"A trail of broken promises"

Now unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past month or so then you will have heard that tuition fees for University students will be rising. “But what, didn’t Nick Clegg make a promise to in fact get rid of fees altogether throughout his election campaign?!” I hear many cry. Well the answer is obviously yes, they went back on their word. Hard to believe a politician has lied; it’s as rare as finding a rational traffic warden (they do exist, it’s just I’ve never personally met one). Understandably Lib-Dem voters are furious. What is less understandable is the strange nature of the protests venting this anger.

Recently I read an article in our student newspaper wondering why we as Brits don’t engage in violent, revolutionary protest like our continental neighbours do. Well wannabe journalist, you happy now? The argument for such protests is the same that occurred from the Chartist movement to the Suffragettes to the Civil Rights movement in America in the 20th century – violent protests get media attention. Undeniable yes, whether the old homage that ‘any press is good press’ is true or not is a different matter. In this case two demonstrations have turned particularly violent in London and the bill for tuition fees has still been passed; whatever the tactic is, it’s not working. The other choice is peaceful protest, an idea some people like to undertake just to seem more morally upright and make it appear like they have strong principles when they don’t really understand the full implications of the cuts. No offence to all those that do know what they’re talking about, but still, there are a lot of pretentious people going on these demos.

The protests have generally been an awkward juxtaposition of the two strategies. Politicians enjoy peaceful protests because they can say statements such as ‘in a democracy so great as ours isn't amazing how people can show their discontent’ whilst concurrently not having anything to clean up and they can merely shrug it off and hope the dissonance disintegrates in time. This is why peaceful protests don’t work. On the other hand, violent protest gives politicians an excuse to say how ‘this is unacceptable behaviour’. They also aren’t going to want to show the moderate middle class (quite a sizeable chunk of the electorate incidentally) as well as other countries that they are a government willing to succumb to violent protest. This is why violent protests don’t work.

So, in conclusion no kind of protest is ever going to work on a British government; unless protestors go for the French strategy of relentless violence, so much so it causes a revolution and overthrows the establishment. Or of course they could go for the other extreme and peacefully stand on the streets until the politicians are sick of seeing students outside their second homes. Even so, both of these aren’t ideal and unrealistic aims. Whatever your stance, at least the revolutionary spirit of Britain hasn’t disappeared, and that’s something right? We do still love a good scrap.

There is one winner in this however; Ed Miliband. He has the luxury of being able to say how terrible this whole ordeal is and how it is a true blow to democracy. New Labour was anything but perfect for sure nevertheless as members of the opposition now they can milk this dry – more so than James Corden milks his on screen persona dry. Sure it’s pessimistic to say this, but politicians don’t care about election pledges, nor do they probably care about you. The cynic in me (hard to find I know) tells me that all they care about is your vote. Once they have it, you can’t get it back – all you can do is not vote for them next time. Yet they still have plenty of time to irritate you, before eventually winning your trust back with pre-election pledges. Unfortunately for many Lib-Dem voters in the 2010 election it appears they won’t get such a chance until 2015. Pity. Oh and by the way, remember when I said at the beginning that I’d make several jokes that would definitely make you laugh out loud? Yeah? Well I lied. If you have any complaints then go protest or something because I’m sending this out regardless. Clear? Good.

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