A youth without opportunity

In March another assault was launched on the ‘lost generation’. It was announced that the minimum wage for under-21s was to be frozen. With youth unemployment already exceeding 20% this news added considerable insult to injury.

Social mobility has not improved in this country since the 1970s; in fact it’s getting worse. Is it any wonder when every choice facing young people these days comes with considerable financial upheaval and strain? You could take the option of university, and pay £9000 a year for the privilege, or take up a job in which you stand to be remunerated with poverty pay.

Those of a conservative disposition argue that young people should be “doing the right thing”, ie marrying, working, saving, but on £4.98 an hour, those things just aren’t within reach. Aside from the tangible economic factors, what will this mean for the ontological wellbeing of our country’s young people?

Most already feel the marginalising effects of being vilified by the media, but to be told that your labour is worth this little can only be degrading; and will hardly engender a feeling of belonging to the wider community. This is emphasised by the fact that the adult minimum wage will be raised, albeit only by 11p, sending out the message that young workers just aren’t as valuable and that their wellbeing is expendable in the quest to offer cheap labour.

Of course, these decisions are coming from a cabinet of millionaires and a generation who got their university tuition for free. The opportunities that allowed them to get to the position they’re in are a distant dream for the majority of young people. People whose parents couldn’t afford to send them to the most renowned private schools, leading straight to the elite universities; who couldn’t afford to support themselves during an unpaid internship; whose family members don’t have the connections required to get the best positions. When we all start on such an uneven playing field, can we really still believe that all you need to get to the top is grit and determination?

Along with cuts to EMA and the raising of tuition fees, Britain’s youth are having their opportunities prised away from them; and then politicians pontificate about how best to sanction the country’s unruly young people. No wonder the so-called lost generation is losing faith in politics; it certainly isn’t showing any faith in them.

Lisa Camps is Chair of the University of York Green Party

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Fair Pay Campus

Lisa Camps, Young Greens Campaigns Officer

In 2009, one book shifted the perspective on social issues, and the determination of the right to disprove its findings has, of course, confirmed their validity beyond any doubt. I refer to ‘The Spirit Level’, an incisive and far-reaching look into the social impact of economic inequality that has led to a paradigm shift in the numerous debates that surround prevalent social debates.

Until now, the left seem to have been dragging their feet on putting this illuminating research into practice. However, the Young Greens are soon to officially launch a campaign with The Spirit Level’s principles at its heart. The ‘Fair Pay Campus’ campaign aims to reduce the widening pay-gaps in higher education, which have crept up to an average of 15:1; the broadest gap in the entire public sector. Campaigners believe that, by gradually scaling back this disparity to a 10:1 ratio, the result would be a huge step in the direction towards greater social equality.

At my own university, the Vice-Chancellor has recently announced plans to step down in the coming year; wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity to scale back his inordinate salary, especially as the next influx of students will be paying £9000 a year and expecting some serious bang for their buck. Of course, arguments will persist that the human capital involved in the job merits a £250,000 salary, but if a potential VC is so unblinkingly motivated by money that they wouldn’t settle for anything less than a quarter of a million salary; you wouldn’t be blamed for questioning their suitability for the role.

Just as much a part of the fabric of our universities are the caterers, the grounds-keepers, the cleaners; without whom our enjoyment of the higher education experience would be markedly diminished. These jobs come with challenges of their own, as many students whose toilets have been cleaned the morning after a party will know. Of course, it’s argued that the varying degrees of responsibility involved in these roles compared to that of senior management justifies a disparity in pay; but surely fifteen times more is just gratuitous and irresponsible, and undermines the value of those other jobs vital to the running of the university.

Only recently, the head of Aviva was forced to stand down after a ‘share-holder revolt’ that saw his exorbitant and ill-deserved pay packet rejected. The public appetite for remunerative equality is growing and during a double-dip recession, it makes sense. With wages that offered more than just a basic standard of living, the resultant increase in consumer spending could be just the stimulus that our stagnant economy needs.

At the national launch event of the campaign, the Young Greens will be joined by guest speaker Richard Wilkinson, co-author of ‘The Spirit Level’, who proudly advocates a reduction in pay gaps and greater democracy in determining high-level salaries. His support for the campaign underlines the potential significance of its aims, and students at universities up and down the country are already preparing to bring the campaign to their own campuses. A difficult challenge lies ahead of the Young Greens, but the victory for the left were they to succeed could be tremendous, and would cause a revolutionary change in attitude towards what is acceptable in determining top salaries in both the public and private sectors.

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Winning Elections In Oxford

Councillor Sam Hollick

Last Thursday I was elected as Oxford City Councillor for Holywell ward in the face of large swings to Labour both nationally and locally. I now represent a ward that is over 90% students, bringing back a Green councillor to a part of the city that has been Lib Dem for the last 4 years.

Holywell, and the neighbouring Carfax ward, cover the majority of Oxford colleges as well as a few hundred non-student residents. These are challenging wards, due both to the large change in voting population as students graduate each year, and the fact that the closed nature of Oxford colleges means that knocking on doors is pretty much out of the question. So Adam Ramsay (candidate for Carfax) and I ran a joint campaign. Adam’s experience in running successful student union election campaigns was invaluable in helping decide the tactics of the campaign, and there is no way I’d have won without him. Through a combination of leafleting the university mailing system, canvassing at student ‘hot-spots’ in the street (Oxford frustratingly lacks an SU building!), social media adverts and lecture announcements, we were able spread the message that Greens could win. And I did.

Our policy platform was distinctly left wing – from taxing luxury hotels to replace the Education Maintenance Allowance, to creating a £500,000 fund for investing in jobs in the city. This was in stark contrast to the Labour’s platform of we-run-the-city-at-the-moment-and-do-a-jolly-good-job, with their leaflets reading along the lines of ‘how to vote Labour’ rather than ‘why vote Labour’. Labour are wrong to interpret their success last week to them winning the argument when so few people actually voted. What’s worse is that they didn’t use the opportunity to review their position on the clearly unpopular cuts. Oxford Labour are a particularly complacent local party, who rely on the votes of the working class while failing to use their majority control of the council to oppose cuts, instead they make staff redundant unnecessarily and start charging for local services. This is why I was so frustrated when, despite running a much more energetic campaign than Labour, Adam narrowly came second to Labour in Carfax.

This is where the work starts, for me as a councillor, but also for the party both here in Oxford and nationally. On the popular vote Greens are now second across the city, so we need to use this position to really challenge Labour by making the case against austerity, by actively working with those affected by cuts to services, and by working to represent the disenfranchised and ignored wherever they live in the city. And I believe that a lot of these lessons apply nationally too. We should be using every chance we get to make the case against austerity and for our economic alternative. The more Labour continues to fail to oppose the government’s attacks on society and the economy, the more important the work we do is.

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