Do Students Learn Anything?

I have been meaning to follow up this post on “Direct Action” for some time - it’s been floating around in the background processor part of my brain – but three events this week have now pushed it back into my real-time processor and spurred me into action.

First, I have been accused of “attacking” Caroline Lucas in that post. Strange isn’t it that when you voice a point of view that someone disagrees with, it is an “attack” as opposed to constructive criticism or questioning. But there again the language of such people is embedded in aggression and confrontation. They want to “smash” things they don’t like.

Second was the Student Fees demonstration on Wednesday, which got a little bit out of hand. Now, there has been much commentary on the blogosphere about this, so I’ll just say that opinions range from complete condemnation to a view that you have to do this sort of stuff to get noticed – “peaceful demos don’t work”. But then neither do violent ones. The Poll Tax was abandoned not because of the riots, but because of the realities of electoral politics – and the Miners lost.

Which brings me to what I want to say [third event to follow]

It was about the turn of the century that I realised that the Green Party and Greenpeace are two complimentary sides of the same coin. The Green Party is there for Political Action and Greenpeace for Direct Action. And never the twain shall meet.

The thing is that Greenpeace are really good at Direct Action and they have a lot of experience at it. The other thing is that they don’t break [smash] anything, at least as far as I know. They put their boat in between the Whaler and the Whales. They climb up buildings, Chimney stacks, Oil rigs etc and unfurl banners. OK they might have to take cutters to a fence to get in but that is about the sum of their criminal damage, unless anyone else knows better. And they get air time – they get noticed.

The Green Party supports “Non-Violent” Direct Action but I think they should be very, very careful about how they define what that means and put clear green water between themselves and those who use any excuse for wanton vandalism. For them the game is politics and they should stick to it.

And that third event:

The Rainbow Warrior is dying, it’s nearing the end of its life and needs to be replaced [wipes tear from cheek]. So, here’s a shameless plug for the appeal.