On Tuesday, I am going to a protest. Not in one of the major cities of the UK - though the so-called Second City is practically on my doorstep - but in a tiny, middle class, true blue town very close to where I live. This town has it's own Hitler Conservative Youth club. The MP representing it has never, ever come from a party other than the Tory party. It contains an Independent School which is (supposedly) one of the most prestigious in the world which was founded in 1553. In short, I fear it is more rightwing than David Cameron's own constituency.
And yet. And yet.
Despite all of this, I and (according to Facebook) 272 other students are going to take to the streets at 11am and protest against this government. This number has already gone up by two in the time it has taken me to write this, and I am sure it will go up further still by Tuesday. Oh, and this is the second protest in the high street - the first happened at the same time last Tuesday.
My town is not unusual at all. It could be a town in Yorkshire, Worcestershire, Essex, Cornwall, Cheshire, Buckinghamshire. It's your basic Anywhere's-ville. And in all of these places, there will be students on the streets, protesting - and for a very good reason. They - I - do not want their right to education to be removed from them. Historically, education has been the biggest contributing factor to social mobility. Women and those from ethnic minorities fought, and in a very few extreme cases, died for the right to be educated. And this government, in raising the tuition fees to up to £9,000 per year, want to take this away from us. (After, of course, they went through higher education themselves for free, or, if they are young enough to have to pay fees, they did not pay nearly as dearly as we will have to, and most of them are millionaires anyway.)
I am aware that the funding for education has to come from somewhere. Tuition fees are a necessary evil. I want a job as a historian, researching and teaching in a university when I am older. The money from fees will probably pay my wages, so I would be a hypocrite if I pretended that I was completely against them. But a threefold increase in fees in a mere two years is entirely unethical. The psychological impact of a debt of £27,000 in fees alone the moment you graduate, would be, for some, too much - and understandably so. Those from the poorest backgrounds could be put off studying at university - or even Sixth Form, as the government have now decided to scrap EMA for those who need it the most - and this is fundamentally wrong.
The coalition claim not to have the money to fund universities, which may or may not be true, but there are other ways to pay for higher education other than increasing the fees by such an extortionate amount - taxing the banks and removing bankers' bonuses, or going after the millions of pounds of tax evasion (avoidance?) by the people and companies who fund the Conservative party, for example (Lord Ashcroft anyone?). Removing the right to education removes the chances of those from non-Upper Class backgrounds ever having any degree of power or moving up in the world - surely this can't be what the Tories want?!
I will make my placard and I will go out on Tuesday and I will protest - peacefully. I won't only be protesting against the rise in tuition fees, but also against the cuts to the welfare state - particularly those which will affect women, which are basically all of them. Did you know that, under the new Child Benefit reforms, a family with a single parent earning £44,000 or more will lose their benefit, but families with two earners each on a salary of £43,000 (giving a combined household income of £86,000) will keep the benefit? The proportion of single fathers raising children is much, much smaller than single mothers. There are a myriad of other injustices that I could list, but I fear I would literally run out of space. This is not right.
Your normal scheduled History programming will resume tomorrow (probably). But I could not let this opportunity pass - I had to write about it, as it is honestly one of the most vile things I have ever heard of. Anyone in the UK who has the opportunity to protest on Tuesday, wherever you are, should do so because we must show that we will not stand for this. Go out onto the streets and tell this weak and feeble government that you are not scared of them, and you will fight what they are trying to do because, fundamentally, it is wrong.
