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I thank Richard for his comment on the Student demonstration in London. I have been trying to work out some aspects of the politics of what is happening from the Guardian. I regard it as a crucial barometer of feeling among those who voted Lib Dem in the hope of a progressive liberal government. After all the university educated are a crucial demographic for the Guardian and the Lib Dems. The commentators seem split between those who want to sneer and patronise yet who are frightened (the majority tendency) and those who almost appear to feel that the violence and anger in the student protest is necessary. Moreover they warn that it indicates that fire storms are ahead. [In this context the threat to charge a man with attempted murder for chucking the fire extinguisher off the roof is I think an attempt to arouse and harness the kind of revulsion that followed the death in Athens of a worker in a bank set on fire possibly by black block protesters. Here the aim is to prevent a link up between the students and the rest of the population. We shall see if they succeed.] I have also been watching the statements of the TUC and the NUS leadership. The former are a product of a period of politics that is truly and absolutely over. Similarly for Aaron Porter the student leader and Blair wannabe. It is now very clear, as Richard put it, Cameron-Osborne and Clegg must be stopped or they will finish off the people. The cost of not protesting has now exceeded the cost of protesting. Yet neither the NUS nor the TUC leadership will undertake the task of stopping and reversing the politics of austerity. The huge peaceful demonstrations before the Iraq war demonstrated conclusively that our rulers paid no heed to peaceful protests. Something more is needed. What might that be? Well it is not chucking fire extinguishers from roof tops nor setting fire to shops or banks. Only when the workers and the students in their hundreds of thousands put their bodies in the path of power and end business as usual will they stop it. comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
