FORUM: A new legitimacy for direct action

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Published: 18 November, 2010
by JONATHAN MOSES

Betrayed by the democratic process, our right to protest will not be a right to be ignored

Apathetic. Apolitical. 

It has been easy to dismiss our generation with glib semantics. 

Wednesday November 10 begged a new analysis, when 52,000 students took part in one of the largest NUS demonstrations in decades. 

Perhaps the problem was less with us than with the political class representing us. 

The Iraq War – perhaps the seminal moment of political education for the current university demographic – simultaneously constituted one of the biggest waves of protest in British history and one of the most ostensible displays of indifference by politicians bent on invasion. 

We learned our lesson, and it should be no surprise that an unprece­dented fury saw up to 5,000 demonstrators lay siege to the Tory headquarters at Millbank. 

I cannot condone violence or arbitrary vandalism – it is neither productive nor defensible – but it must be understood in the context of the way in which youth has been spoken at, not spoken to, both in education reform and broader society. 

No students – not even the NUS leadership – had meaningful input into the Browne Review, chaired as it was by a former chief executive of a multi-national. 

Meanwhile, justifying its programme of austerity, the coalition claims it is “immoral” to “burden the next generation with higher debts”. 

Yet when it justifies its reforms to higher education, the coalition proposes only one option is fair: a huge burden of debt for the next generation. 

The Liberal Demo­crats championed their progressive, anti-tuition fee credentials in their attempt to court the student vote during the general election. Now they will not only oversee, but actively promote a Conservative, neo-liberal agenda. 

Is this what “restoring trust in politics” looks like, Nick? 

Millbank, problematic as it was, represented a rejection of the sanitisation the much vaunted “right to protest” offered the student movement. 

Betrayed by the democratic process, direct action has ac­quired a new legitimacy: our right to protest will not be a right to be ignored when future students are being asked to pay three times the price cost for a cut to their own education, and ultimately concede the inauguration of a market in higher education. 

At the local level, workshops are springing up on London campuses, teaching an entirely new form of education: in the legalities and logistics of occupations, in road blockages and co-ordin­ating walk-outs, in the mechanisms of organ­ising mass protest. 

Already Manchester and Sussex universities have entered into occupation with many more likely to follow. 

Next Wednesday,  November 24, thousands of London students will walk out of their universities, schools and colleges and head to Trafalgar Square to participate in a national day of action. 

Windows can be repaired. 

Lives cannot. 

• Jonathan Moses is a co-ordinating member of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts