Students face crackdown after sit-in
By Edd Bauer I’m a student at the University of Birmingham, and one of twelve facing disciplinary action that could lead to my expulsion after a peaceful one-day sit-in that ended with our forceful eviction by university security and the police. A second-year student in the theology department, which has already lost a third of [...]
For Our Generation it’s the Greens or it’s Nothing
Our generation has taken a beating. Where the Thatcher government waged a thinly disguised class war, our generation has been under attack for the past 13 years. The anger we’ve seen from young people on our streets is an anger driven by the knowledge that we’ve been abandoned. We’ve been abandoned by a political class [...]
Students vs the asset strippers: who will win?
This post first appeared on the new anti-cuts site False Economy which I’ve been a little involved in, and which you have to check out. Two days ago, I stood outside Oxford’s Cheney School as almost the entire sixth-form walked out of their classes. Their younger school-mates too had turned up that morning with placards [...]
Exclude a Generation – Expect Anger
The size and anger of the student protests came as something of a shock to the establishment. They came as something of a shock to the media. And they came as something of a shock to those who’d written off our generation as apathetic. But they shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone. Our [...]
It was always going to be students
It was always going to be students who fought back first. There is a myth that my generation is apathetic. But the truth is that most are alienated. And that’s not the same thing. The “usual suspects” are a product of that alienation. And this generation of twenty somethings has more “usual suspects” than any [...]
A Generation at the End of its Tether Fights Back.
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Doomed to be ignored: The state, media and the hegemonic silencing of dissent.
By Alex Wood Following the fees demo there has been an outpouring of moral outrage from across the elite; from the media, police, politicians and union bureaucrats. Student activists seem generally inspired by the energy and boldness of demonstrators who occupied the Tories’ HQ, as well as the huge attendance and diversity of the demo. [...]
Time to Take a Stand: Oppose Uncapped Student Fees
How many Liberal Democrats does it take to screw in a light-bulb? They don’t – they’re too busy screwing their voters. In universities across the country, the Liberal Democrat’s opposition to fees was symbolic of their claim to stand up for younger voters. And now, after a painfully predictable U-turn, Vince Cable looks like he’s [...]
Conference Fragments – Mobilising the Jilted Generation
I spoke, along with Shiv Malik of ‘Jilted Generation‘, at the Young Greens fringe on ‘mobilising the jilted generation’. Shiv spoke eloquently about how Thatcherite liberalism has screwed today’s 20 somethings. This is roughly what I said. The Conservative Party has always opposed the welfare state. And now they are in Government they have successfully [...]
Students preparing to bite back
This time last year, I wrote a comment piece for “the Herald”, arguing that today’s students are the most politicised for a generation. The main (though not only) piece of evidence I cited was a massive increase in turnout in student elections up and down the country. Politicians should take note – the conventional wisdom [...]
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