Books: Review - Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth By Ed Howker and Shiv Malik

Published: 9 December, 2010
By GERALD ISAAMAN

Those students who this week took to the streets in protest over education cutbacks and tuition fees are laying the foundation for a new and more equitable system

THEY will be marching on Parliament  again today (Thursday). Students and sixth-formers will be declaring their angry rejection of tuition fees and education cutbacks, as MPs finally cast their vote on the proposed controversial legislation.

Whether the police will allow them to get near to the House of Commons is debatable. Indeed, whether the police have the right to do so has yet to be challenged, the corralling of thousands of young people for hours on end being, at least to me, a denial of the citizen’s right to demonstrate peacefully.

Perhaps some truly concerned MP or the charity Liberty ought to investigate the situation.

Yet, what the explosion of protest has done is to give young people their first taste of police power in a democratic society and, if anything, added to their passion to object to short-term laws that, they believe, harm their future.

And all the more so as the major change in funding and benefits is not imperative, given the apartheid created by Scotland and Wales insisting that higher education must remain free.

It is all part of the confusion of our coalition times and the inheritance thrust upon the next generation of a decadence of debt, basically caused by the rout of world economics by greedy bankers on huge bonuses – and still seeking more.

All surveys show that only 10 per cent of the popul­ation take a serious interest in politics while, generally, the total of those actually voting has dramat­ically declined. The result is that more believe now that the current democratic process is irrelevant, not fit for purpose and is ripe for reform.

The evidence is plentiful, whether it be the still redolent MPs’ expenses scandal or the exposure of secret memos revealing, more than anything, the way political leaders and their diplomats deny us the ugly truth of the nuclear and terrorism threats that exist.

What the coalition agreement has achieved is to ignite the ideals of a new generation of voters who now want to sweep them from power for breaking their pledges for short-term gains. 

They want to create a new society based on trust – not the machin­ations of those seeking power whether it is, allegedly, for the sake of the nation’s unsure benefit or not.

It is their young future – and aspirations – that inspires them march in cities across the country, to occupy some 30 buildings and demand that their views are heard. 

And you have to say “Bravo” for that.

For the renewal of our abused and tainted political process is essential, the more so when the established political parties themselves have, together, fewer members than the National Trust and can no longer muster a majority, let alone a collective voice of opposition.

The background to all this is well researched by two young local journalists, Ed Howker and Shiv Malik, in Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth, published by Islington-based Icon Books.

An initial reaction might be, when you consider the outcomes of two world wars, that every generation faces its own hurdles and that today’s youth have enjoyed a freedom never dreamed of by their grandparents.

That, too, has given them the remarkable ability to indulge in and flout anything they like, responsibility not exactly being foremost. 

But they were not personally to blame for creating the temptation of credit cards dangled before them like sex and drugs, and enjoy property fortunes that have produced a booming consumer society. 

In fact, the problem now is youth versus age – the longevity of the population has placed a burden on them in an age when the high cost of housing and the lack of well-paid secure employment has shackled their own prospects for prosperity. 

It’s a good argument that undermines the claim that we are “all in it together”.

And it needs to be seriously understood by schizophrenic politicians faced with ditching pledges they openly made to gain votes. 

They simply don’t realise that, without trust, you cannot build an acceptable society. Anything else is seen as a fudge.

Yet Howker and Malik, like the City and the media when the bank vaults were found empty, didn’t see the revolution coming and, worse still, don’t offer their own sustainable solutions. 

Perhaps they need a new edition – The Jilted Generation Fights Back – that takes in current events, exploiting the exploding radicalism of today’s youth, which has taken to the streets and doesn’t look set to give in.

Maybe, like the thirst for pop music, mobile phones and the twittering teenagers, it will take off like a rocket, ditch our moribund political system that satisfies so few, and build a new Jerusalem.

We shall have to wait with hope – in our heads and hearts.

• Jilted Generation: How Britain has Bankrupted its Youth. 

By Ed Howker and Shiv Malik. 

Icon Books £8.99