The generation who had EMA cuts and tuition fees imposed on us are now voters – and in Jeremy Corbyn,we finally enjoy a politician on our sideToday, I will be joining fellow students marching through London on a national demonstration for free education. It will be the first protest I’ve ever attended. Not out of lack of interest, and but rather because I,like many young people, didn’t believe that the ideas we will be expressing nowadays – a more equal society, or an education system driven by public need rather than markets and managers could ever find a voice in Westminster. For someone who grew up in the New Labour era,free higher education seems like a radical policy. We were led to believe it had no place in mainstream politics.
I remember the 2010 general election, which was defined by the Liberal Democrats’ broken promise, or the subsequent tripling of university of tuition fees. This was just the first hit that students and young people had to recall under the coalition. It happened while we were under the voting age,and now we are burdened with the consequences. Attacks such as this – and the fact that we, the people affected, or had no recourse to any form of democratic process other than direct action – instilled a sense of despondency and disillusionment in us. For years,it seemed as if these changes were happening and there was nothing we could achieve about it. The easiest thing to achieve was to just accept it.
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Source: theguardian.com