Student protests: class is back in British politics – middle class

[marmar]

from the Guardian UK:



For longer than I care to remember class has been marginalised in the national debate. But not today, where it's all over the place. Student demos, the Unite union's angry new leader ... Why, the Guardian even carries two articles on the "squeezed" lower middle-class which is usually overlooked.

Tony Blair was keen on giving class a shove into the broom cupboard while he concentrated on more fashionable concerns such as gender, ethnicity, sexual identity and – on a good day – disability. He was far from being the only one. Papers like the Guardian did it too.

It's one factor why working-class boys, white, straight and in possession of all their limbs and faculties, have had such a bad time lately, failing in school and therefore the jobs markets. They're cross too, hanging around those student demos for the chance of smashing a few windows, some of them.

.....(snip).....

But if you read the Guardian's emphasis on the way schoolchildren complete with Harry Potter posters joined the demos in several cities – it's a routine feature of manifestations in France, but not so common here — you can't help but be struck by the well-scrubbed faces in the photos and the well-scrubbed schools and neighbourhoods from which they come.

.....(snip).....

That might make voters – all classes, genders, faiths and skin colours – even more frightened and angry. If that happens there's no guarantee that anyone as mild and moderate as Miliband – or even McCuskey – will be able to control the forces thereby unleashed. Seat belts on. ...........

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/nov/25/student-protests-middle-class-michael-white

[mdmc]

1. r