ASK ANYONE of a certain age and disposition about the events of 1968 and you leave yourself open to a torrent of nostalgia. Their eyes will mist over as they recount the year of Martin Luther King, of Vietnam, of springtime in Paris. It was the year when a generation declared itself dissatisfied with an establishment trapped in an inadequate inertia. Ideals, dreams and visions were pursued to a soundtrack of the Beetles and the Stones.
In comparison to Parisian students barricading the streets to bring a government to its knees, our current higher education troupe may seem quite tame. Yet is that any wonder? We lack any public figures in this country worthy of following – nobody is presenting us with a vision for how they’d like the world to be.
Our politicians stumble towards each other with all the intellectual grace and integrity of relatives drunkenly brawling at a wedding. Initially rather amusing, but ultimately deeply embarrassing – so wrapped up with their own petty differences they’re seemingly oblivious to the pandemonium that surrounds them. I honestly could not tell you what our major politicians would like the world to look like other than a vague desire for ‘respect’, an agenda which is on an ideological par with the sodden pontificating of an embittered drunk. We have been afforded nothing in the way of hope that the future can be better than today. Is it any wonder we are drifting aimlessly along in our sleek, cream pods?
Some may say that there is no need for the sort of visionary leadership that was present in the 60s. Racism is not enshrined in law; sexism is decried as little more than outdated bigotry. Our aid budget increases yearly and there is an increasing acknowledgement that we live in an inter-connected global community. We’re doing alright – there’s no need to get pissed off.
However, that is patently false. We live in a society where we stand on the precipice of environmental disaster, where our government has shackled education with deadening debt, where our civil liberties are being steadily eroded in the name of their protection and where our dedication to African poverty is enshrined in utterly brutal trade law.
This is an imperfect world, a world that needs to be changed. Yet if the politicians above us offer us little more than bleary-eyed bluster, then what of our fellow students?
As many have probably no doubt experienced, attempting to engage some of our student political clique in political debate is much akin to an intellectual mugging. You are sent reeling from the phlegm-flecked ferocity of an ideological delinquent. This is not something you can follow or rally behind; such blind, reactionary idealism is not visionary or transcendent, it merely serves to isolate rather than inspire.
Of course, I am taking cynicism to the extremes – there are many students working within the Students’ Union who do care passionately about the world, and put huge amounts of effort into effecting change. However, the above is just how student politics appears from the outside – there is no obvious direction, no coherency, and no vision that people can unite behind.
So if our politicians offer us the leadership of the morally bankrupt and there seems to be no sort of great Zeitgeist that can really inspire, then there doesn’t seem to be any real hope of making any tangible difference.
However, there are thousands of students in this University and across the country who are bothered by the state of the world. There are thousands of people who don’t think that ‘shit happens’ is a valid excuse for avoidable misery. There are thousands of people who take one look at our stagnant, soporific politics – sigh deeply and resign themselves to donating £2 a month to Oxfam as a way of changing the world.
We need to change the system in which we operate; things seem so big, so immutable that people give up hope. We need a leader who offers us a vision for the future that we can rally behind, there needs to be a movement that provides hope that we can change the unchangeable.
Until then, the best we can do is drunkenly putting the world to rights; after all, pissing in the wind is better than pissing your pants if you can just undo your flies.
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