Agh! I can't believe I couldn't be arsed to turn up.
I wasn't even doing anything.

Who did the pictures, was it George? They're fucking good.

And er.. nice to see Cambridge on Indymedia. A pleasant surprise.

What do a load of ivory-tower berks know about France, apart from memories of their jolly hols with Mummy and Daddy?

Look mate, I was born middle class, I didn't ask to be middle class. Now ok in theory I could have made the decision not to do A Levels, not to go to university, to get a shit job with shit pay and fuck all prospects... I could have made a deliberate point of cultivating a habit of dropping my H's and T's, and refusing to talk to other middle class people lest they infect my brain with evil middle class-ness. I could have rented a dingy council flat and er... "watched roaches climb the wall" (which incidenatlly have wood chip on them), and then maybe I'd be able to "live like common people".

Then maybe I'd be like you.

But if you were born into a relatively privaleged background don't tell me that's what you'd do. Don't tell me that because you'll be wasting your time because I won't believe you and no one else will believe you, not even yourself.

You're just jealous, face it.

Someone wrote that on a recent post that I'd written, that criticised a business person who is unfairly exploiting his employees. And this bloke wrote back saying that I was just jealous. Well NO I WASN'T - I was making a point about exploitation.

But this is completely different.

There's a reasonably large contingent on indymedia.org.uk of middle class bashers. And it's always the same - we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't:

If we don't give a shit about social justice then we're evil. If we do give a shit then we're a bunch of out of touch over-privalaged students / hippies / champagne socialists.

Honestly, sometimes, I think people like you would prefer it if we were out there marching *in favour* of Le Pen.

And no we don't sit around in Ivory towers all day. We only have 8 week terms and some people get up to all kinds of worthwhile and horizon-broadening things in the holidays. The anti-Len Pen protesters include people who have recently been in Palestine as part of the International Solidarity Movement.

--

If someone's born middle class then they can't help that and it's entirely unreasonable to expect them to try and become working class because a) how would that help and b) I don't believe for a second that that's what you'd do - therfore it would be a hypocritical demand.

Therefore, it's wrong to criticise people just for being middle class.

Sure weon't know all there is to know about France. But we know that we don't like Fascism and racism and so why not protest against Le Pen.

--

And for your information, the students who organised the protest are actually french (less than 80% of students here are english). Other students joined in out of solidarity.
Solidarity is something our movement believes in.

--

This university is about giving the best possible education to anyone who's good enough to successfully do the courses. There are more middle class people here than working class people but that's largely because working class people don't want to come here because they think they're be surrounded by evil middle class people - which is a self fulfilling prophecy. It's also partly because working class people more often go to crap schools because they can't afford public school fees and they can't afford to live in areas where there are good state schools and therefore they don't have the required standard of education to be able to cope at cambridge (this is only a generalisation but it's broadly true). It's also because working class parents (not always but often) don't have a culture of encouraging their children to do well at school or encouraging them to go to university.

--

If you could afford it, would you not take your kids on holiday in france, out of principle?

If you won the lottery, would you give it all to charity?

Don't give me your anti-cambridge bullshit. It's the politics of hate and resentment, which has no place within the anticapitalist movement.

I'm fucking tired of people slagging off middle class activists. Would you rather we just got on with being posh? Or would you rather we were all exterminated? Is that the first thing you'd do after your revolution - kill all the middle class people. Society would collapse without middle class skills and knowledge. If you killed us all you'd have no doctors, no teachers, no engineers, no scientists and er.. fuck this I've got to go and revise.

1 Rob Newman
2 David Baddiel
3 most of Monty Python
4 Howard Marks (oxford, not cambridge)
5 Steven Fry and Hugh Lawry
6 Sacha Barron Cohen (Ali G)
7 many others

George Monbiot
Paul Foot
Naomi Klein

Middle class people who get involved in our politics are a real embarrassment to themselves and us. They should be told to sod off back to the bridge club or Womens Institute or wherever it is they make their home made jam for the third world. Liberal dickheads.

although I severely dislike the middle classes I must admit
some of my best friends are a bit plumy
But that unless a Pol Pot is resurrected and gets to work in the UK we are stuck with them.

What I really object to is the so called professional classes, Pol Pot Could have worked wonders here. starting with Lawyers, Barristers, Architects, most doctors, especially the top dogs of the profession. Teachers are also another bunch who help to maintain the status quo, most of what is taught in schools is total shite, history for example.
We built our own houses for thousands of years and they were OK, architects are surplus to requirement ...
most of modern medicine is designed too benefit nazis like bayer chiron ect. If we didn't eat so much junk food and breathe in fuck knows what in the way of pollution, we would all be a lot healthier. system makes you sick ???

I think it would be better to eliminate the professional classes, not just anyone with a posh accent ..

Well I'm glad you're happy to kill off the french teachers (bastard middle-class puppets of the state) doctors (how about nurses too?) and lawyers (like the ones on mayday bust-cards), but maybe you should try to forget some of your prejudices.

Sure working class people don't get to Cambridge, largely due to snobbery within its fellows, however:

- it's still state education
- not all of us have trust funds
- we're students, we haven't decided what to do with our lives. If we all go and work for andersen consulting then we're a bunch of hypocritical bastards

You can't blame someone for who their parents are or where they grew up. You can't abdicate an accent and you can't decide which people are allowed a conscience. fucking grow up

I'll say it again - as members of the middle class, we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't.

If we don't give a shit about exploitation then we're selfish wankers. If we do give a shit and want to help make the world a fairer more sustainable place then we're condemned for that too, just because we're middle class.

And no, I don't think the "fellows" (=professors, not all male either!) are snobbish. Working class people are a minority here because they didn't get the opportunity to have such a good secondary education because they can't afford private school fees or house prices in areas close to good state schools so it's less likely that they're up to the standard needed to cope with a difficult degree courses... AND because of their own reverse snobbery "urgh I wouldn't go to cambridge its full of middle class tossers" which is self fulfilling prophecy. We actually have positive discrimination here, as far as I'm aware. If you come from a less privalaged background you don't need such good grades to get in. But you still need good grades because you've got to show that you're hardworking, intelligent and have the necessary background knowledge to begin your course.

As for George Monbiot and Naomi Klein (and John Pilger and Chomsky and Noreena Hertz and Gregory Palast) they are a vital part of the movement because they're basically the only people in the mainstream media who uncover and communicate scandalous truths about what's going on in the world, that other journalists don't dare to touch. How the ***************FUCKING**************** (repeat **FUCKING**) hell can that be a bad thing?

George Monbiot has done brilliant work exposing GATS and the Private Finance Initiative and the corporate corruption at the rotten heart of our neoliberal puppet government.

John Pilger has made vital contributions by (for example) exposing the scandalous effects of the economic sanctions against Iraq (and the fact that we are still bombing iraq, including the bombing of innocent shepherds, their families and their friends).

Naomi Klein has done likewise through her exposure of the horrors of sweatshop labour at the hands of the Nike, Gap, Adidas and so on throughout the majority world.

These are all good people.

Just because they're not "from the street"... Just because they don't labour all their lives subserviently to make a pittance for themselves and a hefty buck for their capitalist masters... it doesn't mean that they're not doing a good job. They are a valuable part of the movement.

I can understand why working class people might instinctively want to hate all middle class people (although most don't), just as I can understand why some black people hate all white people, and why some Palestinians hate all Israelis. But hate and blind prejucide are not the answer.

And what's all this about liberals? What do you mean by liberal? I thought a liberal was someone who thinks drugs should be legalised and who thinks gay people should be allowed to get married and who are against authoriatarianism and conservativism. That kind of liberalism is surely a good thing, although there should be other aspects to one's politics in addition to those things.


I know that some people use the term to mean someone whose politics is well intended but watered down. There are people out there, many of them journalists who were pro- the war in kosovo and pro the gulf war and who are pro the "war against terrorism" and who think that george w bush is a tosser but al gore is a reasonable guy, and who think that the wto, imf and world bank are basically alright, and who have only minor problems with tony blair.
But Monbiot et al certainly aren't that kind of "liberal".

Just because they're not communists. (and of course ALL working class people are, oh yes indeed ).

Can't you just dump your prejudices. If someone wants to fight for a fairer and more sustainable world then surely it doesn't matter what they're class background is.

Doesn't the fact that people like Monbiot and people like myself aren't being shafted by The System (at least not like working class people are) but still want to fight for the rights of less fortunate people who *are* being exploited or oppressed... doesn't that make us good people?

This movement is a diverse and broad one. We are stronger if we work in solidarity with eachother rather than slagging eachother off. The System doesn't want us to work in solidarity, it wants us to bicker amongst ourselves as it divides and rules us.

Anarchists, Socialist Workers, Monopolise Resistance, and middle class people with a conscience... all have far more that unites us than divides. The enemy is not eachother, it's The System.

And back on the subject of cambridge, indeed there should be more people from more diverse ranges of backgrounds here. There are infact many students who campaign on this issue and who go to deprived schools and talk to pupils and encourage them to consider to applying. Cambridge isn't about being a bastion of the middle class establishment. OK not everyone can get in, just as not every football playing could get into Manchester United. Yes Cambridge is an elite educational establishment, but only in the same way as the M.U football squad is an elite football establishment (and need I say that the average cambridge graduate is not richer than the average manchester united football player). I didn't come here because I wanted to be a management consultant or an investment banker, I came here because I wouldn't to to acquire academic knowledge. That doesn't have to be an exclusively middle class thing. Academic knowledge is part of human culture, just as is music or film or theatre, or whatever. These things are all things that anyone can get into.


Now go and build yourself a house, mr working-classer-than-thou-i-don't-need-an-architect ;-)

I have a trust fund.
My grandfather gave me 200 pounds when I was born.
And it grew to about 20 thousand pounds by the time I was 18.

Now that is a privalage that I have not because I am part of the ruling class or any such nonsense, but just because I had a kind grandfather.

Most working class people can afford to give their kids that kind of benefit. 200 pounds (it would be a bit more now due to inflation) is fuck all.

Working class people aren't poor. They're consider LESS RICH than middle class people but they're not poor, not by any stretch of the imagination. Check out Calcutta or Mexico City for some real poverty.


Middle class people do get a better start in life, but not all of that is financial. One of the main factors is that middle class people usually have higher aspirations for their kids and they encourage their kids to do their homework, they buy them books and take them to museums, they encourage them to believe in themselves and to aspire to grow up to be something more exciting and dare I say it better paid than a dustman.

Also, something else that I want to say is that while yes exploitation is bad and the exploiters have (usually metaphorical) blood on their hands... but the exploited area not entirely blame free. They are often guilty of letting their employers treat them like that. And if you're going to place your life in the hands of someone you call "boss" then you shouldn't be too surprised when they fuck you up the arse. And as for redundancies, well why should somebody employ you if they don't need you? No one OWES you a job. People should take more responsibility for their own lives. Educate yourself, get some skills and set up a small business (and be nice to your employees!).

I couldn't give a crap for the middle class and neither could anyone I work with. I've had all the advantages of a working class upbringing such as living in the real world with real people who don't have the safety net of their well off families and their well connected friends. As a consequence, I'm self reliant and like almost every other working class person I know, don't want or need interfering middle class liberals descending from on high to tell us what to do. Go away and take your guilty consciences with you. We've had middle class people interfering in our politics for decades and we're no better off for your presence. If that doesn't tell you what a drag on our politics you are, nothing will. You're not damned if you don't. Honestly, believe me. Just don't.

Someone's got to be screwed up if they have to look into the social/financial background of fellow campaigners to check if they're good enough to campaign with them...

Are you suggesting the only people who should be allowed to campaign are those with the least education, the least money, from the most deprived estates?

If so then I'd question if you really give a toss about the campaigns you're involved in.

Looking at the original posting...
It was obviously organised by Cambridge students but why do some people on Indymedia really want to slag off middle-class or students who really give up their time to campaign for Palestinian/Iraqi/Afghan rights, for CND, against police aggression, against the far-right, against the lack of proper democracy in this country...?

OK so I'm a student. I was born in Cambridge and go to uni in Liverpool.
I know the people of Cambridge join forces with the students to campaign in the city. I've been on Reclaim the Streets demos here, which seem mainly to be run by the people of the city and seen CU students take part - I've been to anti-war rallies which are predominantly full of CU students.
So you need to understand that (in this example) Cambridge citizens work with the students. Not all the students are from well-off families and the different areas of Cambridge vary alot on their 'class-orientation'.

And an example of student life in Liverpool.
A lot of students are so hard-up that despite being on full-time courses, will have to go out and work for hours in the evening because they don't have enough money to pay for their rent or their food. Most live packed in to terrace-houses, 7 of us share a kitchen of about 8' by 3'.
In the last couple of months we've had shit covering our house twice from broken pipes, carbon monoxide leaks, wiring burning out, holes appearing in floorboards everywhere

There are people here who think its a crime when people are put in shitty council housing but that its amusing for students who can't afford any better...

And we work with any group with a real commitment to change.
I have problems with the way the SWP works but join with them to oppose the war or the BNP, I work with the trades council, Cuba Solidarity, Palestine Solidarity, PeopleNot Profit

I think you're a dick for slagging off middle-class/students but I guess, in some way, you help out some decent campaigns if you're on Indymedia.

I know all about shit housing in Liverpool. In fact I'm grateful to Liverpool University as our house was demolished to make way for the extension. But, you'll be back home in Cambridge before long so don't lose too much sleep over a year or two of crap lifestyle. The real people have it from day one. And until we bin the middle class it's going to continue. Do you really think we need the middle class on our side? No chance. We're the only revolutionary class because we're the producing class. There's nothing more off putting than sitting in a meeting and listening to some braying middle class muppet telling people what needs to be done as if we can't work it out for ourselves. So, anarchist, socialist, communist or fascist, if you're not working class, piss off.

oh for gods sake.
yeah i'm a student so i live in a shit-hole, why would my home be any nicer when i get back to CAmbridge? it may be a surprise to you but we don't live in 15th century colleges, we live in HOUSES

and why only a couple of years of shit housing?
when i finish i'll have £15,000 of DEBT and my parents can't afford to support me, that's the reality
and i know i'll probably end up with a shit job despite having a degree

yep sorry, thought you were pissed off but trying to be serious. but actually you're one of those people who doesn't want build a movement, you just want to be in opposition permanently, maybe because you don't actually have any answers...
what are you gaining for whatever movement you're part of by arguing and trying to make more enemies?

I don't have any more enemies now than I did when I was born. Namely, the middle class and everything associated with them, including their interference in our lives and politics. Who do you people think you are? The political equivalent of David Livingstone? Go back to your own kind and leave us to sort our own lives out. And by the way, it wasn't me who brought students into the argument. You were the one who equated my hatred for your class with any supposed hatred you imagined I have for students.

We all are the products of the past, regardless of class, race, doctrine or the product of an environment!
The one thing I do agree with is that we are all part of life itself!
We are here, now, and living within a very small and infinitely fine bubble of life that only exists because Earth itself is a small grain of sand in an infinite expanse of time and space! None of us have landed on every shore! But those of us who have had the good fortune to have landed on many, brgin to realise and recognise that humanity does believe in the same thing once the crap has been extracted from the equasion. The problem we all suffer from is recognising whether the crap has a sustainable future!!