From Climate Change & Black Lives Matter to Exams, the new profile of protest: from below
Victory of course has many owners and defeat none so when the Government U-Turned on A Level results on Monday many claimed a hand.
Most had some justification but there is a difference between putting out a statement or a social media message and actually organising protest.
Virtual protest can ultimately be ignored. If that wasn’t the case Boris Johnson would long since have cleared off faced with the weight of adverse twitter comments.
Actual protest makes life more difficult and there was a good deal in the short period between the results and the U-Turn.
These protests were not organised by trade union Head Offices, or Keir Starmer, or the Tory MPs who at least claimed they were lobbying the Chief Whip.
They were organised locally from below. That doesn’t mean the organisers were somehow mysterious or anonymous, they weren’t.
Local Further Education (Sixth Form) activists from the NEU and UCU organised several protests, as did Labour members, the wider left and students themselves.
Of course statements from Unions, Labour etc were important in setting a tone and mood but the actual swell of protest came from below.
It fits a pattern from protest on climate change to Black Lives Matters. Significant agenda changing protests have come from the grassroots, often at short notice but mobilising considerable numbers.
It’s a sign of a new mood and movement rising, not yet institutionalised or placed in an already existing recognisable format
A related point has been made by my old acquaintance James Meadway pointing out that the exams protest is an assertion of the importance of people over algorithms. In an age of AI that’s important too.
2020 has been a very difficult year for many and will continue to be so, but here lies hope for positive change for a better future.
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