Young people and older people are not really any different – what we are bored of and have lost faith in is the male, pale, stale, demographic that stands for established politics in the UK. With the odd exception you either get shouting and snoring from the benches or pre focus groups responses that read more like a marketing blurb than a political idea. The ideologies are inconsistent so it is hard to know who stands for what – they constantly shape shift. There is little discussion about alternatives to capitalism or any from the gut debate (it’s all got to be passed by central office) and this makes for a bland and exclusive club that no one wants to join. Students who do become activists are often picked off by political groupings to add the ‘young voice’ and to do grunt work and flattered and courted and presented with managed ‘easy wins’……this is especially so in student politics where it is often a case of ”we were going to do it anyway but let them think it’s as a result of their campaign/involvement’ and are rapidly dropped from court if they go off piste with their opinions or actions.
The routes for non students to get into politics which in days of yore would be trade unions and such are a pretty barren land – and that is if they can actually get a job in a unionised workforce. And politics has become about who is going to protect you best from whatever bogeyman is the current fashion (bird flu, terrorists, crack, crime, immigrants bla bla bla) – there is no one articulating a dream or a plan for a brighter future (well they mumble a bit about it in Scotland). But are they interested in political thinking or ideals or change? There is none so earnest as someone who works out that the media distorts, propagandises and basically lies – or that states do the same, or that it is not the just fair world they thought it might be. And if they do follow politics they see a world where business interests trump human and community interests again and again – and they see those who have tried again and again to change things via approved routes and who take to the street or engage in direct action of any kind trashed by polticians and the media and given the treatment of criminals or ‘domestic terrorists’.
A couple of years ago we started a discussion group over the summer break and there were lots of ideas and discussions which were certainly political – but there is a lack of organisation for these ideas to flow into – where organisation exists it is often bound up with rules and procedures and hierarchies which get in the way. And to be frank there are so many adults who fall into the ‘politics is boring’ category I doubt many get political discussion in the home or in most classrooms. Try a political discussion in a staff room and you fast become the loon in the corner. Although if you are politically aware and join up the dots and say x is round the corner when it does happen (as an inevitable conclusion) you are then seen as some form of wizard with mad skills for predicting the future.
To summarise – bored rigid with media managed mainstream politicians and the focus group marketing form of politics we get. Bored at the lack of discussion of alternatives rather than sticking plasters on a corrupt system and bored with a curriculum which places politics into a box for those who study politics when it should be in every corner of everything they are studying. Bored with citizenship which consists of cup cakes for the poor but perceives any critique emerging from their understanding of citizenship as treason of the highest order.
Watt Tyler
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