Tuition Fees Protests

So today saw 50,000 students marching through the streets of London at the proposed rise in tuition fees to £6,000 and £9,000. If you were to switch on the news, you'd probably get the impression that this was a mob of rabid students tearing through the capital destroying everything in sight, but thankfully it looks like the majority of the protest was carried out peacefully. The Police sensibly showing restrain for once, but probably underestimating the number of officers needed.

Protesters outside Conservative Party HQ - AP

The breaking into Tory HQ wasn't good, but I was surprised how quickly Aaron Porter (NUS President) and others condemned it. Well not so much surprised - I mean their number one concern is their own reputation, it would seem - but if there had been no word from NUS straight away about the violence, I can't help but feel it would have sent a stronger message to the government. Perhaps a feeling of "crap... this is only going to get worse..." Instead, the 'anarchists' and 'Trotskyites' have been blamed and NUS shuffles off into the corner looking embarrassed at a peaceful protest gone wrong.

I'm certainly no fan of violence and it's a big shame that those on both sides were injured (3 police and 6 protesters, is the latest), but it had happened, and surely it's better to play that to your advantage to shock the government and to get a message across? The breaking of a few windows and desks are a tiny dent in the pocket of the Conservative Party in comparison to the damage of saddling a whole generation of new students with millions of pounds of debt every year...

German University - Seminars Begin!

Today we had our first full and proper politics seminar in TU Darmstadt. The module is taught in English and entitled "Early Visions of Global Governance", which is mostly centred around pre-WWII idealist thought. Naturally, you can't study idealism from this period without focusing heavily on thinkers/theorists in the UK and mentioning the International Politics department at Aberystwyth University.

The seminar today was on (classic) Realism, and the ways in which theorists such as EH Carr dismissed, or argued against, the idealism which came directly before them.

Our reading for the seminar was Carr and Herz - the latter with whom I can't say I was familiar before now - but relatively easy, as I guess you would expect with the only English-language module taught in a German-language political science department.

One thing which I noticed today is the knowledge the students in our class have about the subject. It's not that they don't know what they're talking about - they know a great deal, and doubtless more than me! - but they seem to take a different approach to dealing with the subject than I had done whilst studying IR theories and Realism in Aberystwyth.

We (myself and Abi) have chosen to do our presentation on the Welsh Liberal David Davies (1880-1944, MP for Montgomeryshire 1906-1929) who was an important idealist, an active supporter of the League of Nations, and who funded the creation of the Chair of International Politics in Abersytwyth.


On Thursday, we launch into our seminar on Parties and Party Systems, and Friday we begin Local Politics in Germany. These are two topics I've not really covered before, or at least not since A-level Gov & Pol, and certainly nothing like the EU Politics, 20th Century Propaganda and Studying Hamas modules which I took in Aber over the past year.

But with today's seminar, one thing's for sure: it's certainly nice to be speaking in my native tongue and dealing with subject matter I can understand and have a grounding in!