David Barclay, President of the Oxford University Student Union, writes for Left Foot Forward on the language of the student movement, following the NUS conference.
The National Union of Students annual national conference took place last week; David Barclay, President of the Oxford University Student Union, writes for Left Foot Forward on the language of the student movement, arguing that many delegates to the conference fell into the trap of using a dehumanising rhetoric which is actually the hallmark of what students are trying to fight against
Running late for the next debate, I tried to dodge the hordes of eager activists flyering everything and anything that moved in a desperate attempt to earn our votes. Yet one of their slogans stuck with me as I headed up the steps to the main hall of the NUS National Conference – ‘Vote Joe Bloggs to fight cuts, racism and war’. It took me a few seconds before I realised the delicious irony of this bold promise to ‘fight war’; I chuckled to myself, told a few friends and moved on.
But now, three days after the close of the 2011 conference, I realise that what could seem like just a poorly chosen strapline may in fact hold the clue to why I spent the last few days agreeing with the substance of almost everything that was said whilst all the time feeling deeply uncomfortable and worrying seriously for the future of the student movement.
This gut feeling of unease came upon me most powerfully in the many references made to the failings of the Conservative party and the extreme right. Over the three-day event, delegates were bombarded with references to ‘Tory scum’ and ‘the cabinet of billionaires’. These people had ‘launched an attack on hope’ and ‘decimated the welfare state’. Their only priority was ‘money, money, money’ and they would stop at nothing to ruin the lives of ordinary people.
At the same time speeches railed against ‘the racist thugs of the BNP’ and their ‘scumbag friends in the EDL’. These people, though you’d be forgiven for thinking they were barely better than animals, had to be ‘crushed’ and ‘driven from our communities’. Proud references were made, to raucous applause, of students literally fighting members of the English Defence League in the towns of the North West.
Now please don’t get me wrong, I am no apologist for the political right. I believe the coalition’s cuts agenda is needlessly damaging the very fabric of British society, I find the right’s rhetoric on immigration revolting and I am convinced the recent changes to higher education could cost our country a generation of bright students from poor backgrounds who will never now go on to university.
Like so many other British citizens I yearn for the day when the BNP and the EDL cease to be a recognisable force in British politics, and am truly proud of those students who dedicate extraordinary time and energy towards combating their language of racism and fear. Yet I just couldn’t identify with a rhetoric which seemed to be parroting the very thing which make our political enemies so objectionable in the first place – an ability to dehumanise ‘the other’.
That is at the heart of what makes the BNP so objectionable; they see people as fundamentally less valuable based on aspects of their identity, be it race or religion, and that is totally unacceptable in any civilised society. But there is a real danger in the student movement that by using the language of violence and hate we lose the one thing which truly elevates our cause. Members of the BNP are thoroughly misguided, often very scared of change in their communities and fixated on an imaginary vision of the past, but they are still human beings.
As soon as we lose sight of that, we’re just two sets of people who hate each other.
This problem seems to have spilled over into the reaction to the coalition’s policies. There are many things our government has done which can be legitimately criticised, but the fact that one brave delegate felt it necessary to point out that he was a member of the Conservative party and yet he was ‘not scum’ shows how our overly-aggressive criticism just misses the point. There is a line in all politics between legitimate anger at policies and ideas with which you profoundly disagree, and personal attacks that seek to undermine the humanity and dignity of those you oppose.
The former are desperately needed by the student movement and the NUS right now; the latter will only alienate us from the mainstream of public opinion and many of our own members who might happen to agree with some or all of the government’s policies without harbouring a fundamental desire to destroy the welfare state, swim in a huge pile of money or destroy the hopes and dreams of a generation of working class children.
At a time when students are rightfully angry at a government which has betrayed and alienated them, the student movement needs to move beyond this problem of fighting dehumanisation with dehumanising rhetoric, so neatly summed up in the claim to want to ‘fight war’. Those figures most inspirational to young politicians – William Wilberforce, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King – were all able to transcend the language of hate whilst fighting against the most despicable and unbearable injustices.
Interestingly, they were all Christians, and surely had the words of Jesus to ‘love your enemies’ and ‘bless those who persecute you’ ringing in their ears throughout their political careers.
Whatever our faith traditions, our movement may just be defined in the coming months and years by our ability to register our anger and frustration whilst maintaining a fundamental respect for the basic humanity of all involved in public life.
Only by doing so will we create a true ‘narrative of the alternative’ to follow our ‘march for the alternative’ and begin to make real change for our members and the whole country.
45 Responses to “The dehumanising rhetoric undermining the student movement”
Alex Blower
Completely agree, very glad I took a minte to read this.
Paul
This comes down to a fundamentally divergent opinion on where this change is coming from, and therefore what tactics might be needed to overcome them.
Whilst from the liberal left the rhetoric is more placid, it’s also based upon an assumption that the current position of HE and FE is due to political decision made within a specific political sphere. The aim, therefore, would be to influence those decisions through slowly influencing policy- whether via lobbying, persuasion, voting etc.
For those further to the left (although, to be honest, I find the SWP rhetoric very clumsy too) the logic would be that these decisions are not the result of policy but the result of economic forces, and hence the tactics to defeat them would be a serious mobilisation of other economic forces- that is, the productive forces of the working class- to overcome them. The rhetoric of persuasion and the rhetoric of mobilisation are two very different beasts. It’s wrong to assume that because you see social change coming through lobbying, others share those aims. To be fair to them, the far-left have capitalised on the fact that those who wish to lobby power (and, let’s face it, one day attain that power themselves) have been totally ineffective and weak. Their attempts to put up any robust defence of their position were also hardly conciliatory- to call your own union members “despicable” being evidence of this.
Although I would never identify with the tactics or analysis of much of the hard left, the basic premise is right. To think that a robust defence of students can be mounted within an economic situation tending towards the consolidation of capital may seem wonderfully pragmatic, but is actually painfully naive. Future generations will not thank us for a handful of scholarships when we face a US style education system.
The job of the far-left should now be to really consider their rhetoric, to pull it out of the quagmire of 1980’s– or even 1930’s– nostalgia.
That’s all in theory- in actuality, of course, many are drawn to the hard-left for totally different reasons- misguided romance, yes- but also sheer anger, clumsy hatred etc. It’s time for the intelligent voices of critical analysis on the far-left to make their voices heard, or the party-builders will drive away angry students into the arms of the professional politicians with the slick rhetoric and the total inability to enact positive change. I like to call them the “Cleggers”
Alex
Hmmmm. I’ll concentrate on one element here for the moment.
The same Jesus who is reported to have said love your enemies also said “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household” (Matthew 10:34-39), “Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12:51-53), he advised his followers to buy a sword (Luke 22:36) and so on. This is not to want to get into a full on discussion of Biblical exegesis, or theological history, but the relationship between Christianity, violence and peace and division is a really significantly more complex than you allow. In particular, let us remember that Jesus believed that when the end of the world came (at a time that was fairly obviously thought to be fairly close by his early followers), those who hadn’t helped the poor and so on would be thrown into eternal punishment.
I’ll respond to the political substance soon.
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Grels
I think it’s generally symptomatic of the language our society uses. Increasingly only the superlative is appropriate. Perhaps it is “americanisation” I’m not so sure, but it does seem a model of entrenchment in political discourse. I guess it is no surprise that the children of Blair are fluent in emotive-politics also.