Tomas Sullivan
This year has seen a dizzying rise in the involvement of students in politics. The recession hit home like never before with soaring emigration rates and sudden change of the question from ‘who will bail out the banks?’, to ‘who will bail out the country?’, precipitating a landmark election with possibly the biggest turnover of seats the Dail has ever seen.
It wasn’t just cuts and fee hikes that we were faced with, it was disillusion with our entire political system, an immensely cynical belief that politicians had done made a mess, would continue to do so and that there was nothing we could do about it.
But students haven’t been idle. Though fees have been rising for the last three years, so too has student protest against them: this year seeing more student involvement, more protests and more lobbying by USI and TCDSU. An ‘I am a Vote’ voter registration campaign and a ‘Tell your TD’ letter writing campaign were launched the aim being to mobilise the student electorate. When it was proposed that student nurses would have their pay phased out completely over a number of years an organised but assertive activist movement was formed immediately in combination with trade unions. Yes, Dylan Haskins did not get in, but over 1,300 votes is nothing to scoff at for a first time candidate struck a chord in his constituency.
The pivotal moment for many students from around Ireland as well as from Trinity, was the march of over 30,000 students against fees and cuts to education in on the November 3rd. While the government will undoubtedly try to continue raising fees, talk of doubling fees before the protest almost immediately subsided and there was a feeling that students had finally done something.
SU President Nikolai Trigoub-Rotnem said “the march was a real tipping point for Irish student involvement in politics. We finally all saw that the decisions made by politicians do affect us and those around us after maybe growing a little bit apathetic during the boom years.
Dr Elaine Byrne, a political science lecturer, comments that there has never been a huge involvement of the youth in the political system as ‘historically it’s the young people who emigrate’. Emigration is coming back, but Dr Byrne argues that as Ireland has the 2nd largest amount of young people in Europe and because, due to the introduction of free fees, Ireland’s young people are now highly educated, Irish students will continue to have an impact.
She points out that formal political involvement in political parties has not really changed, but informally, in terms of activism and political awareness, she has observed huge changes. ‘I’m incredibly impressed with what my own students have done this year. I’ve seen them on TV, quoted in newspapers like the Irish Times and setting up websites like telluswhy.ie.’
This change is welcome, Dr Byrne argues that this is ‘a young person’s recession’ and groups like pensioners have been able to fight their corner much more effectively with more immediate results.
She finds the student reaction to fees welcome, but suggests that it would be good for students to protest on issues that affect the country as a whole as well, which in turn would make them seem more credible.
Certainly we can all see sharp contrasts between the pivotal role other student bodies play in other societies and our own case. Around the same time as the fees march here, in France students took a leading role in protests against Sarkozy’s raising of the retirement age of all things.
This example is barely worth mentioning when we look at the regime toppling effect young people in the Arab world have had. This region in general has a huge young population; who are more interconnected, thanks to the new social media, better educated and less content to endure an unjust political system than the preceding generations. One could draw parallels all day.
But that’s not to say we have to should go to such extremes. Unlike the UK, where huge protests swarmed through London, one with as many as fifty thousand people, (not to mention the odd ransacking of conservative party HQ and attack on the heir to the throne) ultimately to no avail, our politicians aren’t nearly as decisive.
The last government veered away from pensioners, public sector unions and even students whenever a firm objection was raised. ‘Firm objection’ meaning letting your politicians know that your vote hangs in the balance; this is the only language they understand.
Though, while it’s usually effective in the short term, say the length of an election campaign, after that is anyone’s guess. This government has promised us everything under the sun, but does anyone, for example, really believe that Labour will remember their pledge to oppose further fee rises on their own?
