By Moral Force If We May. By Physical Force If We Must.

The broken windows at Millbank Towers on yesterday's demonstration by students against the government's policy on tuition fees has triggered the usual dreary monotone of deadness from the usual media poltroons, and calls for 'clampdowns' on future protests, which are now seen as a universal threat to public order, which they will be. See any protest in the last 200 years for identical defeatist quotes. The calls for clampdowns will be counter-productive. The more they crack down, the more violence there will be. If the Condems wanted nice protest, they should have made nice cuts. In other words, they deserve everything they get because they are the cause of it.

One particular snide-issue is the accusation that these demonstrations are expressions of pure self-interest, and not to be mentioned in the same breath as the campaigns of the 60's against Vietnam or Apartheid. That 'it is all about money'. This is the attitude of those who only see life in terns of money, and is therefore irrelevant. But the points it misses therefore need airing. 

The student campaign is not just about the Sword of Damocles of tuition fees. It is essentially about the nature of education itself, and therefore the kind of society we want. The bureaucrats and Gradgrinds want a future of obedient cannon-fodder to carry on fighting the war of Consumerism, whatever the cost. An education system churning out little turtles every three years to carry the next generation of turtles on their backs for all eternity.
Turtles all the way.
While a growing number of students refuse to see why they should not be granted the same mental freedom as the generation which demonstrated against Vietnam and Apartheid. A generation which knew full well that those crimes were all about money.
This is a moral argument. And in spite of a few broken windows yesterday, the government does not hold the high ground. And many will be encouraged by yesterday's scenes. So there will be more demonstrations of anger, and more violence. And while the students alone are no Chartists or Suffragettes, together with the many other blameless victims of free-market madness they constitute a coherent single case against the atomisation of society and community, and for progressive change. And so the Chartist position is a perfectly valid one to adopt, as it is for all opposition to the excesses or idiocies of government.

'By moral force if we may. By physical force if we must.'