The student protests, and most recently university occupations, have been the most successful form of anti-cuts protest to date, and it’s a shame Aaron Porter (NUS President) did not support the occupations earlier. This is politics in action, and no one can deny their message is getting across in the media and even the Lib Dems are starting to think perhaps they shouldn’t vote for fee increases, knowing support for their party is at rock bottom.
But where the message needs to really hit home is to the rest of us, disgruntled by the cuts. The students have taken the lead, and it’s in everyone’s interest now to get out and show solidarity, show our politicians that it’s not only students who are angry that they will have to bear the brunt of free market capitalist cuts.
And it won’t just do for Labour to criticise the Lib Dems and Conservatives. Labour needs to become THE party for no cuts and court the logical resentment that’s brewing. There’s never been a better time to propose a RADICAL alternative. Shake up the party, Ed Miliband. Get out on the streets with students, strikers and the public to show that Labour is the party of the people it so wants to be.
In recent days, Nick Robinson has described the tuition fees dilemma as the Lib Dem’s Iraq war. The Lib Dems need to make sure they don’t make the mistake Labour did by going against thousands of voices out on the street. Listen to all the angry students, listen to the number of people who are/would be out supporting them if they weren’t working, and make the right decision. We don’t care about your reputation, but we do care about the future of thousands of children, and so do they.
1 comment:
I agree to an extent. What this new surge in activism needs is direction, and the Labour Party seems like the logical organisation to do it. The only obstacle is the Labour leadership. They appear to have no interest in putting out a coherent argument against cuts and for a more progressive (in the real sense of the word, not the Clegg version) taxation system. I know the right-wing media and the Coalition would just jump on anything 'left-wing' that Miliband or whoever said, but that's not really an excuse. We can see the result of Labour compromising its core values in the mass electorate desertions back in May and the rise (such as it is) of the BNP and EDL. Perhaps a leftist 'coalition' is needed to bring all the disparate groups together and create a force that can truly challenge the ConDems?
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