For anyone who has seen my Facebook timeline this is inherently obvious, young people aren't inherently left wing, and the portrayals by the media that the young are just a bunch of radicals is just wrong and idiotic. Commentators like Owen Jones often point to the young person's struggle to be heard and their distaste for tuition fees amongst other things. I'm here to say on a vast level; young people quite often simply don't care. I was at an interview yesterday for a job abroad I mentioned to the other people about what effect a Brexit might have on the job, of the five people I was talking to none of them cared; none of them were going to vote in the referendum and most of them didn't even know there was one in the first place. If that's not indicative of the fact that politicians are out of touch with young people then I don't know what is. There has been for sometime now an over emphasis on the views of students in youth issues, this ignores the fact that over 50% of the populace doesn't go to university and quite often have no plans to go to university. This group of people are quite often likely not to vote or even care about issues, for them life is about getting a job and getting on with their life; either not wanting to or not being able to afford to (tuition fees don't factor into this, what really matters is the maintenance loans).
Even in the student populace most don't care about politics, the vocal minority that has sit ins and goes on marches influence policy more often than the average student, who is most likely to be sitting in their room watching Netflix or streaming TV on their computer after doing their work. Politicians don't speak to these people, and as a result they aren't spoken to as it's presumed that all students are red flag waving Marxists or tweed wearing Tories. If politicians want to make a difference in getting the young to vote and actually be engaged, then we need to speak to the actual average students.It's unbelievable how many times at university I spoke about the election and people simply said, I'm not going to vote politicians are simply liars and there is no point in voting because it will just be enforcing this truth, no matter if it were Labour or the Tories or even the Lib Dems.
The Growth of Conservative clubs across campuses around the country should point to another truth, young people are quite often Conservative. The working class young Tory is a real thing in the south, people believe that the state should be small; all the people see about the government is that they take a large chunk out of their pay cheque and most people want to pay less taxes. Some say that people become more conservative as they get older because they end up paying tax; one of the reasons that older people may vote more is that people see that they are always going to have to pay taxes and want to see their taxes being spent more efficiently, this is especially true in Britain as we have the NHS and as we inevitably get older we end up spending more time in hospital.
The general election polling from Ipsos MORI shows that 43% of young people vote labour on a turnout of 48% (polling data here) over half of young people didn't vote and 27% voted Tory and 8% UKIP. This shows a lack of engagement with young people, and if any thing that the engaged ones are voting Labour because at this sort of age left wing people during a Tory government are more likely to vote against the so called establishment. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm all for everyone voting Labour but at the end of the day we need to encourage young people to actually get out and vote. Support for Brexit amongst young people is is over 25 points greater but the problem is that people may not vote, and if people don't vote then the vocal minority of people that support Brexit will win the referendum. UKIP won the European elections with most seats because people didn't vote in their masses, the same can be said for the Republicans in America in 2014 where there was a historically low turnout in the mid-term elections.
In conclusion, young people needed to treated as the same as the rest of the populace as the engaged will already vote and there isn't this magic group of young people who will be suddenly vote Labour that just need to be coerced into the polling booth.
Thursday, 17 March 2016
Monday, 29 February 2016
Intimidation of Labour's moderates and progressives needs to stop now
I'll start this off with a disclaimer; I'm by no means Jeremy Corbyn's biggest fan or a supporter in any shape or form of Momentum. In fact I used to be a member of Progress, and still vaguely align myself to progressive wing of the party, I even voted for Liz Kendall in the leadership election. I had many mixed emotions when the leadership election occurred; I even went to a bout of depression (signs that I care far too much about the Labour Party) but JC won. This does not excuse members of Momentum and the #JezWeCan camp from belittling my strand of politics.
I fought blood sweat and tears for Labour Government in 2015, I spent most nights canvassing the streets of Reading where I was at university, throughout my degree; in fact so much so that it was probably one of the contributing factors in me leaving university. I campaigned tooth and nail in the Rochester and Strood by-election; only to be told by the national press that we did nothing and we were put off as effectively having no ground campaign at all. I spent a hell of a lot of money travelling to and from Reading and my home in Gillingham (the neighbouring seat) during that by-election; but now because people like myself disagree with Mr Corbyn we are now simply labelled as "Red Tories" and a part of the party that needs to be purged. We made mistakes in government yes, any government does; the left's beloved Harold Wilson had his Lavender List yet in party lore he is still known as Good Ole' Harold. Yet Tony Blair goes to war with Iraq and suddenly he is labelled by large sections of the party as a Tory and a war criminal.
I've spoken with many of the elders in my CLP about what life was like in the 80s when there was the huge division along militant lines; meetings had punch ups and open discourse about policy ideas was discouraged for fear that the Hard Left might take over and cause a huge row. If we go down the way we are going, then this is going to happen again; and what it will lead to is constant Tory Governments and Councils, any hope we have will be gone and there will be another split and I don't think the party can go through another split.
This leads me onto the main reason for this blog post, in that intimidation has to stop. We've already seen the constant trolling of MPs who voted for air strikes in Syria, but now Unite Reps are allegedly intimidating delegates to the Young Labour Conference into voting certain ways. This needs to stop now! The key element of a free and open democratic party is the members of our Broad Church that we call the Labour Party are allowed to express their own opinions without fear of being trolled and shouted down in meetings.
The Youth Conference needs reformation, if we want to stop the debacles over the selection of the NEC member through a conference we need to have the member elected through a young members ballot that is actually properly advertised; we already had online voting for the delegate system; yet young members couldn't directly vote for their representative on the NEC, all of party elections have OMOV so why can't young members have it? The problem is that young members aren't treated with seriousness in the Labour Party, we have our Youth Officers in CLPs and some Young Labour groups; but we don't get selected as councillors and we have our own little side show away from conference. If we want a proper youth movement, the youth conference needs to be at conference, the Women's conference is and so is the BAME conference.
If we want the future of our party to be actively engaged we need to select young members for council seats on the basis of their hard graft. There is a lot of demonisation of young people and students within branch meetings; regularly you'll hear "Students did this, Students are coming over here and taking our housing; rent is more expensive because of students. Some hooded youths were committing anti-social behaviour etc.." replace the word student or youth in this sort of statements made by various people at branch meetings and change in with immigrant; and how are we different to the Tories or UKIP? We need to adopt a serious approach to young members. Time and time again you here stories of young members being scared off in EC meetings and in branch meetings because of intimidation by older members of the CLP. If we want to have a proper youth movement we need to be treated with respect and not as the "New People", I'm often asked by members who rarely turn up to meetings oh so when did you join then? Thinking that I'm a new member, I reply with "nearly 6 years ago" I've been active member for nearly 6 years now, but I'm still treated by some semi-active members as this new kid on the block. This needs to change, after all young members are the people who travel the length and breadth of the country during by-elections; the ones doing the awful delivery rounds in places no one wants to do them (trust me when I say this, there is nothing worse than having to deliver house that are 50 steps up and 50 steps down and you've got 500 to deliver and half the route is like this).
In short; young members are people too, just remember we are the future of the party; the MPs, the Councillors, and the Prime Ministers for the Labour Party of the future.
I fought blood sweat and tears for Labour Government in 2015, I spent most nights canvassing the streets of Reading where I was at university, throughout my degree; in fact so much so that it was probably one of the contributing factors in me leaving university. I campaigned tooth and nail in the Rochester and Strood by-election; only to be told by the national press that we did nothing and we were put off as effectively having no ground campaign at all. I spent a hell of a lot of money travelling to and from Reading and my home in Gillingham (the neighbouring seat) during that by-election; but now because people like myself disagree with Mr Corbyn we are now simply labelled as "Red Tories" and a part of the party that needs to be purged. We made mistakes in government yes, any government does; the left's beloved Harold Wilson had his Lavender List yet in party lore he is still known as Good Ole' Harold. Yet Tony Blair goes to war with Iraq and suddenly he is labelled by large sections of the party as a Tory and a war criminal.
I've spoken with many of the elders in my CLP about what life was like in the 80s when there was the huge division along militant lines; meetings had punch ups and open discourse about policy ideas was discouraged for fear that the Hard Left might take over and cause a huge row. If we go down the way we are going, then this is going to happen again; and what it will lead to is constant Tory Governments and Councils, any hope we have will be gone and there will be another split and I don't think the party can go through another split.
This leads me onto the main reason for this blog post, in that intimidation has to stop. We've already seen the constant trolling of MPs who voted for air strikes in Syria, but now Unite Reps are allegedly intimidating delegates to the Young Labour Conference into voting certain ways. This needs to stop now! The key element of a free and open democratic party is the members of our Broad Church that we call the Labour Party are allowed to express their own opinions without fear of being trolled and shouted down in meetings.
The Youth Conference needs reformation, if we want to stop the debacles over the selection of the NEC member through a conference we need to have the member elected through a young members ballot that is actually properly advertised; we already had online voting for the delegate system; yet young members couldn't directly vote for their representative on the NEC, all of party elections have OMOV so why can't young members have it? The problem is that young members aren't treated with seriousness in the Labour Party, we have our Youth Officers in CLPs and some Young Labour groups; but we don't get selected as councillors and we have our own little side show away from conference. If we want a proper youth movement, the youth conference needs to be at conference, the Women's conference is and so is the BAME conference.
If we want the future of our party to be actively engaged we need to select young members for council seats on the basis of their hard graft. There is a lot of demonisation of young people and students within branch meetings; regularly you'll hear "Students did this, Students are coming over here and taking our housing; rent is more expensive because of students. Some hooded youths were committing anti-social behaviour etc.." replace the word student or youth in this sort of statements made by various people at branch meetings and change in with immigrant; and how are we different to the Tories or UKIP? We need to adopt a serious approach to young members. Time and time again you here stories of young members being scared off in EC meetings and in branch meetings because of intimidation by older members of the CLP. If we want to have a proper youth movement we need to be treated with respect and not as the "New People", I'm often asked by members who rarely turn up to meetings oh so when did you join then? Thinking that I'm a new member, I reply with "nearly 6 years ago" I've been active member for nearly 6 years now, but I'm still treated by some semi-active members as this new kid on the block. This needs to change, after all young members are the people who travel the length and breadth of the country during by-elections; the ones doing the awful delivery rounds in places no one wants to do them (trust me when I say this, there is nothing worse than having to deliver house that are 50 steps up and 50 steps down and you've got 500 to deliver and half the route is like this).
In short; young members are people too, just remember we are the future of the party; the MPs, the Councillors, and the Prime Ministers for the Labour Party of the future.
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