Those of us who campaign in student-heavy seats can breathe a sigh of relief; the party is keeping its commitment to scrap tuition fees. This will spare us the challenge of having to explain a new and in all probability less snappy policy to students. I am, however, still concerned. I have heard too many activists talking as if tuition fees are a panacea for winning the student vote. That is far from being the case.
Students are a key part of the Liberal Democrat coalition. Their votes have helped us to win seats like Cambridge, Leeds North West and Cardiff Central. We will need their votes again to take seats like Oxford East and hold places like Romsey. With stakes this high, we have to get student campaigning right.
We will be getting it wrong if we assume that opposing fees is enough. To say that we won such a large part of the student vote in 2005 because we opposed tuition fees is simplistic. Yes, it helped, but our appeal was broader. Looking back at student leaflets from that election, I can see as many stories about Iraq and the environment as on fees. Talking as if we could only win student votes by appealing to their wallets is insulting to students, many of whom are genuinely idealistic. We must also bear in mind the contribution made by people who went out and knocked on students’ doors and put literature in their pigeon holes. Without that kind of campaigning, all the good policies in the world would not have won us the student vote.
We must not, however, try and rerun the last general election. We need to win an election in 2009/10, not 2005. It is likely that this time round the tuition fees issue will be less helpful than it was before. For a start, it is becoming old news. An eighteen-year-old starting university in 2010 was not even a teenager when the Higher Education Act was passed. It is inevitable that as time has passed, the initial anger has dulled and the fees are being increasingly taken for granted. This has been my impression from conversations with my fellow students. In 2005, our main rival for students’ votes was a Labour party led by Tony Blair. That has well and truly changed. The prime minister who spearheaded fees has gone and polls show that the Tories’ popularity amongst students has increased massively. We are no longer fighting the man or the party that introduced fees. The fact that the Cameron Conservatives are doing better amongst students whilst having u-turned on fees is a further illustration of the way that it is not as central an issue as many believe.
While I am pleased to see our fees pledge kept, I would implore anyone involved in student campaigning to think bigger. In Nick Clegg, we have a very student-friendly brand. His bold stances on Palestine, the environment and the economy will win us more votes than fees ever will.
Mark Mills is an Oxford city councillor, president-elect of Oxford University Liberal Democrats and an undergraduate history student.
N.B: the poll referred to can be found at here (PDF)
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Knaptoft: The very heart of England
We do have a two-tier policing system but it is not what our homegrown racists think it is.
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Tom Arms
Ruth Bright
Tom Bailey
Alex Macfie
10 Comments
Good article. As a student I’d have voted for a goldfish if it had shown some sign of understanding how difficult it was to contemplate getting on the property ladder (this was before it became fashionable to care about the issue).
I predict that the economy, specifically the job market and credit availability, will be a surprisingly major concern with students this time round.
Seems to me the problem is our tuiton fees policy is too focussed on attracting student votes, when we should be trying to focus on their natural liberal instincts as a whole- idealistic I know… I’d personally like to fight for their votes with tuition fees still in place, because I think there are far greater priorities (despite me being an undergrad).
Many- amen! I don’t like fitting policy to campaigning priorities anyway.
Very good article, Mark, and you are quite right.
Our stance on student finance was an important part of our message to student voters last time round, but it was only one of several key issues.
It is also the case that we shouldn’t just think of our student finance policy as being aimed at student voters, it is popular across the board and I suspect many of my generation, who did get a free 9to them) education feel very strongly that we shouldn’t shortchange future generations.
I am gald to say that the debate about this at FPC was based on the principles involved and not simply ‘we must do this or we will lose student votes’.
Good article. The next question is, what are the other issues we should also be campaigning on with students and young graduates?
To be simplistic about it, there are two opposite extreme positions. One is: “Students are idealists. Talk about climate change, peak oil, war and peace, and civil liberties.” The other is: “Students these days have to be realists. They are rightly terrified of what the future may hold for them personally in a contracting job market. Talk about jobs, money, and house prices.”
It seems to me that we do have to cover both of these bases, but we must do it in a self-consistent way. If we aim to appeal to the noblest instincts of the idealists, while also offering crude populist tax cut bribery in parallel, we shall merely look disjointed and two-faced.
That’s where Vince convinces and Nick does not. Vince’s language is all about what is practically necessary for economic recovery, what is genuinely needed to meet hardship or promote fairness, and what is morally good in terms of green infrastructure investment. Nick’s language is all about big cuts, billions of cuts, roll back the State, save money, stuff your pockets with the money. They are not a team, and their different perspectives clash, irrespective of whether their specific policy prescriptions might have been quality-checked to avoid blatant conflicts over factual points.
Not surprising, then, that business gives Vince a 41% favourable endorsement (higher than Gordon’s 28%), but Nick trails on 11%!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brown-goes-from-boom-to-bust-1242579.html
As a student activist at the time maintenance loans were introduced – I have to say we chose not to make loans a major campaign within our University, because opposing Thatcher on loans was seen as unrealistic amongst students.
Instead we tried to get back to pavement politics with campaigns on things like getting enough washing machines in the student laundries in halls of residence, enough fridge/freezer space in University self catering accommodation, window locks for ground floor rooms in University accommodation.
Seen as realistic and achievable campaigns we trebled / quadrupled the membership of our university group and set our star high.
Having done eight years in a big, perhaps the biggest,student ward its a tough one which is why the article is well worth noting. My obsersvations in no particular order are.
1. Never underestimate the power of “they are the only ones that bother.” Because halls are a bitch to get into and students nearly always need special literature they are often ignored. The number of votes I have seen clocked up for the party because we were the only leaflet they recived is astonishing.
2. I think we have a problem because so many of the culture wars are over. 3 years of sex,drugs and rock and roll has previously pivoted people in a liberal direction. However as stigmas have waned so has the need to define your self as things or against things.
3. always without fail in every circumstance reply to student requests for interviews, research queries, internships etc. Its quite sad but they are nearly always flatered that anyone is bothered much less willing to give up time.
4. always keep on good terms to the “gate keepers” of student halls no matter how obscure. Buy them chocolates and flowers. I mean that literally.
5. understand that by defination students are aspirational. the idea that they are all tie dyed grunge warriors is rubbish. Even aged 20 people are looking 20 moves ahead on the board. Jobs, mortgages etc.
the chronic debt has made them more consumerist because they know eventually they will have to pay the bills.
6. the fact that they are a transient population often with little emotional tie to the geographical area they live in can make them more suspectable to value based and single issue campaigns.
7. students are worth it. While thankfully in decline the propensity for people to stick by there first vote is still there. The benefits to liberalsim of student work is difficult to quantify because in many cases it will be repaid over a life time.
Conclusions ? I wouldn’t be so bold at least not in a quickly knocked off comment. However this article is correct to say one simple policy, even fees , will not do it.
Liberal Neil – as I understand it the debate at the FPC was based as much on the campaign imperative to maintain a slogan as it was about any principle.
As it happens our 2005 policy was a lie. We weren’t scrapping tuition fees. We were scrapping tuition fees for full time university student.
Now at least we have a slogan that isn’t a lie – The FPC agreed to scrap fees for all HE and FE students on their first courses.
To be fair to the working group their proposal scrapped the fees of far more students than our 2005 policy and three times the cost.
The FPC decided to scrap the fees of all students at four times the cost.
But please let us not fool ourselves with some halicon dream of 2005 policy.
In 2005 we said we’d scrap tuition fees, but in reality it was only for some.
We said we’d give free personal care, but we wouldn’t really.
And all the money raised by the 50p rate was directed at middle class subsidies including lessing the pain of LIT to middle earners.
The party inder Campbell and Clegg has proven to be far more ambitious in its policies – and far more progressive in reality than anything that happened under Kennedy. To be fair to Kennedy, he started this process by setting up the Tax Commission and Meeting the Challenge. But look what we have now.
Pupil Premium
Zero Carbon Britain
Tax cuts as part of the Green Tax Switch
Universal Childcare
Compared to 2005 (which was really only we were against Iraq) I say well done Lib Dems.
MM – Had I been on FPC four years ago I would have voted for all tuition fees to be paid, for part-timers as well.
As for the rest of your points, I am happy for any ways in which the current leadership moves to be more progressive than the previous one.
LL – don’t know if their was a vote or a even a choice 4 years ago.
Worth finding out from someone on the committee in the run up to 2005.
I would say the FPC over the last 4 years has done a good job of examining each part of the 2005 manifesto and ironing out the cracks – democratically, bringing each move to conference one by one, voting and taking on the argument each time.
The Tax Commission and the 50p rate replaced by the Green Tax Swith – based on the principle that the polluter should pay, and the rich sould pay more.
Huhne’s vision for a Zero Carbon Britain based on renewables not nuclear power.
The Health paper, Norman Lamb setting out the £2bn Care Guatantee for the elderly and Patient Contracts for the ill.
David Laws Poverty and Inequality paper which set in place to policy to increase the Universal Child Benefit and the £2.5bn Pupil Premium to boost the education for our most needy children to the funding level of private schools
Norman Baker’s Transport paper which gave us sustainable plans for public transport in the £10bn Future Transport Fund.
Devolution plans in the health paper and Chris Huhne’s Catching Criminals motion – contraversial but approved.
The Green Road to Recovery – energy efficiency, green jobs, new technologies.
At at Spring Conference:
Lower class sizes for primary schools.
universal child care – 20 hours free from 18 months, and shared parental leave.
Free Tuition for all FE and HE students.
Labour has let you down, the Tories are vacuous, the Lib Dems at least have an agenda…….And Vince Cable, And Ming Campbell, and Chris Huhne, and Steve Webb, and David Laws, and Paddy Ashdown, and Charles Kennedy.
Rude health……..