A week or so back there was a debate at the University of Edinburgh about how best to respond to the cuts and fees currently dominating education debates. Our newest member, George Lerner, spoke on behalf of EUSNA. He reports...
A panel ended last Thursday to discuss the cuts, our SNP representative, just one of eight, concluded that the general mood was to chastise the major political parties, rile the fifty-person audience with unnerving commendation of bankers, and be subjected to the fawning ferocity of utopic talk that read very little into the problems and solutions faced by Scotland.
It began with an introduction; the beginning of a welcome political dialogue that was not reciprocated with reason granted by the expansive girth of the panel’s Scottish political connections. It included a Conservative, a Labour member, a Lib-Dem, and a Socialist in addition to an Anarchist, a Green, and a Feminist.
While each speaker was asked a question and each one granted the ability to give what was supposed to be a prompt reply, the overall topic of the debate was not Scotland. Indeed, a bystander could have been taken back; temporarily confused that he or she was seated near Westminster, discussing its problems, then really a mere three miles away from Scottish parliament and hundred times at that from London. Despite questions from our own Ben MacPherson and Euan Campbell, a scrappy performance was brought to bear coalescing under an umbrella of either the meanderingly redundant, involving stating with a remedial ‘if bankers do that, we’d be happy to have them leave,’ and party-toeing nihilism to include, ‘well Labour’s policy in Scotland doesn’t exist, so I guess I’ll just make it up as I go along.’ One must question whether bashing bankers, and it came up quite often, does any good. While I agreed that bankers and the banking sector needs to come under major restrictions, one should have mentioned that the banks which were bailed out or nationalized were all South of the Border. Most of the speakers believed that the protesters were doing the right thing. While I agreed that civil disobedience is necessary, nothing has ever accomplished by protesting your way out of it.
It should be noted, though, that the Feminist speaker, who did not have had applause in mind, should nonetheless be congratulated for not conforming to expectation, and discussing the problems directly. She said, ‘women could be most affected by the cuts since they are disproportionately represented in the humanities which are being cut 40 to 60 percent, than the marketable (science and business) degree.’
My thoughts from beginning to end were that the debate ignited few sparks. There were some passionate, albeit, pointed remarks from myself, George Lerner, but overall the mood was acquisitive and not dynamic. Intellectual debate was scorned and riding the bandwagon seemed like a much more enviable opportunity than seeing if Scotland’s perfunctory union with England could get any better. Indeed, not one member of the panel included a singular word in just one their remarks beginning or ending with: ‘Scotland.’ Instead, while the moderator tried their best to keep the panel, and the audience, at ease, the questions and answers were petty, trivial, vague and generalized.
To give one example of what I tried to do when the topic was close to tackling the deficit and cuts, it asked: are there alternatives to the cuts? To which my reply was: why not make it more efficient and save money that way? Surely, cutting out some English bureaucracy in the form of Trident, education, and other public services would go a long way to lessening the stranglehold of £170.8 billion? A budget deficient, which should have been pointed out, is greater than at any time in Scottish and English history except for the wartime needs of just two periods: the 1910s and 1940s. However, while
trying to conjure some reasoned arguments which could step the problems; I myself sometimes showed a lack of concision than the others had.
Speaking for the SNP is possibly one of the most difficult but rewarding opportunities that I could have enjoyed. And, while I should deal with the rancor of the audience and speakers more pristinely, I will make sure that the problems discussed in Scotland should have something to do with Scotland. That’s why I came onto the panel, and I think the audience, through grit and groaning understood my message to them at the end. It’s a much better solution for the SNP to be fighting battles against the banal interlocutors from other parties by explaining to them that if they live in Scotland they should help fight and put the priorities of the people living around the University of Edinburgh first before those of Westminster. That, without touching the education budget, the SNP is going to free up SNP £100m in local NHS spending, what would the other parties do? More cuts, ignore existing solutions for the deficit, and ignore Scotland.
- George Lerner
