welfare state and how close we still live, will always live, to the precipice.
Now that the music has stopped, the students are unwilling to accept that there will be fewer chairs, that seating is no longer free and that everyone cannot, indeed should not, come along for the proverbial ride. With their political backers - some starry-eyed 68'ers like John Pilger, others opportunists like Ed Miliband, the students deny reality - the cuts, they say, are not necessary or go too far.
But beyond the indulgence of the JCR, the world has stopped functioning as it has for the last 20 years. More people will have to work harder, longer and for less - not necessarily for less salary, but for less public services, less pension and, if inflation sets in, less purchasing power. In other words, for fewer entitlements, including in the educational sector. That is the world the students are united against, a world without their entitlements.
Previous
Vulture
January 4th, 2011 6:10pm Report this commentYou write and speak in vapid platitudes. Do you dream in them too?
Richard
January 4th, 2011 6:47pm Report this commentAnd in such a new world, will the extreme disparities of wealth that have emerged in the last couple of decades have any public legitimacy? I doubt it, especially as the crisis was caused by the recklessness of people on unimaginably high salaries and bonuses. The perception will grow that those people and their political representatives want to make everyone else pay without making any sacrifice themselves.
Ms Proper - Manners Advisor to The Stars
January 4th, 2011 7:11pm Report this commentWhatever.
TomTom
January 4th, 2011 7:22pm Report this commentMaybe there aren't any more politico Non-Jobs available to spout nonsense. The other way of looking at things is to see this generation of students expressing anger at the way the '68ers have betrayed them.
The Cohn-Bendits now sit as Green MEPs and pontificate as old men fat on the cream having imposed a yoke of debt and decline on subsequent generations.
The student radicals like Jack Straw and Gordon Brown, Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson et al have screwed the latter generations but grown fat and smug themselves. Barroso the Maoist who yachts with Latsis but builds his empire in Bankrupt Brussels as his former power base in Portugal shrivels into insolvency.
Sarkozy the Smug funded by Gabon;s dodgy money delivers nothing but hot air and celebrity lifestyle.
It is the Bourbon Court that angers students and its celebrity lifestyle as they are told to look forward to life as galley slaves with whatever flotsam and jetsam the New Class can import from around the globe to keep them down.
You would do well to read up on how laboratory rats behave when stressed, it might be good to know before you get to wear the blindfold on the scaffold
Prospero
January 4th, 2011 7:23pm Report this comment'They grew up with 500 channel TVs, cheap short-haul flights and inexpensive clothes. They never really had to work for it, it was always there, and they never really knew it could end.'
Surely access to education should have been one of the milestones of western democracy, Daniel. I would have thought, you are supportive of consumerism (the blessings of capitalist adventure), be it in the form of cheap t-shirts or cheaper education, no? I am confused.....
Walsingham's Ghost
January 4th, 2011 7:28pm Report this comment@ Vulture
He has a point though...
Victor Southern
January 4th, 2011 8:06pm Report this commentDoes "across Europe" include Germany? I haven't seen any report of students rioting there over increased fees.
Student riots in Greece had another cause altogether.
Prospero
January 4th, 2011 8:32pm Report this comment@TomTom: would you bother explaining when on earth exactly, was Jack Starw a radical student???
TrevorsDen
January 4th, 2011 9:39pm Report this commentThe lizard people are out in force I see.
biggestaspidistra
January 4th, 2011 11:56pm Report this comment@Prospero: in the 1960's at Leeds University
JohnAnt
January 5th, 2011 1:31am Report this commentActually, Prospero, Straw was the NUS leader at a rather important time of student ferment, and he speechified non-stop and jollied it along like the dickens.
You'll find all the news reports very difficult to locate these days, but I remember them very clearly. In 1969, having gained the support of communist 'student' groups particularly in radically unionized Yorkshire, he was elected President of the increasingly radical National Union of Students, having led the campaign to remove the "no politics" clause from the NUS constitution.
He later reinvented himself as the bluff, frank, honest and good-humoured uber-democrat we all know and love today.
Fergus Pickering
January 5th, 2011 2:41am Report this commentWhaddya mean 'access to education'? You mean going to uni for three years to booze and fornicate? Ah well, it's education of a sort, I suppose, though it seems to have precious little to do with opening books and reading the matter within. They are rioting because they are cross and they are cross because the free beer for all the workers seems to be turning off for now. I am (sofar) underwhelmed and I doubt my time in the tumbril is due to come yetawhile. Both my children worked hard, are working hard at their universities, but then both would have done what they have done, are doing, way back. Though the result would have been called a degree in neither case.
Prospero
January 5th, 2011 12:48pm Report this commentSorry - I need to rephrase my question: NUS??? When on earth exactly was that radical?
Stuart Seacole Smith
January 5th, 2011 3:00pm Report this commentToo many students, too many worthless and unnecessary degrees. It was always bound to end in tears eventually.
Perhaps for you, Prospero, radical can only be associated with all-out bloodthirsty loons like Ayers, Dohrn, Rudd etc. I'd set the bar much lower, and certainly would lump Straw together with Brown and others as true haters of our own society, and I firmly believe that this has informed every aspect of their political careers, every choice they've made.
TomTom
January 5th, 2011 3:43pm Report this commentWho cares ? It was/is simply the conduit for Communists and Trots to enter the Labour Party. It is an entryist position. Since you have such gaps in your knowledge Prospero try using Google for Sue Slipman, Trevor Phillips, Phil Woolas, Stephen Twigg, Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, John Denham, and past officers of NUS
Ken bishop
January 6th, 2011 10:27am Report this commentFergus Okcering: "three years to booze and fornicate"
It is amusing that defendants of fees invariably say that students are time wasters. Perhaps they have never noticed the generations of doctors, teachers, engineers and other educated people who keep our country prosperous.
Or perhaps Mr P himself spent three years boozing and fornicating, while I was studying?
Back to top