"Jeremy Corbyn has given hope to my generation. Please don’t let the cynics take it away"

[Ken Burch]

1. More:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/09/jeremy-corbyn-has-given-hope-my-generation-please-don-t-let-cynics-take-it-away

I was expecting toxic political attacks, too. I was less prepared for the establishment’s cluelessness about why this movement is happening and how it is less about the man than about the values that he represents – fairness, equality, peace – and the hope that he inspires for a younger generation. The tone-deafness was striking. “Wow,” I thought. “They really, really don’t get it.”

From the evidence of the rallies and meetings that I have attended, Corbyn’s supporters come from a wide range of age groups and backgrounds. His popularity with young people, achieved without particularly trying to be anyone other than himself, is particularly noteworthy. He has built a grass-roots movement. As the journalist Ed Vulliamy wrote in the Observer, Corbyn’s victory in the leadership election “was the first time many of our young readers felt anything like relevance to, let alone empowerment within, a political system that has alienated them utterly”.

Yet the cold-water consensus elsewhere in the Sunday paper had let those readers down. Britain’s young people, so starkly disadvantaged in comparison to their elders, deserve better from the media.

The other lesson of recent weeks (as if we didn’t know already) is that you should never look to Twitter – that cynical, nuance-free home of hacks and trolls – to gauge the public mood. Instead, seek out the opinions of those who have little concern for burnishing a public reputation and whose hope and optimism are unspun. In this country, there are tens of thousands of people who have a question mark over their housing situation, or their care provision, or the care of someone they love. (These are not minority concerns, alien to Middle England’s comfortable prosperity. While housing is a huge millennial concern, a social care crisis awaits the baby boomers.)


My generation’s political opinions are often excluded from the mainstream media, which is why I wrote, early on in the campaign, for the New Statesman website about Corbyn’s young supporters. I sensed that a gulf was opening between the media establishment and my interviewees. On a personal level, I have never felt as though I belonged less in this industry because of my politics and my background than I do now. On a professional level, I have largely shut up about Corbyn. The mainstream media have an amazing ability to make your big dreams seem stupid and poorly informed.

Right now, the last thing that young people need is for newspapers to adopt braying tones of avuncular chastisement. They are the readers of the future, yet few print outlets engage with them. Instead, the young express themselves by going on marches and on Facebook, where they describe their relief that the devastating impact of austerity will finally be challenged with passion and conviction. Online, they share their hopes for a more egalitarian future and their dismay at the overwhelming tide of shit ­being thrown Corbyn’s way. Unlike the occasionally humourless “cybernats”, most young people in this country don’t want unwaveringly favourable, uncritical reporting and they love a bit of satire. They just want to be given the time of day.

Jeremy Corbyn has given many of my generation hope for a better future and he could do the same thing for many more disadvantaged and disenfranchised young voters. Will the establishment allow us that hope? Or at least some engagement with the policies and ideals inspiring that hope? If not, where do we go instead?