Labour wants to stop a lost generation? Here’s five ways they can find us
I feel like a bit of a celebrity. Every few days I appear on the front cover of newspapers (and some of my favourite journalists have written all about me in impassioned comment pieces): I am, you see, young and unemployed.
Whilst it’s still (just) the summer - I graduated in July - there's a feeling amongst school and university leavers that this is just a temporary blip. Young people looking for work are not used to working during the summer in any other context than stacking shelves or serving pints- neither of which are widely considered to be careers for those with degrees to their names. Even those leaving school at sixteen have grown up for eleven years with six-week holidays being a natural reward for the previous year’s drudgery and boredom. It therefore feels nothing short of ordinary that early September is seeing us flicking through the TV and cursing Dave for repeating the same Top Gear episode three times a day.
Yet, through the mutterings of baby boomer politicians, we are starting to confront a rather harrowing prospect: we may soon be ‘lost’. I don’t mind spending most of my twenties in abject poverty but I always thought that would be because I'd be working for a newspaper that knew that, if my parents had any means to aid me doing so, I would quite happily be paying for the privilege. Not being able to buy the next White Stripes album because I’m unable to even get a job I hate is a far more uncomfortable prospect. If it turns out that the rest of my fleeting life is marred because of the actions of some ex-public school, socially-oblivious bankers I might be just a tad furious. Knowing that, the Government are promising that (like a neurotic parent in a supermarket) they will not let my peers and I get ‘lost’. Phew.
Just in case they struggle to come up with a surveillance strategy watertight enough to keep my generation in they’re sights, here is a five point plan that might just make life easier for the class of 2009.
1. Be Honest
The common boasts of parents and teachers who went through University has been that when they graduated they were immediately placed within the top 5% most qualified of the country’s work force. Three years studying was all it took to enter the job market with an advantage. Luckily we no longer have such an exclusive and elitist attitude towards higher education. With over 40% of the population now expected to be given the opportunity of detailed academic enquiry and personal development, however, University is no longer the guarantee of success that it once was. This is obvious.
Yet few of my peers felt the need to take on extra-curricular activities during their university career. Only those of us who wished to get into the world of journalism felt the necessary pressure to take advantage of the non-academic possibilities that having 12 000 young people in one place will give you. If the Government want to raise the levels of higher education amongst young people they will have to stop espousing this idea that a degree means you have ‘made it’. Most of us no it is just a piece of paper that you need to pick up so it would be more effecting (and honest) if Mandelson and co could level with us and say that a degree is merely an essential step in a wider journey towards employment.
The old stereotype of students as living drunk and drug-addled for two-and-a-half years, then ‘cramming’ at the end, is already over for most students who get involved in Student politics, volunteering, media or societies: The hard work of these should become the rule for most students (ensuring opportunities for the poorest students are also available). Now that this is becoming a wide spread expectation it is imperative that the Government tell those entering higher education the truth and helps them take advantage of the available opportunities.
2. Build on ambitions
Though there are many young people who, understandably, don’t know what they want to do and where they want to be, there are also a growing number who are dedicated to a career path that is proving difficult to latch on to in this recession. These are the people who will not normally struggle to find work as they can show the passion and self-gained experience that will always impress employers.
Yet as these people join the dole queues it is they who are being least catered for by the services available. The requirements for Jobseekers’ Allowance are so low that, for those who wish to compete for the most competitive vacancies, there is a lack of higher-level support that can leave ambitious youngsters feeling demoralised by the lack of expectations that others are putting on to their potential.
When I went for my initial interview to start my claim, I told the interviewer of my long standing ambition to be a journalist. She went through the information available to her on this career and asked me about my experience. When it got to ‘networking’, she cut me off before I’d had chance to respond: ‘Of course you won’t have’ she said. The majority of the Guardian’s staff will have received an email from me in the past and many can attest to my considerable powers for irritation, and yet there seemed to be in-built low expectations that meant that since then I have only had my own self-motivation to rely on.
For the government not to lose the most dedicated people of this generation (through lowered expectations, and also probably depression) they must add an extra tier to the support available to job seekers.
3. Have faith
Because I am older than twelve but don’t yet have wrinkles, I am part of a pretty evil cohort of people. Gifted with easy exams, deft with knives and only capable of communicating through facebook, it is frankly surprising that we haven’t been executed for crimes to evolution.
In reality of course I am part of the best educated, most environmentally aware generation in British history. Crime is falling (which during a downturn is stunning), GCSE pass rates are continuing to rise and it is because of pressure put by (mainly) youthful protesters that the UK is at the forefront of the battle to save the planet. We’ve done well so far.
It would therefore be heartening if we could, maybe, get a pat on the back from you oldies every once in a while. Thanks to your generation we have two BNP MEPs and Polar Bears might soon be extinct- we’re already doing a good job to put some of this right. If our achievements aren’t applauded and our value not recognised, however, there is a good chance that the huge potential for further progression will be lost and that my generation feel uninvolved in the social and political processes that will seek to turn this country (and the planet) away from financial and natural disaster.
4. Sell us your ‘vision’
Slightly connected to the last point, Labour needs to do what only Labour knows how to do: give voters a dream. People will only enjoy a Conservative government because it will pander to their lower instincts. Whilst treating national finances like a housewife would treat a family’s bills might sound comforting to people who don’t understand economics, it is both utterly wrong and suggests that a ‘better day’ can be found by reverting back to something simpler and more reactionary. Labour governments have always been able to look forward and, in contrast, have made people see hope in the new and in the different.
If there was ever the time for a Rooseveltian declaration of intent, it is now. Labour can both restore its own power and instil hope in my ‘lost’ generation if it could just be a little more daring. It would take one speech, calling on the young to come together, follow their ideas and offering them a direction and, if it was followed up with two or three daring policies, Gordon Brown could go down as a truly great leader. Imagine if he was going to stand up to the Tories on the need to increase spending during a recession, and proved his point by announcing the creation of ‘green’ institutions for research and a set of subsides for the rail and agricultural industries? It would restart the economy, place Britain at the extreme end of the world’s environmental improvers, and show my generation that our young lives were now purposeful and (perhaps) heroic too. Continuing the slide into cynicism and pandering to the lowest common denominator would be disastrous.
5. A little justice
Had a teenager, holding a cider bottle and smoking a spliff, stolen billions of pounds and plunged us into recession, it’s hard not get the impression that he or she would have received an ASBO or some Community Service... at least. In all likelihood they’d be in prison now and would rightly be given the status as one of the UK’s worst criminals. Because said teenager is, instead, one the many victims of this crime, they will be less likely to receive justice.
Not only should there be a top-to-bottom review of how it is that banks operate, it is also important that for those individuals who’s thoughtlessness caused our unemployment are seen to be sacked and investigated by the police.
In the same way that 9/11, the Rwandan genocide and the Cuban Missile Crisis make the world’s population stand up and declare ‘never again’ we need to use this opportunity to improve the workings of the human race and to ensure that the mistakes that led to such an economic catastrophe are never repeated.
If those now in power want to be remembered fondly in the future it must be earned by you leaving the world a better place than it was when you found it. Otherwise it will be our respect for your generation that will be ‘lost as well.
