DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?

 

Protests that began over conditions in a Paris high school have grown into nationwide protests about the cost of living, inequality, cuts to public investment and democratic rights, with demands for money to be spent on social welfare rather than the military. But while the protests are about issues familiar to New Zealanders, all is quiet on our city streets.

IN EUROPE protests have erupted in France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere over economic issues that New Zealanders are also well familiar with. They include the rising cost of living, the lack of affordable housing and underfunded social services failing to meet people's needs. They might not be of the enormity of the European Revolutions of 1848, but the demonstrations have shaken the political establishment.

In France the protests grew from a single demonstration over substandard conditions in a Paris high school. And, indeed, at the very centre of the French protests are young people who feel marginalised, condescended to and ground down by seemingly endless austerity cuts. One commentator has written that the French protesters are pushing toward a 'broader political and ideological confrontation' with the centrist establishment. 

But despite being confronted by a similarly unresponsive political establishment in New Zealand, all is quiet on the streets of our main metropolitan cities. The irony is that while folk queue up for food parcels here, what is happening over there in Europe is largely background noise. The connection is not being made. 

US journalist Abby Martin makes the point that workers in European countries like France view the cost-of-living crisis as an aggressive assault by capital and government that demands a militant, extra-parliamentary response. But this is a country with a proud militant tradition that almost turned into a successful revolution in 1968. 

In New Zealand though when workers face the exact same economic crisis, the default position is often to hunker down, budget harder, or quietly pack a bag and book a one-way ticket across the Tasman to Australia. The trans-Tasman migration valve is perhaps our most telling symptom. Instead of staying to organise and fight, the inclination is to exit and seek greener pastures elsewhere. We treat structural decline like the weather—something to endure, circumvent, or migrate away from, rather than something to confront at the barricades.

Of course compounding the problem of political passivity is decades of unthinking loyalty to the Labour Party from our union officials. It has left us with a neutered union movement led by officials whose only justification for continuing to support Labour is that its 'the lesser evil'. And look where that has got us. 

Without militant unions or a vibrant, extra-parliamentary left capable of providing a political voice for working class New Zealanders, the anger and discontent abroad in the community is being shepherded into yet another general election which will change exactly nothing. The opinion polls show that the majority of New Zealanders think they are being conned. Given the absence of real choice at the ballot box perhaps New Zealanders will begin to recognise that democracy does not end at the ballot box, it often begins in the streets.