"Whose idea was that?": Gordon, Gillian and the election pantomime

Despite Gordon Brown apparently being determined to lose the election by insulting a pensioner in the presence of the national media, I doubt his description of Rochdale voter Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman” will have any effect on the election result.

It's moments like this which reveal the stage-managed nature of the election. The political “walkabouts” taken by leaders surrounded by media types, suited spin doctors and members of their own party pass for genuine campaigning. Brown was heard saying “they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It's just ridiculous...”

Ridiculous, presumably, that a voter could slip through the net of vetted individuals and ask a politician to explain their policies in real time without an autocue. Brown's apparent irritation with having to deal with a conversation that departed from pre-arranged scripts is an indictment of the contempt with which the entire political class treats all of us. What was interesting about his initial exchange with Mrs Duffy was how Brown kept interrupting her with a string of soundbites. “We're for fairness... for hard-working families...better schools...” It was as if he couldn't think of anything substantive to say.

What about the “bigot” comment? Duffy's politics were of a type familiar to anyone who has done any political campaigning in recent years. It could be summed up, very crudely, as Welfare State = Good, Immigration = Bad. She is, apparently, a lifelong Labour supporter who has worked in the public sector for decades. While she mentioned having to pay for the national debt, and why tutition fees were bad, her attack on Brown was mostly from the Right; lock up the criminals, crack down on the scroungers, sort out the Poles. The sort of populist, reactionary shite that will no doubt inspire a proliferation of “Gillian Duffy should be PM” Facebook groups.

So Brown perhaps really did think that Duffy's views on immigration were bigoted. But he should perhaps indulge in a bit of self-criticism. His Party's citizenship tests, “British Jobs For British Workers”, points-based immigration scheme, demonisation of Muslims, have all pandered to racism in society rather than combating it. It's no surprise that a Labour candidate like John Cowan could come out with disgusting anti-Muslim comments.

Working-class racism should be condemned as any other racism should be. Anti-immigrant feeling should be fought. But it's more than a bit rich for the leader of a Party that has presided over all this to throw around allegations of bigotry.

As usual I'm taking an Everyone Involved Is Wrong position on this one. Brown, like all politicians, wants his politics stage-managed and stale, without argument, confrontation, or possible embarrassment. Duffy should probably go and buy some Polish sausages, they're fucking delicious. The media should piss off from her front lawn and go and cover a real story.

What sort of democracy are we in where Politician Meets Voter is front page news?

Red Barons Ate My Baby

“Has your flight been cancelled? Are you stuck somewhere trying to get back to the UK? Send us your comments and pictures” pleads the BBC News website. “Have your say: Do Unions have too much power?” Well, do they? They do, don't they? Look at them! With their flags and placards and everything. Who do they think they are? Here's another story about the American Teamsters, who support the BA strike. Did you know their leadership had links with organised crime 35 years ago?

Yesterday's Sun gave a column to union-busting BA chief executive Willie Walsh. He feels sorry for the customers. He respects the cabin crew a great deal but is angry about their decision. Here are some pictures of pickets, smiling. How dare they have any fun on a picket line, while they're ruining your holiday. Why not ring us or email us if your family's hard earned holiday has been wrecked? We'd value your impartial judgement. Len McCluskey and Bob Crow make speeches that are “throwbacks” and “anachronisms” more suited to the 1970s and 1980s. And thus the media coverage of the BA strike goes on and on.

But we're not in the 1980s. OK, there are similarities: all the music is shitty electro-pop and nobody has a job. But I'm pretty sure it's 2010. Perhaps union leaders still make speeches about striking to defend members' conditions because it's still relevant. For the mainstream media, strikes and union militancy are both “a thing of the past,” and no matter how many strikes there are they will still be “a thing of the past.” No-one does it these days. The cabin crew are just an exception. Oh, and so are those railway signallers. And those others ones, the civil servants. And when our own reporters walkout against the job cuts we will make, they will be an exceptional case too.

All this works against producing a picture of a general, albeit still small, upsurge of industrial activism among many different sections of the working class, for similar reasons. The only possible effect of a strike is that more “passengers face travel chaos.” In this narrative, a victory for the employers will not give a green light for others to behave the same way. A victory for the workers will not inspire others to take a stand. Painting a dispute as an isolated, self-contained event means it is just a nuisance, the workforce are selfish no matter what their actual grievances are, the management may be incompetent but are not malicious.

Anyone who wants an alternative view of the dispute, including more extensive interviews with the strikers themselves, can check out Air Strike, a blog run by Socialist Party supporters.

Student Churnalism

This week I had an article printed in the comment section of The Cambridge Student (TCS). I was writing about the importance of a left-wing challenge to the three main parties at the next election, and in so doing, mentioning Martin Booth’s Socialist candidacy in Cambridge.

Put frankly, my article was butchered by the editors. I can live with this. I’m used to articles being changed, cut down, or rejected outright. What I want to focus on is the political nature of the editors’ decision. What they did was take out not only my endorsement of a candidate, but even any mention of Martin’s candidacy and the existence of TUSC nationally. The reason they gave was that, as a neutral newspaper, they couldn’t print any article that endorsed a particular candidate. This is clearly rubbish. No readers will equate one article, by one writer, in one issue, with the endorsement of the whole paper.

In the student press, as in the grown-ups’ media, the main parties get free coverage all year. In fact, one of the first things TCS printed this academic year war a full page given to Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative representatives to explain what their parties would do for students this year. No other, much more active political groups on campus were given the same opportunity. Fine, that’s the editors’ prerogative of course. No-one would argue that it amounts to an “endorsement” of the main parties. But neither is it neutral or impartial.

Student newspapers can be playgrounds for aspiring journalists who write in the same style, about the same issues, and with the same tired arguments that we read in the comment and opinion sections of national newspapers. One blogger for the online version of Varsity, Cambridge’s independent student paper, has illustrated this point well in a couple of recent articles. Firstly, during the recent referendum on NUS affiliation, he likened the leaders of the “No” campaign, who were opposing the NUS from a fairly left-wing standpoint, to early-90s Tories Norman Tebbit and Roger Knapman. This is either deliberately misleading, or a desperately poor analogy, presumably designed to show off the author’s knowledge of big-boy politics. Either way, it’s bad journalism. Secondly, in an otherwise interesting article, he described James Purnell, who recently announced that he would be standing down from Parliament, as “one of the foremost thinkers of the centre-left.” The tired media cliché about Purnell’s supposedly towering intellect can be debunked by a quick glance at this confused and pointless article he wrote for the Guardian. As for “centre-left,” ask anyone who has been affected by his Thatcherite welfare reforms.

I don’t expect student journalists to be particularly good at writing, still less have time to produce earth-shattering investigative pieces. Everyone is learning, of course. But surely showing some imagination, and not producing pale reflections of something I can read in any issue of the Guardian, could stop us all unwittingly getting on the train to Hacksville.

TCS has a self-selecting editorship. In contrast, many other student union papers have their editors elected by the student body. This is a better system, but the idea that student papers must be neutral permeates here too. The Facebook group for one of the candidates running for editor of The London Student wants the paper to be “impartial at its core” but “support student campaigns.” A neutral paper which supports certain campaigns? First one to square that circle wins a prize.

Student papers could choose to be weapons in the fights students wage in their own interests, against their university managements and against the government. They could choose to seek out the less-known views and stories. They could choose to take student politics on its own terms rather than treating it like Westminster-lite. Activist journalism doesn’t mean distorting or ignoring facts. It just means using them for something more worthwhile than a nice liberal academic chat about the nature of representation or what John Stuart Mill said about something-or-other.

To be honest though, I’m not holding my breath.

Lazy journalism?

The BBC website today carries an article discussing a government programme to build offshore windfarms.

Not one mention that last year the government did precisely nothing to prevent the closure of the Vestas windturbine factory on the Isle of Wight!

Internships

Not that MPs are short of a bit of disposable income, but The Guardian newspaper has been investigating whether any of the 18,000 hours per week worked by unpaid interns at Westminster should be covered under the 1998 National Minimum Wage Act.

Under the legislation, all contracted workers should be paid, but an informal labour market of internships allows employers to get around this. The scandal of unpaid internships is growing during the recession as companies attempt to cut labour costs. Often, interns are effectively doing the same jobs as paid workers. A National Union of Journalists survey of recently qualified journalists found that a quarter thought that their workplace couldn't function without relying on work placements. Over half were still in placements, often unpaid, after qualifying.

Not only is this bare-faced exploitation, taking advantage of graduates in a shrinking job market, but it is closing off professions like journalism to all but the wealthy. The constant cuts in local media mean most opportunities are in the capital. Who can afford to live in central London while earning nothing? Often there is no real application procedure for a position. Landing one relies purely on having the right connections or the right school tie.

A couple of weeks ago the publication of Alan Milburn's 'Unleashing Aspiration' report confirmed what common sense and harsh reality have already taught graduates. While criticising how closed off professions like journalism are becoming, the report only offered typically feeble Blairite 'solutions'. These include extending careers advice back into primary school, and giving more children the opportunity to join a cadet force! No word against the impending hike in university fees. No word about the gross unfairness of the existence of independent schools.

Recently I've heard a range of different opinions from friends and acquaintances who are doing internships, or have done them in the past. What seems clear is that a side-effect of the growing importance of internships has been the lowering of expectations at work. Fewer and fewer graduates expect to get a decent job offer. The danger is that people accept an unwaged position because they see themselves “getting something out of it,” usually skills that will land them a well-paid job in the future. The principle of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay starts to be eroded. The logical conclusion of this argument is that employers refuse to pay anyone in the lower echelons of the workplace, on the grounds that they are learning skills which will get them a promotion. Work now, get paid later. Maybe. If we have the vacancies.

Sure, this isn't the most horrific example of exploitation on the planet at the moment. But it helps to see internships in the context of the wider “race the the bottom” in working conditions that bosses always relentlessly pursue when they get the chance. The current recession is giving them a great excuse. Plants are being mothballed, workers are being asked to work without pay out of a sense of loyalty to the company, as has happened at British Airways.

Clearly, the bosses want us fighting like cats in a sack for the few opportunities available. Clearly they want to lower our expectations to they extent that we will be grateful for a few weeks of unpaid work. Putting up with it because of a possibility that things might get better, or because “there's plenty worse off than you” will only lead to a cycle of lower expectations and embolden those bosses who are hell-bent on wrecking hard-won working conditions.

Unpaid internships should be done away with. Everyone who works should receive a fair wage. Rather than hiding behind pathetic documents like Milburn's report, the government should be spearheading the creation of decent jobs across society, and stopping long periods of unpaid labour becoming the norm in many professions.