Preparing for revolution

'If you're feeling low, stuck in some bardo, I, even I, know the solution: love, music, wine and revolution.'
Stephin Merritt in the song World Love from the album 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields

Hello! I thought I'd start off with that quote from one of my favourite songs (will put a link at the bottom of this blog) as I thought it was appropriate, because today I have been preparing for revolution. On 10 July 2014 there will be a huge strike by numerous people who work in the public sector across the country. I myself am rather independent and do not have a union or anything active to strike against, but naturally I very much support the work that is done in the public sector, I will be attending the demonstration and I entirely condemn any suggestion of pay cuts, pension restrictions and any other measure which is harming the lives and wellbeing of those who provide the vital services that our present Government is privatising in back rooms. In this blog, I will discuss the events that I have taken part in today, talk a bit about some of the people I have met and listened to and possibly go a little into my own interpretation on things.

My action concerning this has really taken two forms. Firstly, this morning I stood opposite Bristol Royal Infirmary with a petition to raise awareness of the strike, encouraging people to sign and show support and hopefully leave their contact details if they are interested in taking part. I cannot say I achieved a huge number of signatures, but I think I collected a reasonable amount for the amount of time I was there - the petition drive was wrapped up quite quickly so I did not get as many as I would have liked, but I think I did raise some awareness. One woman in particular really intrigued me by saying that she actually supports the cause and is a member of the Socialist Party, but was in two minds about whether or not to sign because she does not feel that striking is the way to go about making a difference. Her approach is more concerned with discussion and negotiation. This interested me in particular because that is exactly my stance when discussing whether it is ever ethical to go to war. I am very anti-military, and I think that negotiation is a far preferable approach than bombing or sending drones. If someone says that that isn't feasible because people won't listen, I say that it is down to those in power to make them listen. Having said that, I support striking if work or pay conditions are not being met. I wonder why that is? I must confess that I have never really considered the two standards before. My argument in favour of striking is exactly the one that I counter when discussing war - that the powers that be are actually not prepared to listen, so sometimes a strike is necessary for the greater good. I suppose I think of striking as being a less drastic measure than going to war, but now that I have considered the two, I hope that as I grow older I do not become cynical enough about such things that I will ever condone war, because I think that that is immoral. Anyway, I think I have possibly gone slightly off-topic there. Ultimately, the lady in question did sign the petition, as did many other people, which I very much appreciate.

The other relevant thing that I did today was attending a planning session for the rally next week. At this event, numerous people tuned up at the Create Centre in Bristol to listen and contribute; these people represented various unions around Bristol and the surrounding areas such as South Wales, as well as independent people who just wish to get their voices heard and to make a difference to this world, such as myself. There were five key speakers whose speeches I shall comment on a little below, and then guests were allowed to speak. I did not contribute anything myself, partly because we were very pushed for time and partly because I did not feel that there was anything that I could say which had not been said. I did not take written notes, as I do not usually do that at this sort of event; I find that notes are more effective when taken mentally, as to me at least, anything written down tends to look a bit out-of-place afterwards, and hard to put in a sentence. I must stress that it is impossible for me to sum up everything that the principle speakers said; I will comment on the things that stand out, but I am not physically able to express their sentiments in quite the way that they did. I will also post links to the blogs of all of the bodies which these people represent.

The first speaker was Steve Timmins of Protect Our NHS. I had spoken to Steve a little before the meeting began, and I found him an intriguing and politically and morally aware individual. In his speech, Steve talked about how the Protect Our NHS campaign started through 38 Degrees in 2012, how confusing the changes that are currently being made to it are and how it needs to be protected or else we will lose what we have. I have done a lot of work in the past for the Save The NHS campaign, including two invisible theatre spoofs, one in which I played the embodiment of the NHS being wheeled from an ambulance, and one in which I played a junior manager at Virgin called Dick Price, involved with publicising healthcare services that Virgin would be offering post-privatisation.

The next speaker was Jim Delaney from Lambeth College. If I remember correctly, he talked about raising awareness of the rally, as many companies within the public sector have not been balloted about it. (If that was someone else who said that I apologise - it was definitely brought up and I think it was during Jim's speech, but it could have been a different one.) I find Jim's to be one that I cannot recall as much about as some of the others - I have no idea why, it has no reflection on Jim Delaney's speaking abilities or the subject of his discussion, it just did not resound as personally with me as some of the others.

Third to speak was Anne Lemon of National Union of Teachers (NUT). Anne was another one that I spoke to before the meeting - I helped her set the chairs up! - and I was very impressed by her speech. Anne spoke passionately about the plight of teachers today, which is something that I can entirely understand, it being not so long since I was in the education system myself. She discussed how a lot of schools, particularly those in more working-class areas, are getting barely any applicants for jobs, because of shortages of teachers due to many new student teachers dropping out of the system within the first five years. The Government says that this is due to unruly children, which not even going into how insulting that is to people of my generation and slightly younger, is entirely incorrect. The real reasons are to do with payment, retirement ages and targets. In the past, teachers could retire at 60 with great pensions, which naturally attracted many people to the job. Now, teachers retire at 68. Naturally, it will be hard for a teacher of that age to have the same amount of energy and charisma in the classroom, so many will be laid off long before that, but they will still not be able to access their pension until 68. Also, head teachers are free to pay teachers according to their own systems, and many are assessed on performance and targets. Anne discussed how some teachers have a certain number of classes per week observed, and if it does not reach 'good' or 'outstanding' (in short, if anything at all goes wrong, which anyone who has ever been in a classroom knows can happen to the most fantastic teacher) they are not performing up to standard, which is of course extremely stressful and leads to teachers doing a worse job as a result. I myself happen to have a friend who was training to be a teacher and left because of the immense stress that he was put under, and I think that is an absolute disgrace. Not to mention teaching assistants, who are in my opinion the unsung heroes of our society - even more so than teachers really, as they are the ones who will work with the students who are having more problems with certain things and help them overcome any learning difficulties that they have. I think that they could certainly do with more appreciation. (I actually feel a little bit awkward that I remember this much about Anne's speech compared with how little I remember about Jim's! I think education is just something I am extremely passionate about, and Anne's speech touched a very personal note with me.)

Steve Preddy of Unite the Union was the fourth person to speak. He talked some more about the NHS and other bodies affected which are striking. He also touched on the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). I talked about this in my blog of 30 March this year (http://actorandpoliticalactivist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lord-kitchener-edith-cavell-and-ttip.html); it is something that I have signed numerous petitions against, and I would encourage others to do the same, if they would. Steve said that if this goes ahead, our NHS will be gone forever as it would open the door for parts of it to be involved in international trade agreements, and no future Government would be able to prevent this from happening. Whilst I am sure that Steve is more informed than I am on this issue, I'm not sure that it could never be prevented in the future, as I think that anything can potentially be made law if someone powerful enough wants it to me. However, that's a moot point, and I'm sure we can all agree that none of us want this to happen in the first place, so that is definitely something that we should include in our campaign.

The final speaker was Huw Williams of UNISON South Gloucestershire. This was undoubtedly the most engaging speech of the night. It was very much a speech of encouragement and motivation, and I felt that Huw did a sterling job on this. The overall points were that we need to get out there, force the Government to back down, and that this needs to be the start of something, not a one-off. Next week's event will hopefully be massive, but ultimately it won't be successful if it stands on its own. Beyond it, there need to be more strikes, more protests and ultimately we will have control. I probably cannot express it quite as well as Huw did, but I think that his words echo a notion that I have been feeling and expressing for some time, in that progress can be made if only people remember that and make an effort to make it. Going back to how I felt when I started getting involved in this sort of work, I realised quickly that people will only protest if they feel that progress is happening quickly, and if it feels futile, they will stop and the group mentality will be lost. Of course, that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, for it is thinking that way that prevents progress from being made. If it is something that I care about and am passionate about, I will continue to fight for it even when all seems lost. That is how political and social progress gets made. Nothing happens overnight; it takes time and persistence to achieve these things, and if people don't have that motivation to work over an extended period of time, nothing is going to get better.

There was a little more discussion beyond this, including a mention of how if Labour win next year things probably will not change a huge amount, but I think that that is something for another time. I'd like this blog to focus primarily on the rally next week. I don't know a huge amount about what is happening nationally, but the Bristol one will start outside City Hall (the new name for the Council House) and be moving in a circular direction. (I believe it starts at 10.30, but I'm not sure on that - I may have to get someone to clarify that.) I'd advise anyone who is around to come, and to publicise it as much as they physically can. It's a fantastic cause to get involved with, something which will affect each and every one of us.

Before I sign off, there is one comment that came up that I'd really like to talk about. I believe it was either Jim Delaney or Steve Preddy who commented that it is very motivating for young people to take part in a march like this. That really struck a chord with me, because I can personally identify. I'm 20 years old, which is unusually young for someone to be this involved with political and social change projects; a lot of my peer group are neither as informed nor as involved as I am, and I am very used to attending events where I am clearly the youngest person there (I think I was tonight, in fact) and people come across as a little surprised that someone as young as I am is this passionate and this opinionated about things. I think back to how I started all this. I was 17 years old, just starting my A-levels, not really any more politically aware than anyone else my age, and someone asked me if I wanted to come to the student demonstrations with them, and I just agreed because everyone was going and it sounded like fun. At that first demonstration on 24 November 2010, it suddenly struck me how much I cared about what we were doing, and how angry I really felt about being screwed over by the new coalition Government. I realised, then and there, that I wanted to be a political activist, to have my say in this world and to change things for the better. Of course, after the fuss around that died down, my friends just went back to their lives. But I continued to get involved in whatever projects I could, I soon started this blog, I met and talked to relevant people and I did a lot of informing myself about the various issues going on in the world today. It all started with that one demo, and it is really quite surreal to think about how much that changed the course of my life. I think it changed my life for the better, and I would encourage anyone to get involved with these kinds of things. It may feel sometimes like nothing is changing - and you know, if nothing changes the only person you can blame is you for not making them change. Anyone can make a difference. I wish more people would remember that.

Okay, now I have a few links to post.

Protect Our NHS: http://protectournhs.wordpress.com/
Lambeth College's position: http://lambethcollegestrike.wordpress.com/
Information from NUT's perspective: http://www.teachers.org.uk/campaigns/protect-teachers
Unite the Union: http://www.unitetheunion.org/
UNISON, South Gloucestershire: http://www.southglosunison.co.uk/

And, as promised, a link to the song I referenced at the start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_5eI7g3Cg&feature=kp

Thanks for reading!