Priyamvada Gopal teaches in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. She writes political and cultural comment for the Guardian and is the author of The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration. She spoke to NLP’s Alex Doherty on the events at last weeks anti-cuts protest and the longer term significance.
Many were surprised by both the scale of the student protest but also the level of militancy on show. Why were people so surprised?
I think the surprise is attributable to the lamentably widespread acceptance of the pernicious idea that we must and will all share the pain of the cuts and that they are, in some sense, unavoidable and necessary. This falsehood has had remarkably successful propaganda value. Criticism of the protests generally takes the form of the belligerent question: ‘We all have to suffer; why should students be the exception?’ What the protests have usefully forced people to realise is that, no, young people are not, in fact, buying that line wholesale and that a challenge is gathering pace. Of course, they will be dismissed as ‘selfish’ and ‘self-indulgent’, but perhaps it is time for self-interest as an idea to become legitimate beyond the circles of the already powerful and wealthy, for social self-interest to trump private self-interest.
For those unaware of the details – how significant are the proposed cuts in education budgets and the hike in tuition fees?
The current cuts will amount to 50 percent across the board for universities and in due course, much much more for certain subjects, specifically the arts and humanities. Bear in mind that funding is already at less than required levels. The hike in tuition fees—a possible trebling in some cases—will make higher education decisively unaffordable for many in the middle-class, never mind those who are economically disadvantaged. This is the final determined neoliberal push towards privatising higher education permanently and if it is not resisted and defeated now, the battle—of ideas and economics—will be lost forever—as it has been in most of the United States where only a fraction of young people acquire an undergraduate degree or can aspire to one.
Aaron Porter president of the National Union of Students was unequivocal in his condemnation of the violence that occurred at Millbank. What was your view of the violence and the use of direct action in protests more generally?
As I have said publicly, most of what happened at the Millbank Tower does not qualify as ‘violence’ except in the most cartoonish ways. We live in a world where war and exploitation are routine, as is the loss of life and limb both in inner-cities of the Western world and the killing fields of places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir (where violence is inflicted by the militaries of countries like Britain and the USA as well as those who claim to resist them). It is actually quite insulting and demeaning to those innocents who lose their lives and limbs in these places to describe smashed windows and minor scuffles as ‘violence.’ We have to ask why ‘collateral damage’ at such a high level—maimed children and bombed wedding parties—are normalised, on the one hand, as something that ‘can’t be helped’ in situations of conflict and on the other hand, such outrage expressed over broken windows? What sorts of hypocrisy, entitlement and double-standards are operating here in the definitions of and acceptance of violence? I think it is actually a kind of ethnocentrism that thinks it is ok for other places to experience violence (at the hands of Britain and its allies) but not okay for the privileged classes of Britain to have windows smashed in occasionally by people questioning what is going on.
Having said that, let us remember that relatively few windows were smashed in and very little that qualifies even as minor violence actually took place. Throwing a fire extinguisher into police ranks was a manifestly wrong and ill-judged move by a single protester, the sort of thing that really should be avoided and prevented as the resistance movements grow and organise better. But to judge the whole protest as ‘violent’ on the basis of some manic actions by individuals is tantamout to suggesting that all pubs should be closed and alcohol banned because some people turn violent and crack each other on the head on Friday nights (as happens routinely in most city centres on weekends). This protester was chided by others and others were stopped from throwing things that might hurt other people and policemen. Given the numbers on the streets—54,000 or so, it is statistically remarkable and politically laudable that so much self-restraint was exercised by the overwhelming majority and that uncontrollable elements did not, in fact, dominate. While keeping a clear focus on not hurting people, there will need to be creative thinking about means of protest that go beyond waving placards and rallying on Trafalgar square. Politicians use these events to boast about their own ‘democratic’ credentials rather than listen and take protest seriously. But throwing harmful objects at people and injuring policemen is not helpful to the cause.
What is your view of the graduate tax being proposed by the Labour Party and the NUS leadership as an alternative to tuition fees?
These are ultimately matters of nomenclature. The real issue is whether higher education is a right or not, and whether it should be available to all without impediment. I happen to think it should be. So any withdrawal of the State’s commitment to supporting higher education should be scrutinised very carefully. Having said that, I certainly believe that those who earn more should pay more tax – but I don’t see why this so-called ‘graduate tax’ can’t be incorporated into the taxation structure itself with a higher proportion of those taxes accordingly being earmarked for education.
In much of the media the protest has been presented as a middle class protest and Polly Toynbee in the Guardian has suggested that students are “low in the pecking order of pain”. What are your thoughts on those views?
While it would be obviously wrong, at some general and abstract level, to equate cuts in benefits, employment and healthcare provision, to cuts in higher education, the idea of a hierarchy of pain is itself a red herring. First of all, a ‘pecking order’ only makes sense if one assumes that the cuts are necessary at all, that the ‘deficit hysteria’, as some economists have termed it, is anything more than a wide-ranging justification of marketisation and rolling back the state’s obligations. To invoke a pecking order under the pretence of concern for the most oppressed is, in fact, to endorse the cuts while pretending to want to staunch some of the bleeding. It is of a piece with that specious notion of ‘compassionate conservatism’, an ideology which promises not to let people get too hungry or too ill as long as they commit to all the other savage destruction.
How does UK spending on education compare with similar countries in Europe?
Britain’s total investment in higher education is 1.3 percent of the GDP which is behind the OECD average of 1.5 as it is. So, yes, Britain is behind other capitalist economies in its public spending which is only 0.7 percent of GDP. (Indeed, the much vaunted increase in spending per student in recent years also comes from tuition fees, not public spending). Britain is even behind already low spenders, France (1.2 % of GDP) and Germany (0.9%), in terms of public investment in higher education, and even the United States (1%)! This is the already abysmal scenario which the Condem coalition seek to worsen.
The main argument in defence of the Browne review is that students will only have to pay once they are earning a certain amount of money. How do you view that defence of tution fee increases?
I would view that in the same way I view graduate tax. What we need is a fundamental rejigging of the tax structure to make vey high earners and corporations pay more tax (corporate tax was in fact reduced by Osborne within hours of getting into office and news has just rolled in that he is going to reduce the bank levy). Targetting individuals who earn above £21,000 (a frightening low amount) does not alter the fundamental unfairness of a system where structurally, the rich, whether graduates or not, are simply not paying their share of the tax burden. So when one pays is beside the point, although alarm bells must ring in our heads at yet another attempt to force people to live indebted lives. We’ve just witnessed how that has ruined thousands in relation to the housing market. Now we must mortgage not only shelter, but education and employment—that seems like precisely the wrong direction to go in. Less debt, not more.
As a member of the faculty at Cambridge University can you tell us what kind of discussions and debates are going on among academics and university staff behind closed doors
There is a great deal of disquiet among staff in the wake of the Browne review and the cuts. Many are feeling energised by the student activism and have declared solidarity with it. Others are trying to think things through and are less certain of where to go from here. The combination of cuts and tuition fee rises cleverly attempts to divide academics from students in that the latter looks like the only solution to the former. The media reported Wednesday’s protests as ‘student protests’ rather than the joint protest that it was because it is easier to make young people fit the definition of violent rioters than staid lecturers and professors – of which many were present and witness to the occupation of the Millbank building. Many returned and testified to colleagues that what happened was hardly the riot that was being reported. There are certainly some academics who back the Russell Group’s pressure campaign to be allowed to raise tuition fees as each institution wishes. But so far, the majority that I have spoken to have expressed disquiet as well as a desire to do something constructive against it. Many of us at Cambridge are alarmed at the thought of only teaching rich young people who can afford to study the humanities or, indeed, study at all. In that academics are notoriously unwilling to be brought out on to the streets, the protests were very successful in demonstrating lecturer-student solidarity but more work remains to be done.
Does the government have a democratic mandate for the proposed cuts?
No. For one thing, the junior partner in this coalition were elected by those who expected them to block the cuts. The LibDems are guilty of misleading their voters, a species of electoral fraud. Without this junior partner, the LibDems, the senior partner, the Conservatives, had no mandate to form a government at all. If you crunch the numbers for a Conservative ‘mandate’, you have them garnering 36.1 percent of a 65.1 percent turnout. Do the math, as they say. This means that the time has come back to take back democracy from its hijackers, and the only way to do that now is to organise and sustain large-scale resistance to the cuts.
How do you think the student protest will affect the broader anti-cuts movement?
I think and hope that it will provide inspiration and momentum. There is talk now of an anti-cuts coalition across trade unions and that seems like a good first step. Much depends on students and young people more generally: they have energy, they are less identified with and jaded by the existing system and its normative claims, and they have a degree of time and freedom to initiate and sustain protests. Certainly, as a teacher, I am hugely inspired by the energy and anger and I can only hope this will spread across other sectors. But work will be required: spontaneous anger and a dynamic sense of injustice will need to be channelled into patient organising and sustained resistance, never easy, especially when every effort will be made to divide and break the back of such movements.
This article originally appeared at New Left Project: http://www.newleftproject.org
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