Poets, Artists and Musicians: The Importance of the Arts

This by Harry Wells, on the importance of arts funding.

Funding, by research council:

£102mil AHRC
£470mil BBSRC
£740mil EPSRC
£350mil MRC
£400mil NERC
£211mil ESRC
£491mil STFC

Even before the impact of any proposed cuts, you’d get no prizes for guessing that the Arts & Humanities Research Council is by far the worst-funded of Britain’s seven research councils; of the approximate 15% of their total budget the AHRC is entitled to, it currently takes £102mil a year, an actual figure of 4%. Unsurprisingly, the next lowest-funded is the Economic & Social Research Council, at £211mil, or approximately 8% of the total budget. And yet, Lord Salisbury’s report in 2004 stated that ‘[the arts] lead the way in promoting understanding of the nation’s history and other cultures, religions and societies, helping to sustain both national identity and multicultural tolerance’, and encouraged the idea that it be treated on an equal footing with sciences in terms of funding, and Beethoven himself once said ‘No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.’ On top of the recent cuts to library funding, the question has to be asked; why, exactly, are the arts such a target? And do they deserve to be prioritised below scientific fields?

One reason could perhaps be the public perception of the arts that Lord Salisbury’s report challenged; the cliché image of the unemployed painter, or the alcoholic author, living in a dingy studio apartment in Paris and rolling slowly toward an opiate-filled grave combined with the concurrent low graduate employment figures for most arts subjects (perhaps excluding foreign languages) when compared with fields such as medicine and engineering have led to an idea of the arts as the predecessors to ‘soft subjects’; not exactly easy or wasteful, but not contributing to society in the same way that developing new astrophysical theories into the creation of the world does. These ideas, however, could be argued to be a contemporary phenomenom, surely; in the same way that during the Renaissance, the work of artists and poets took to the fore as the most effective way of developing culture and understanding, in our modern information age, the same is true for computer science and molecular genetics. The fact of the matter is that societal progress, at the moment, does depend on science, just as it depended on art in the 18th Century. This isn’t, however, a reason to forget the importance of art, as the Conservative-led government would quite happily do; their penchant for slashing and burning whatever isn’t useful at the exact moment is phenomenal. At some point in the future, when science has taken us to the edge of understanding in fields like medicine and the creation of the universe, what will be left to expand upon but the arts?

The other, perhaps more contextual factor in this case, is that the arts are the most effective way to resist a government; and are all the more likely to do so in one that’s cutting them. The world’s most famous writers, musicians and painters have been all-too explicitly anti-establishment; Oscar Wilde, Elvis Presley, Banksy. Across ages and cultures, the arts are a medium to express passive, peaceful resistance, understood as early as the time of Plato; why else would the poets in The Republic have been the first to be cast out? The arts were the first target for budget cuts in Thatcher’s Cabinet, and countries such as the People’s Republic of China and Burma, noted for being repressive fairly universally, are particularly draconian in their treatment of the internet and literature. This argument really needs no rebuttal; if it is the case that part of the coalition’s intention behind library and research funding cuts is to silence potential opposition, it cannot be allowed to work.

Whilst nothing further than the reduction in library budgets has been announced, any cut in the arts would be insurmountably dangerous; and with more disapproval coming from the camp of children’s authors than Her Majesty’s ‘Opposition’, grassroots forces need to move in the same way they did against the NHS Bill. ‘Art is science made clear’; it would be hard to turn a blind eye to it.

Why I’m going to the pickets tomorrow

 

By Sam Coates

My mum is a public sector worker. After my dad died she went to university and got a job as a teaching assistant. She recently qualified as a Higher Level Teaching Assistant, namely, people who teach without being paid teachers wages. Her pension scheme changed recently so that she already pays more into the ‘pot’ than public sector workers used to.

The government’s proposals would mean that public sector workers (mainly low paid women) pay even more again into their pensions and also have to work longer, to 65 or more. In sectors such as teaching, working to that age isn’t always appropriate in what can be a stressful and exhausting job. But most shockingly, the index used to calculate annual pension increases will be changed from the Retail Price index to the Consumer Price index, which reports a lower level of inflation. So when people like my mum retire, their annual pension increases will in fact lose value compared with the real cost of living. This to me is the most unacceptable part of the proposals.

As I mentioned above, most public sector workers are low paid women, so increasing contributions to pensions yet again will have a real impact on their standard of living, turning away from the ‘social contract’ of public sector work meaning lower wages than the private sector, but a decent pension at the end of it.

I was totally shocked by Ed Miliband’s comments regarding the strike, saying that it “inconveniences” people. Whatever happened to solidarity, and standing up for the modestly paid people who set up the Labour party and continue to fund it and back it? By talking about the strike in terms of “inconvenience” and tarring both sides as being equally at fault, he is undermining the very idea of trade unions and their role within society. Yes, if public workers go on strike it makes your day a little bit more difficult, but if we don’t support their battle to defend their conditions, the Government will soon turn on other groups of workers and the private sector will follow suit. And if public sector conditions/pay/pensions are better than the private sector, that’s not a reason to support a downgrading of everyone’s conditions, as it will lead to even more worsened rights across the economy.

That’s why I will be at the picket lines supporting the strikers tomorrow. If you care about your own working conditions then you should back them too. The Green Party supports the strike and I would welcome anyone appalled by the comments of Ed Miliband and the Government to join us in speaking up in favour of workers’ rights.

Opposing the Legal Aid Cuts

Kieran Anderson writing on the proposed legal aid cuts.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that this government simply does not like poor people. The government appears, in fact, to be out to inflict suffering on poor people. And this is much more than the usual Tory “kick them while they’re down” philosophy, but more worryingly representative of a growing consensus in the other main parties.

It is a startlingly obvious, but often ignored, truth that we should judge our society by how it treats its most vulnerable members. By this standard, we are not doing a terribly good job. And we are going to get a lot worse.

Legal aid has had a difficult few years, with the budget having been frozen since 2004. It has shrunk significantly in real terms while dealing with more cases. The Government is seeking to save £350 million, regardless of the suffering and devastation that these cuts have the potential to inflict on everyone in society, especially the most vulnerable people. The Government’s behaviour simply suggests that they do not want poor people to have access to equal legal services or in fact any legal services.

Legal aid covers a wide variety of separate issues, not just criminal, but family and civil. It offers various different levels of aid dependant on the nature of an issue. And not just legal aid as such. There’s a good chance that if you walk into a Citizens Advice Bureaux needing advice on how to deal with a benefits issue or dealing with your debt then it is a form of Legal Aid that will fund the advice that you will receive, but only if you meet some very restrictive criteria.

What the Government wants to do is to completely remove legal aid from a broad range of areas. Clinical negligence, despite the Government recognising the very serious issues involved, is to go. Education cases will go, most employment issues will go, welfare benefits cases will go. Children and family cases will be going, except where there is domestic violence, consumer, debt, immigration, housing, and much more may be going. The scope is shocking

The Government even admits that these cuts will have a disproportionate effect on the most vulnerable in society. The governments own impact assessments warns that, the cuts will have a wider social and economic cost and may result in reduced social cohesion as a result of a failure to apply the rule of law fairly.

More than the most vulnerable will be affected, society as a whole will be the poorer. Not just by how much harsher a society we will become if the Government gets it’s way, but also as a warning that these cuts risk bringing chaos to the court system.

It is essential to our society that we maintain the rule of law. A situation where the government or big business could not be held to account, a situation where the government or big business could act with near impunity against people who could not afford to fight back, must surely appal us all. Liberty in responding to the government’s proposals stated that “Access to the courts to uphold individual rights does more than simply vindicate the individual in the particular circumstances of his or her case. Successful challenges set precedents, raise awareness and help to instil human rights considerations into public sector decision making.” Cases such as the recent “Trafigura Case” would become impossible to bring under the government’s proposals.

Kenneth Clarke has tried to offer some semblance of a defence claiming that ‘Legal aid will still routinely be available in civil and family cases where people’s life or liberty is at stake, or where they are at risk of serious physical harm or immediate loss of their home.” Apparently completely missing the point that, it is often the early intervention that prevents people from ever reaching this state. By cutting people off from this vital early advice more people will be forced into situations where their life, liberty and home are at stake. Also early intervention saves money. The Justice for All campaign reckons that for every £1 invested in early advice, there is a £9 saving.

These cuts, if not disturbing enough in themselves, don’t even appear to be justified in the Government’s own terms. As already mentioned, early advice saves money. These cuts also appear to be directly slashing frontline services, while leaving server governmental and bureaucratic inefficiencies in place. Numerous organisations, such as the Law Society have put forward a wide range of suggestions of how the government could seek alternative means to reduce costs. The Law society has identified £384 million in savings which avoid the savagery of the legal aid cuts.

It is not that there is no need to reform Legal Aid. There is a growing issue of more and more people who do not have sufficient means to properly access legal services, who are however insufficiently poor to qualify for the criteria already in place. This will only increase with the governments current proposals which will only further restrict the numbers able to accesses legal aid.

The Government doesn’t need to make these cuts, there are alternatives. Even if there weren’t, we would surely want to question the legitimacy of doing something this cruel. And we must think of this as cruel. The Governments actions will inevitability lead to a great deal more suffering and hardship. To do this at all is suspect, to do it when there are alternatives, is indefensible.

In finishing. a quote from Tim Dutton QC,
“In much the same way that the National Health Service has been held in high regard, we should be proud that our legal aid system has been considered one of the best at providing justice for the most vulnerable and needy in our society.”

Please consider some of the following:

Support one of the campaigns against Legal Aid cuts, such as Justice for All (www.justice-for-all.org.uk) or Sound of For Justice (www.soundoffforjustice.org).

Lobby Your MP, you can find lots of helpful materials form either campaign’s website.

Have a go at volunteering with your local CAB (http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/index/join-us/volunteer_bureau_search.htm)

Where Next for Student Anti-Cuts Campaigning?

Ali Thompson, the Young Greens International Co-ordinator, went along to the conference of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts on Saturday. Here’s what he thought.

Last Saturday the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) held
a ‘reinvigoration conference’ at Birmingham university to debate its
future direction and the need for an elected steering committee. For
those who don’t know already the NCAFC was founded almost two years
ago, but probably came to most people’s attention during the student
protests towards the end of last year. Along with the Education
Activist Network (EAN), NCAFC was instrumental in calling the
demonstrations the NUS was unwilling or incapable of properly
organising and though fees seem to be about to increase dramatically
in England and Wales, those protests, occupations and resistance were
almost certainly influential in ensuring every party, bar the Tories,
went into the Scottish Parliament election in May pledging not to
re-introduce fees.

Over the next year, and further ahead, we are going to see the
imposition of those fees, strike action from the Universities and
Colleges Union (UCU), departments cutting courses, firing staff and
closing entirely across the country, and attempts to fully privatise
our education. A united and strong left campaign that brings together
all those who believe education is a public good is going to be
absolutely essential. It was heartening, therefore, to see a wide
variety of political groups at conference: the Alliance for Workers’
Liberty (AWL), Workers’ Power, Student Broad Left (SBL), Counterfire,
Green Parties (both Scottish and England and Welsh), Socialist Party
(SP), Labour Representation Committee (LRC), People and Planet,
anarchists and other independent socialists. There was a reasonable
geographical spread too, with all the devolved nations represented. It
was a little disappointing, however, to see no Socialist Workers’
Party (SWP) members there. One of the most pleasing aspects of our
movement over the last six months has been the lack of sectarianism,
and I hope that whether or not the SWP choose to get involved with
NCAFC — and I hope they do — we can continue to work together against
our real enemies. We’re never going to agree on everything, but we’re
all anti-cuts, pro-public services, and want to build a more
democratic, more sustainable and more equitable economy.

Constitution
Until now the NCAFC has been organised by open meetings with no formal
leadership or committee and,due to those meeting happening there, been
dominated extensively by activists from London and the South East.
Those of us in Scotland, for example, have had no real opportunity to
influence the direction of the ostensibly national campaign. Some at
conference thought this should basically continue, meetings should
move around the country, but remain open to anyone who wanted to
attend. Others thought an elected national committee would be more
representative and democratic. I side with that latter camp. Open
meetings are great if anyone really can attend, but there’s more
needed for that than just a right. Transporting people all over the
country on a regular basis would cost hundreds of pounds, money that
could be better spent actually fighting cuts and building a national
demonstration than organising our own internal meetings.

The proposal we adopted for an elected national committee elected by
STV and with guaranteed gender balance (at least 5 of the 14
nationally elected block must be self-defining female), plus
self-organised regional committees and liberation caucuses, ensures a
degree of continuity while also allowing a spread of geographical
representation and preventing any one faction from dominating the
campaign.

The election itself was, however, somewhat less than ideal. By the
time we had agreed a structure people had almost to leave. That left
us with just half an hour for nominations, hustings and voting. We
also didn’t have software to hand for STV and had to resort to an
online calculator with a very poor interface which took a long time to
enter the data (this is why you never admit to knowing how electoral
systems work).

Fortunately, five women were elected normally, so there was no need to
use the gender balancing mechanism and, though still far from
proportional, we have some geographic diversity with 7 London, 1
Edinburgh, 1 Aberdeen, 1 Liverpool, 1 Northern Ireland and 3
Birmingham activists elected. Unfortunately Workers’ Power,
disagreeing with the process by which the conference was called and
the committee agreed, boycotted the election; despite that, however,
we have AWL, SBL, Green and self-defined libertarian communists on the
committee, so no faction should be too dominant. Bizarrely, NUS NEC
member and NCAFC founder Michael Chessum didn’t make it onto the
committee, but hopefully he can still get a place through the London
regional committee.

Future Action
Going forward, regional conferences and liberation caucuses will have
to be set up. There is already a London committee and a women’s
causus. There is also the Northern Ireland Student Assembly (NISA) and
we’re in the process of forming the Scottish Campaign Against Fees and
Cuts. It remains to be seen how those two regional bodies will
formally relate to NCAFC, but I hope that whether they also affiliate
to EAN, or any other UK wide body, they can work with NCAFC.

The constitution was approved by a relatively small conference of
people (around 90) and can undoubtedly be improved. There should be
another conference in the Autumn, prior to any national demonstration,
to evaluate our structures and make improvements. New elections should
be held then and regularly thereafter, maybe 3-4 times per year.

On June 30th we will see the biggest coordinated strike action in this
country in years. It’s a opportunity for us to connect the struggle of
workers with that of the student movement and NCAFC will be working to
build solidarity action and support over the next few weeks. We need
to work with school students to support the NUT action and walkouts
from pupils.

We agreed to protests at party conferences this Autumn, including
Labour. There was unanimous (I think) support for demonstrating at
governing party conferences (including the SNP and Welsh Labour) and
most activists were in favour of a demonstration at the UK Labour
conference too. Despite the membership of some very good people and
their connection to the labour movement, Labour are passing on cuts on
councils across the country and support cuts nationally. They cannot
be absolved of their complicity. There will, though, be no single line
or message for Labour conference, some will want to lobby them to
oppose cuts, some to protest the whole system; it is best not to try
to force a single message, we need to campaign together where we agree
and accept we will have differences in our preferred tactics.

There will be a national demonstration in Autumn. We need to try to
persuade NUS to support that demonstration, but we will take the lead
and move forward with or without their support. When that happens we
need to broaden our message, against all cuts and in solidarity with
the broader trade union movement; we can’t just fight the same battle
as last year, but neither should we accept that the fight over fees is
lost. La lutte continue.

Finally, we need to organise for NUS conference next year. We need
delegates elected across the country and need to make a much better
job at reaching out and including FE. We need to decide whether to
target specific positions on the NEC and if so which ones. I think
it’s better to focus on winning one or two sabbs than spreading
ourselves too thin. We may not be able to realistically challenge for
president. Liam will be hard, if not impossible, to beat mid-term, but
if we can win at least one VP position we will be in a much better
position to build for the year after.

Clegg’s Lords Reforms – A Positive Step?

Reforming the house of Lords could be Clegg’s one good idea yet, says Harry Wells.

Considering the fairly stunning defeat of AV this last 5th May, you’d think the idea of electoral or constitutional reform would have been shelved for the rest of this government’s term. However, Clegg finally seems to have something both genuinely liberal and genuinely democratic up his sleeve with a reform for the House of Lords.

His proposal is to replace the chamber with one of 300 peers; less than half the current number therefore massively reducing the drain on the House’s resources, with 80% being elected and 20% appointed. Now the strength in Clegg’s argument comes from the fact that he is attempting to reform the less important of Westminster’s houses; with no constituency link. As the House of Lords only exists to scrutinise bills created in the Commons, there is no need to consider location-based election, like the Commons system of first-past-the-post. Pressure groups set up across the political spectrum, particularly in pockets of dissent to the AV referendum in Labour, such as YES2PR, suggest to me that a reform of genuine proportional representation would meet with much more support than the ‘baby step’ (in Clegg’s words) AV referendum. It has to be noted that the Lib Dems did not stand in 2010 with the intention of discussing AV whatsoever; their manifesto pledged a PR system for both Houses of Parliament.

In this humble blogger’s opinion, if Clegg were to propose, like he is, an 80% elected, 20% appointed chamber, with peers elected by the d’Hondt System (the electorate votes for a party, represented by a ‘party list’ of the candidates the party is standing for the House, rather than a person, and seats awarded per party represent the percentage of the vote gained as closely as possible), and appointed by the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet respectively for the remaining 20%, he would unite the majority of his party, the left and centre of Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and of course, the Greens; with Cameron also touching upon Lords reform in the last Tory manifesto, potentially him and his frontbench team as well, although the Tory right will be very dangerous ground for the Prime Minister. The far right, UKIP and the BNP, are difficult to predict; whilst UKIP threw themselves behind the Yes vote this May, this reform would be tangling with appointed peers, which, given the party’s tradionalist views, may not sit so well.

Although perhaps not the ‘thumping majority’ Blair once commanded, this potential progressive force would be a far more effective backer than the limp and castrated attempt at ‘reform’ that AV gave; although I personally supported the Yes vote, I knew that it wasn’t going to happen, and also that it wasn’t really that much of a change. The only problem, of course, is the Lords itself.

With some opinion polls quoting as much as 80% of the upper house being completely opposed to reform in the direction of democracy, citing the move would be ‘unconstituional’, even with a Commons majority, Clegg faces a challenge pushing past the protests of those he is reforming. How he deals with this, rather than the question of Commons support, is going to be the real test of his dedication, and his genuine desire to regain some credibility for the Liberal Democrats on the whole; with Lord Steel, the former party leader and Liberal Democrat peer known to be opposed to the reforms, as well as a host of well known Labour and Tory peers, Clegg’s only choice may be to use the Parliament Act to force the bill through the Lords, or perhaps to enter a sort of ‘second coalition’ and attempt to bargain with the left of the upper house by offering concessions. Maybe a 25/75 split of appointment/election? It seems unlikely he will be willing to increase the length of a term from his plan, 15 years per peer, with a third of the peers re-elected every five years, rather than all at once.

Whatever route Clegg decides to take, two things can be concluded as almost certain. This plan is going to meet with a lot more support than the AV referendum from the left; and a LOT more opposition from the right.

 

Can We Learn from the German Greens?

German Green politics had a comparable infancy to that of the UK, with the same issues causing a growth for support in both Western Germany and the UK, but by the 1980’s, Green politics in the UK was increasingly sliding against the German equivalent. In 1980, the vote share of the Green party in West Germany was 1.5% (similar to the UK Greens in the 2010 parliamentary elections). A centrist conservative faction of the party split in 1982 and by 1987, the share of the vote had increased to 8.7%. A temporary blip in Green support during the reunification of Germany saw the share of the vote drop to 5%. The German Greens first went into government in coalition with the German equivalent of Labour in 1998. This was with a 6.7% share of the overall vote and 47 Bundestag seats. Subsequently the Greens went out of government in the mid 2000’s, largely due to disillusionment from the Green electorate on achieving policy goals due to the restraints of coalition government and arguments over participation in conflict in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Perhaps the key achievement of the German Greens during their years in power as part of a coalition government was the ‘denuclearisation’ of German strategic energy policy in the early 2000’s. Currently the German Green party has a 10% (68 seats) share of the vote in the Bundestag and 12% (14 seats) of the European election vote.

Before fortifying ourselves with bratwurst and Jaegermeister before hitting the election trail, however, there are several points to consider:

Mixed Member Proportional Representation This is the method by which Germany elects representatives to the Bundestag. In the UK, it is also known as the additional member system or AV+, and was recommended as a UK voting modification as far back as 1976. Essentially, it is a combination of first past the post and proportional representation. You have a list of candidates you wish to get into parliament, and you gain seats based on your vote share. However, if you happen to gain a seat outright in an area (first past the post), this is deducted from your total seat share.

Multiple Parties and Coalition Government Germany has more political parties with a more divided vote than the UK. Governments are made up of coalitions as the norm rather than the exception: this is often the cause of other nation’s despairing of the complexity of German politics.

Local Issues and States Germany is historically a nation fused from Dukedoms and Princely states. As in America, support for parties locally over single issues such as power plant construction can be much more intense than in the UK. Also, this can have the effect of buffering voters from dissent with the performance of the national party.

Hence the playing ground in the UK is not quite as level as in Germany. Both UK and German Green parties are parties of growth with increasing vote shares and number of seats in local, national and European government. It is not simply that the UK ignores environmental issues: indeed, charities and campaign organisations such as Greenpeace have some of their largest numbers of membership here, and have real impact on the international stage. We are thirty years behind the Germans, but they were able to go from 1% to 5% of the vote share within a decade. So what can we apply to the UK green party in order to increase our share of the vote?

Visible Competence In Germany, there is a perception of Green politicians as being good, reliable and hardworking. This has led to their de-facto election in certain areas because they are simply regarded as being competent. In the UK, we have one MP, two MEPs, two London assembly members and two councils where Greens are strong. I can personally vouch for how hard elected officials in Norwich work for their constituents, especially those aged below thirty. Essentially, every Green elected official needs to be working harder, listening more, and working smarter than their counterparts in the main three parties whilst avoiding potentially damaging ‘gaffs’. Reputations are hard to win, but easy to lose.

Focus on key local issues If you look at maps of the German political landscape, some areas are much more pro green than others (no difference there!). However, the communication of big single issues appears much more effective in Germany, and in the UK, similar issues are perhaps not acted on as well as they should. For example, I was first aware of the fight over an incinerator being constructed in King’s Lynn, Norfolk because of a sign in a field next to the A47! (This helped the election of the first West Norfolk Green Councillor, too!).

Change to AV+ Most leftwards commentators prior to the AV referendum acknowledged that AV was the start, not the finished solution for reforming UK politics. Any power-sharing agreements in future UK governments should have voting reform at the top of the list. The sight of Nick Clegg being used as a football and given the cold shoulder by Ed Milliband should not be a deterrent, and reform should not be watered down.

Attack the demographic In Germany, the Green vote is higher among higher earners and urban dwellers, and lower amongst the unemployed and working class. This contrasts with the UK, where suburban lower and middle income voters, along with a higher proportion of the unemployed are the norm. Should policy shift accordingly?

UKUncut Protests – A Shop Floor View

Today we have Harry Wells writing from a different point of view, that of a member of staff in a targeted shop. Anyone who has attended an action recently or has views on the efforts of UKUncut, send us an article at younggreensblog@gmail.com.

I’ve always been a very vocal supporter of direct action; no matter what your beliefs, if it’s legal, you should always stand up for them as unequivocally as you can. Who knows how many other people in the world think the same as you? You’ll never find out unless you make your voice heard. However, aside from the law, there are definitely some guidelines protesters should abide by, if only out of respect for fellow humans. As a cashier at Boots, on Lincoln High Street, I’d like to write about certain aspects of UKUncut’s actions that weren’t particularly respectful, didn’t aid in getting UKUncut’s (completely correct) message across, and really did draw a thin line between legal protest and harassment.

At about 11:30am on the 21/05/2011, I was well and truly on autopilot, dragging myself through my Saturday job behind the tills, when the usual throng of beauty product-hungry customers began peering out of store entrance. As we’d been briefed in the morning, a group of UKUncut protestors had turned up on a march from Nottingham, and were going through the motions outside: megaphone, chants and picket signs. A little bubble of admiration swelled up inside me at people acting so passionately to protect our country from the slash and burn treatment the Coalition is giving it, at least briefly; until my line manager began informing the team of the best escape routes through the building. It turned out that the protestors had essentially ‘sacked’ the Boots on Nottingham High Street, entering the store, intimidating staff and throwing shelves of stock to the floor. I was horrified that such blatant disregard for the wellbeing of employees who in no way endorse the government’s cuts and DO pay their taxes was entertained by what I believed to be a totally well-intentioned group.

The group soon dispersed, though, and both my fears of danger to myself and my colleagues and my hopes of half the day off were assuaged. Upon going up to the staff room for my morning break, however, I found some of my colleagues spectating the apparently very new sport of ‘force your way into Boots through the delivery entrance’; evidently an effective and modulated way of expressing your views. They found their home on the second floor, shouting fairly incoherently and just being a nuisance (a nuisance that had forced their way onto the premises).

They seemed very eager to reassure the staff on the shop floor that they were ‘protesting for the workers’, and whilst I do sympathise with UKUncut’s aims, I can’t help but feel that in this situation, the claim was fairly disengenuous. Chanting ‘Pay your taxes’ at a shop floor full of low-paid sales assistants who probably feel they pay too much in tax isn’t exactly going to help your cause. And with what the group had reportedly done in Nottingham, they certainly weren’t given the reception by staff I think they may have expected.

The right to protest is a valuable and effective weapon against ideological warfare such as that the Coalition’s generals are executing at the moment; but just as with the NUS marches in the wake of the tuition fees conflict, there will always be rogue elements that ruin the message of a movement. In seeing myself how these rogue elements can spoil a day and the impact of a protest, I implore those of you in the Young Greens that are likely to protest this year not to go down the violent route. Don’t respond to your fears by causing others fear.