The love of something, shown in action and not in words: the saving of Friern Barnet Library, and ' A Polite Revolution'

At one point during Tuesday's celebrations for the re-opening of Friern Barnet Library, Mrs Angry was standing in the doorway with community squatter Phoenix, discussing his role as the Mary Poppins of the occupy movement, (a comparison for which he claimed he has forgiven her, but only just) and he reminded her of the first evening of occupation, where, as the sun slid slowly over the rooftops of Broken Barnet, we introduced ourselves, over the  fence by the back door. 

 occupier Phoenix

We were wary of each other at first: but as he explained what he was doing there, and Mrs Angry explained the background to the Barnet insurgency, and the interesting coincidence that the new criminalisation of squatting was promoted by local MP Mike Freer, cordial relations were soon established, and it became clear, as Phoenix put it, that: hello ... the story of this occupation was going to be something altogether different ... 

And so it was, and so it is.

The story of Friern Barnet library continues: now not only the tale of a local community, and the saving of a much loved service; the significance of what has been achieved here is reaching far beyond the boundaries of Broken Barnet and carrying a vital message to every community in the UK, and further still.

A brilliant film is being released today, National Librariesm Day - made by members of the occupy movement, and focused on the events at Friern Barnet Library. It's called 'A Polite Revolution'.

 
A Polite Revolution from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.


This is a fabulous, moving and inspiring film, with contributions by local residents and campaigners, who speak about the impact the occupation of the library has had on their lives, and community, and points to the wider significance of the story, the possibilities of a future where communities take control of their own destinies, not through the faux democracy and empty promises of the Tory localism agenda, but through direct action, and grassroots campaigning.

In the film Noam Chomsky talks about the sense of disenfranchisement that the majority of people now feel from the mainstream political process.  Here in Barnet, local Labour councillors have been directly involved in the library rebellion - this should be an opportunity to re-energise the political opposition, and target new force where it should be focused, in the Town Hall - it is the way in which to engage with the community, as events these last few months have shown. Let's hope the party as a whole can learn from this experience and harness some of this new energy.

Local resident and library campaigner Fiona Brickwood makes some very interesting personal observations in the film: she describes herself as coming from a 'privileged' background, never having been involved before in political protest; she watched with some astonishment as the campaign for the library appeared to move from a peaceful and 'legitimate' protest into something rather different - she compares this to 'like going to war'. 

A fair comparison, because it seems to Mrs Angry that we are in the middle of a war, and a war fought on several fronts. We are seeing the emergence of a new class war, with a newly defined underclass of dispossessed, and yes, disenfranchised citizens, whose lives are being made intolerable through a concerted assault, by a government run by a privileged elite, intent on removing from the less advantaged members of society the most basic requirements of everything fundamental to a decent standard of life. 

Our public services, our health service, our benefit system: all being destroyed and laid open to the predations of the market, while those with immense wealth and unconstrained power and influence exclude themselves from any process of accountability.

As this film observes, the Friern Barnet story represents a microcosm of what is going on around the country. 

The One Barnet programme, which aims to privatise almost all our public services, and turn our borough into 'Barnet Plc', with profit for Capita shareholders taking priority over the duty to support the needs of local residents, is, ironically, a model for local government that central government now rejects, not so much in principle but in terms of scale and scope. That will not prevent the similar model being used to open up the new market possiblities of the dismantling of our NHS, of course, or in any other area of opportunity.

The One Barnet programme has been imposed on the people of this borough by a cabal of Tory councillors, and a handful of senior officers, without the consent of the residents of this borough - that this has taken place without engaging in a process of consultation is now the main argument leading the current Judicial Review of the privatisation. 

The closure and sale of Friern Barnet library demonstrated, as Fiona Brickwood points out in the film, that even when a show of consultation is made, the Tory councillors in Barnet display utter contempt for the opinions of residents, and she speaks of the sense of impotence, injustice and unfairness that residents felt when their views were ignored by their elected representatives.

 campaigner Fiona Brickwood

An overwhelming objection to the closure and continued campaign to defend the library was defied until direct action, the occupation of the building, the creation of the people's library and an extraordinary court case which gave validation to the protest, forced the Tory adminstration into a humiliating retreat.

In the process of the residents' library campaign, what happened was not just the saving of a building, but the creation of a new sense of community, and even, as the film testifies, the renewal of sense of identity on a more personal level for many of those involved, as the contribution of Danielle reveals.

As occupier Leon observes, everyone wants to save a library - a library is 'sacred', a thought echoed by Chomsky, who says the power of such public spaces is not just that they are where people learn, but where they interact. I

It is curious, is it not, to reflect on the totemic place of the public library in the British psyche? It represents something very precious, if indefinable: something we do bit want to lose.

Perhaps the reason is this: our public libraries were established in order to give access to education and information to ordinary people, the working man and woman in search of self improvement. It was part of the undoing of the rigid social barriers which held people in their place, powerless, and without a voice. Now in the twenty first century, in a society where the potential for upward social mobility is becoming harder and harder to maintain, the preservation of a public library still represents the hope of something better, for those who may have nowhere else to look.

In the film Fiona Brickwood refers to the power of shared information. Knowledge is power, and a book is the most dangerous weapon in the world, and a necessary part of class warfare, even in the new battle between our public schoolboy led Coalition government and the dispossessed of Broken Britain. 

Here in Broken Barnet, where all 'sensitive' political information is redacted, thought is a crime, and public discussion of council policy forbidden by our elected representatives, nothing could be more dangerous than a library. 

Friern Barnet library posed a real threat to the 'relentless drive for efficiency', the psychopathology of One Barnet - it might even be said that the closure of Friern Barnet library was a trophy killing: look at us, what we can do, if we only want to ... 

Or so they thought.

One of the residents featured in this film is Alfred, a single parent who came to this country as a refugee from the unspeakable horrors of the Rwandan genocide. In his country, of course, a public library system is being created, as a mark of recovery from barbarism and madness. Here in Broken Britain, once the bastion of civilisation and cultural triumphalism, we are taking an axe to our public library system, and returning our profit driven society to a wasteland of philistinism. 

Residents Alfred and Fred

For Alfred, his local library was a refuge too, a place of safety for his children. 

In the film he and his children sit in the People's Library, watching old footage of traditional warriors back in Rwanda. Perhaps one day children will sit in this library and watch the footage of the fighting  of our urban warriors, men and women of the local community engaged in a very different sort of war. 

Alfred states something obvious, but no less true, and spoken by someone who clearly knows from first hand the value and fragility of the things we all take for granted:  'the love of something - it's not only by words, you have to show actions'. 

If you love something - or someone - fight for it, protect it, reclaim it - or someone, or something, will take it away forever. 

This is the lesson from the occupy movement - direct action is not just for urban warriors and professional activists: it is something everyone can take part in. 

The film moves at one point from a group declaration taken on the steps of St Paul's to the declaration made at the recent takeover of the committee of Barnet councillors about to approve the Capita contract: it finishes with residents, middle class, middle aged and older, protesting about a local hospital about to lose vital services - and calling for an occupation. It is an extraordinarily significant moment. 

And the war moves on, now, from the library to One Barnet, and to the NHS, and beyond: time to sign up, maybe. Your country needs you.

The message of this film, and the story of the People's Library is this: you are not powerless.

You can do something to change the world you live in.

You may not reach the immediate goal you set out to achieve, but in the process, you will find something perhaps more important - a new  sense of who you are, and what you are, and where you live: your community, and your life. 

Not just by words, then, but by actions. 

Fight for it.

Mrs Angry went to Manchester: Part Two, Rebuilding Britain, and a load of Balls

 


So ... Mrs Angry left the fragrant foyer of the Radisson hotel, on Sunday afternoon, and made her way through the Manchester drizzle to the conference centre entrance just yards away, outside which she was to meet fellow blogger Citizen Barnet at a lobby against NHS cuts. 

This demonstration was a rare intrusion into the life of the conference, as it turned out, by any live, unorchestrated expression of dissent, or protest. Not to denigrate the powerful testimonies of some of the speakers, for example, during the NHS debate, but still one could not help wonder if the real heart of the Labour movement and even, sshhh, a whiff of socialist fervour (are we still allowed to mention that, in the conference hall?) was waiting outside the high security gates of the compound.

 

That there was a lobby was about the NHS 'reforms' was no surprise, but it gave an indication of the rapidly rising strength of fury and fear emerging from all over the country and from all parts of the political spectrum over the future of our healthcare system.

Mrs Angry and Citizen Barnet joined other Barnet folk in the rather nice Waterhouse pub near the fabulous Town Hall, designed by the architect of that name. The contingent from Barnet was large: five councillors and various party activists, and we had an entertaining time in Manchester, didn't we?

 
 Citizen Barnet, outside t'Town Hall

By Monday morning Mrs Angry acknowledged that she could no longer avoid the inevitable, and was obliged to go and see what was happening behind the closed gates of the conference itself. 

The theme for the beginning of the conference was 'Rebuilding Britain', because of course Britain is broken, and not just Broken Barnet. How we are going to rebuild everything was explained: by the magic powers given to us by Danny Boyle, see, and thank you very much. But that was later, Mrs Angry: spoilers.

Watched some of the 'Britain in the World' debate, some good speeches from Jim Murphy, and Doug Alexander, who referred to the Tories as 'unreconciled to the modern world', a thought that certainly resonates here in Broken Barnet, where time stood still thirty years ago. Having said that, sitting at the end of the row of seats was a very odd looking woman who looked as if she was a ghostly relic of the 1930s: wearing a sharply cut vintage suit, with pill box hat and accessories, her hair in a French bun. Perhaps she was waiting for the Clement Attlee moment in Ed's speech.

Largely, it was apparent that most of the debates at these events consist of the converted preaching to the converted, and all very well, but heavily engineered to fit a template, the chosen themes. What was alarming was the predominence of the aspirational young men in suits, and the lack of minority representation. There were also always empty seats in the hall. The conclusion may inevitably be that the party is not reaching out to the widest sectors of its natural membership - or perhaps few can afford to attend, or even want to attend, this staged event, full as it is of too many aspiring career politicians and would be spin merchants, rather than party activists. Hello, Mrs Angry, you are in danger of sounding like Nadine Dorries: stop there.

One speaker proved the exception to this rule, anyway: here was an old school Labour voice, using the terms sisters, brothers: comrades. Len McCluskey, from Unite, urged the shadow Cabinet to come out of the shadows, to be louder, clearer, to fight harder ... and everyone appplauded politely,  and relegated him in their minds to the shadowlands of history. Union politics, old school, are not sexy. They smell of fags, and beer, and sandwiches, and the lost world of industry and manual labour. They are not sufficiently virtual, and abstract.

Ed Balls next. Mrs Angry took an unreasonable dislike to him, and his speech, and so let's move on, shall we? Except to say that his excited announcement that Labour would be co opting the services of the man responsible for organising the Olympics' infrastructure was a warning of what was to come. Yep: jumping on the Olympic bandwagon, kidnapping Danny Boyle & holding him in the tightest embrace, within an inch of his life: that was the way things were going. Mrs Angry sighed.



Balls.

One morning in the conference hall had already proved too long: Mrs A decided to bunk off, and slipped away (oh, ok, via Harvey Nicks, yes) - to the Peoples' History Museum.

This was a terrific place, really: you must go. Try not to be worried by the exhibition extolling the virtues of temperance - a habit that appeared to be largely disregarded in Manchester last week - the permanent display is packed full with interesting artefacts: the earliest miners' union banner, suffragette material, relics of the Chartist era - and Peterloo. 

In the foyer of the museum, as Mrs Angry arrived, there was, rather to her dismay, some sort of reception of Labour party officials, yes, all in suits, a load of young ex public schoolboys hanging around awkwardly, trying to find some sort of right to identify with the theme of the collection around them. Clearly, it was a struggle, surrounded by the ephemera and memorabilia of the Labour movement, before there was a Labour movement.

One can only wonder if, in a hundred years time, our great grandchildren will come to the museum, and gaze in wonder at some spad's i pad, or a menu from a corporate sponsored fund raising political event at the Midland Hotel. Not quite the same, is it? 

The people's history is no longer the history of the Labour Party: and here seems to be the problem - a party which sprang from the struggle of the working classes has been hi jacked or at least its leadership has been, by the middle classes, and the upper middle classes at that. Of course you cannot change the course of history, or stop a movement from evolving as it will, and no doubt the party would never have been elected if it had not embraced the culture of the bourgeoisie, but look around this museum, at the banners, and the posters, and all the fading mementoes of our earlier beginnings, and if you tell me we have not lost something very precious in the process, well: I cannot agree with you.

Two nations: how the poor subsidise the rich in Broken Barnet

Barnet Tories take a library away from the children of Friern Barnet, to pay for one in Hampstead Garden Suburb

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."

Samuel Johnson

Well, that is certainly true, if not quite in the way he meant it, here in Broken Barnet.

There is, it must be said, a wide range of controversial schemes which the fat headed Tory councillors of Barnet might propose to implement in this borough, and which would be met with almost complete apathy or indifference on the part of the majority of residents.

Shut childrens centres, leisure facililties, youth centres: if they don't directly affect the middle class voters, nothing much will happen.

There are, however, certain issues which will always provoke a reaction of fury and outrage: to mess with these sensitive matters is a very foolish thing to do. One of these is the issue of parking - oh dear ... and the other ... is the subject of libraries.

It is a brave or foolish political administration which dares to declare its intention to cut library services in this borough.

Such a proposal is an instant incitement to rebellion by the petit bourgeoisie of Broken Barnet.

Since such proposals were made here last year, councillors have been overwhelmed by the level of protest from residents of all backgrounds, but most significantly from people who probably have not set foot in a library since they were children, but deeply object to what they see as a threat to a traditional service, and a mainstay of our culture, the institution of the public library.

And there is nothing wrong with people who are not reliant on the local library fighting for a service which benefits others: in a decent society the more advantaged citizen should be doing exactly that, because, as it has been shown in this case, those who do rely on public libraries have no voice when it comes to consultation by the local council.

Last year's proposals, by our culture averse Tory council, to make reductions in library provision were met with unprecedented hostility by local residents, and inspired the formation of a number of campaigns directed at protecting libraries threatened with closure.

The Tory councillors, in fact, were more than a little unnerved by the extent of the reaction to the closures, and responded by appearing to support the possibility of Friern Barnet and Hampstead Garden Suburb libraries being given over, Big Society style, to local community groups.

At the same time, the anger over the decision to axe funding to our two local museums, Church Farmhouse Museum, and the Barnet Museum, was met with a similar promise to help local bodies take control of their management.

All of this, of course, was a load of balls.

If you take a look at the report going to Monday night's Cabinet meeting, you will see that, as Mrs Angry predicted, the campaign to save Friern Barnet library has been completely rejected, and yet the council has welcomed the efforts of the highly influential Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents Association to provide some alternative service arrangement. Why is this?

There was never any intention or will on the part of the Tory leadership of this council to enable local community groups to maintain a library or museums in any council owned property - and the reason for this is perfectly clear.

The opportunity offered by the development potential of all the buildings which are owned by the authority are the only real considerations that matter.

As we know, Church Farmhouse Museum is shut, the historic building boarded up, the public gardens up for 'disposal' and the house up for sale.

The only reason Barnet Museum does not already have the estate agent board outside yet is because the authority is still trying to prove legal ownership, and in the meanwhile is distracting the voluntary body which runs the place with verbal promises of their good intentions, and the vague offer of a short lease - with an incrementally commercial level of rent. The council knows that this is a condition which the society cannot accept, and for good reasons: the promises of external funding from various concerns which have been negotiated, with great effort, by the volunteers is dependent on a long term lease and security of tenure, and to extort a commercial rent from a local society is completely unfair.

You might wonder why the council is so keen to offer Saracens rugby club, whose owner Nigel Wray lives in Totteridge, a peppercorn rent, and such advantageous conditions, for the use of a council owned local amenity, Copthall Stadium, yet refuse to show any support for the only remaining museum, a modest small scale venture that happens to be housed in a council owned property.

As for the libraries: Friern Barnet library is an attractive building and situated in an interesting area.

Although a largely Labour supporting district, and not particularly affluent, it is opposite the upmarket development of Princess Park Manor, in the former Colney Hatch Asylum, owned, incidentally, by the Comer brothers, who are also the landlords of the council's offices at North London Business Park.

Local Labour councillors, and GLA Labour candidate Andrew Dismore, have been prominent in supporting the campaign to try to save Friern Barnet library.

There are also a couple of local Tory councillors who have been involved, you may be surprised to hear. I mean Cllr Brian Salinger, and his wife Cllr Kate Salinger: two dissident Tories who are the only group members ever to express amy real criticism of the lunatic policies of the One Barnet agenda. Obviously the Tory leadership does not give a damn about their opinions on this issue. Much more important to support the Garden suburb councillors like Andrew Harper, and John Marshall, who have had a rough time over the last year from their normally complacent constituents over the parking fiasco.

The fate of Friern Barnet library, despite the impassioned campaign run by local residents, was never in any doubt.

Look at what the report has to say about the two community based proposals it has had to pretend to consider:

Save Friern Barnet Library Group

9.10 The group’s proposal, whilst showing evidence of local support, advocates what amounts to a continuation of the existing service with volunteer support. The cost of the project to the council in year one must, then, be assessed as requiring the full council budgetary exposure of £124,351.88 (from 2009/10 out turn), plus the lost opportunity cost of the building’s market rental of between £18,500 and £37,000 per annum (dependent on use, new valuation to be commissioned).

9.11 The recommended action is, therefore, to confirm that the existing library will cease
operation on 31/3/12 and preparatory work undertaken to transfer the service into the new Landmark Library to be created in the Arts Depot in North Finchley.

Hampstead Garden Suburb Library?

Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents Association

9.8 This proposal, as currently constituted, does not deliver the necessary savings. However, it does come from an established group with a membership of over 2,000 local people and provides a basis for a sustainable long term community based service. The council has met with the group and is optimistic that a formalagreement can be reached which is affordable. As part of this agreement the council will continue to pay rent and business rates on the building as this is an on-going cost in any event until such time as a break clause can be negotiated.

9.9 The recommendation is to continue dialogue with this group, giving their proposal preferred status, with the aims of reducing the proposal’s reliance on the council’s infrastructure and funding. The council will support the group to apply for additional grants from other sources. If this is successful, the council will seek to establish a formal agreement between with the group so they can proceed to the operation of a transitional library service in the Hampstead Garden Suburb area by 1/4/12.

So: the council rejects the proposal from the Friern Barnet group, in curt and dismissive terms, noting the costs and loss of an imaginary rental figure, yet the Suburb proposal, which we are told 'does not deliver the necessary savings' is welcomed, even though the council must continue to pay the rent and business rents, and there is only the vague expression of hope of 'reducing the proposal's reliance on the council's infrastructure and funding' ...

In other words, the disdvantaged, Labour voting residents of Friern Barnet are being told to lose their much needed local library in order to subsidise the hugely wealthy residents of Hampstead Garden Suburb, who, of all people in Barnet, are least in need of a public library.

Mrs Angry is not in favour of closing any library, but the truth is that of all the branches in Barnet which ought to be first up for the chop, by the logic of our Tory councillors, and their oft stated committment to 'a relentless drive for efficiency', it is the one in Hampstead Garden Suburb.

A story in the Ham & High last year gives you an idea of the sort of pressure the local councillors were under to keep this library open, however, claiming:

"Magistrates, school teachers and local councillors could all serve behind the counter as voluntary librarians in a bid to save the Suburb library from closure".

Looking forward to seeing Councillor Harper behind the counter, serving the ladies of Garden Suburb, aren't you? (Not sure there is room, actually).

Mrs Angry has worked in this frankly ridiculous place, a long time ago. It is tiny, and housed in a former shop in an area accommodating some of the wealthiest residents not just of Barnet, or indeed the UK, but the world.

In this area, for example, we have The Bishops Avenue and Winnington Road, each lined with the most ghastly looking monstrosities - enormous modern day mansions, many owned by foreign royal families, dodgy businessmen and absentee dictators like the Gaddafi family.

The less overtly prosperous roads, including a large number originally built as part of a philanthropic scheme to provide decent housing for the 'artisan' worker, are immensely desirable properties affordable only by the very wealthy. There are, I would say with some confidence, very few disadvantaged families living in this ward. And of course it is a Tory ward.

Question: Do the people of Hampstead Garden Suburb really need their toytown library more than the children of the Friern Barnet area need theirs?

Answer: No.

Question: Is this a shameless act of politically driven decision making, and another example of the absolute hypocrisy of our Tory council?

Answer: Yes.

Here, citizens, right here, you see the true face of Broken Barnet, where the poor subsidise the rich - and all in the name of the Big Society.

Mrs Angry is going out for a long walk.

Class War with Mrs Angry

That photograph of Charles and Camilla was everywhere yesterday, wasn't it?

At first, Mrs Angry was very annoyed at the amount of attention that was being given to the incident, when the really significant issue, the nationwide sense of outrage over the tution fees hike, was in danger of being overlooked. It seemed grossly irritating that a moment's slip in the security arrangements for a pair of over priviliged members of the royal family should be considered more important than the devastating economic impact on every ordinary family in this country.

But then I became interested in the photo itself, and what it had to say about the state in which we now find ourselves.

What the tabloids described as a look of fear on the royal faces looks more like anger to me: outrage, even, as outside the car, rioters, completely out of control, are lunging at the royal couple, baying for their blood, screaming 'Off with their heads' ... just extraordinary. This wasn't a scene from revolutionary France, the flight of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette from the mob of Paris: this was a pair of slightly bored sixty somethings off to the Palladium, to sit through the undeniable reign of terror that is our annual Royal Variety Show. Funnily enough, the route along Oxford Street was once the road that all condemned prisoners took to their place of execution at Tyburn, now Marble Arch; but of course, on this occasion, Charles and Camilla were heading in the opposite direction. These days, anyway, we don't punish our royalty by chopping off their heads; we make them sit through a performance of N-Dubz and Susan Boyle, and serve them right.

Now please don't misunderstand: I don't have any particular animosity towards the Royal Family.Not all of them, anyway. Like most people, I think the Queen is a dutiful, conscientious woman, and the rest of them : well, I really would prefer that they weren't indulged at the expense of the rest of us. As it happens, me being a champagne socialist, I er, ahem, have been to Buckingham Palace, once - and this will make you laugh - as the escort of someone representing the London Borough of Barnet, at one of those garden parties. Don't panic, Mr Walkley: I did behave myself. More or less.

Attending one of these events is a highly surreal experience, rather like being Alice in Wonderland: guests are ushered through the rather tatty looking palace - faded velvet curtains and yellow nets, very shabby genteel - by bad tempered courtiers in top hats brandishing umbrellas which they use to poke the visitors into line, (really) whilst shouting at the guests 'Take your hat off! Keep moving!' - and watching your every move, in case you leg it up the stairs, like the mob at Versailles, or pinch a Canaletto. You are then unceremonially prodded into the palace gardens, which you discover look rather like a badly maintained public park, Broken Barnet style - (although without the usual number of chavs sitting on the benches, spitting, and shouting at their pitbulls).

You wander about aimlessly eyeing up the other women's hats, and all the members of the armed forces in full dress uniform - and trying to avoid the Brian Coleman look alike mayors strutting around with all their municipal bling, (the only occasion, please note, Brian, when such excess is appropriate). You snigger at that woman from Emmerdale trying to walk on soggy grass in her spikey Louboutins. Suddenly, the doors open and the Queen and royal party are standing before you. Everything is still. The royal standard is flying in the clear blue skies above above the palace, a military band starts playing the National Anthem, and even Mrs Angry is momentarily, just a teeny weeny bit awestruck.

Well, actually, she is thinking to herself: ' F*ck me, I'm standing on the lawn at Buckingham Palace, staring at the Queen. And not laughing ... '

HM then descends to walk long the lines of guests. This takes ages. Your mind wanders. When she approaches, you have forgotten where you are and why: who is that little woman, and why is her face so familiar? Ah, yes - on the stamps. She smiles politely at you: you smile politely at her, she moves on. No, I didn't curtsey.

The experience was interesting, if only for one thing: a reminder that our society is still deeply rooted in the past, and one that is still strictly defined by divisions of class and wealth. While we had a Labour government, we may have fooled ourselves that we were moving towards a more equal society - if anyone really believed that the Labour government represented anyone other than a self interested group of opportunists lining their own pockets. Since the election, though, we have been thrown back right over the royal garden wall to where we feel more familiar: poking our heads through the iron gates of the palace, and gawping at the toffs.

And what an Eton Mess they are making of things, aren't they, Posh Boy and his public school chums? From our point of view, of course, not theirs. Of course they don't care about hiking up tuition fees. What's the fuss about - a few thousand quid? One of Samantha's handbags probably costs more than the new fees for one term of university education.

The children of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne will never have to worry for one moment about the cost of their education: Mummy, Daddy, or the family trust fund set up by their grand parents, will take care of that. Of course we are supposed to be comforted by the thought that students from poor backgrounds, you know, from up north and all that, whose parents still keep coal in the bath, and have an outside toilet, may qualify for an exemption for fees. The fact that most will now not even consider the option of further education because of the prospect of the burden of debt for the rest of their working lives is probably all for the best, isn't it? It would only lead them to expect something better than life in one of those dreadful sink estate ghettoes where they should stay safely excluded from the middle classes. No, not social engineering: think of it as an extreme form of kettling, maybe?

And ah, yes, the middle classes ... when politicians like Cameron and Clegg talk about the middle classes, they really mean, or want to pretend to mean, people like them, because they really don't want to admit to belonging to an upper class. They dress down in jeans, and open necked shirts from Boden, and think that we will be fooled. We're not, and we know that most middle class people do not, unlike them, have inherited wealth, or fabulously well paid jobs. They define themselves as middle class probably on the basis of education, or having a mortgage. Most significantly of all, they are the section of the electorate that the Tories must reclaim at every election if they are to return to power. This section of the electorate also represents the families who are going to be kicked in the teeth by the burden of debt that will accrue as a result of the tuition fee increase. Not rich enough to pay their childrens' fees for them, not poor enough to qualify for exemption. And their children, the ones in sixth form now, who are going to be the first students to be walloped by this scandalous fee hike. When the next election comes, these kids are going to be eligible for the first time to vote: that's going to be interesting, isn't it?

No middle class student is now going to vote Conservative. Oh, and how could I forget: sorry, it's hard to type without laughing at the thought of anyone ever again voting for the Libdems, let alone any students.

It's curious, isn't it, how little we have heard from our three Tory MPs and our three Libdem councillors, here in Barnet, on the subject of tuition fees? None of our MPs have any children, of course, so they have absolutely no understanding of the economic realities affecting most of their constituents, and probably care even less. Our Libdem councillors: hmm - has anyone asked them for their thoughts? No? I suppose Mr - sorry -new Lord Palmer is very busy being fitted for his ermine robes (unless Susette is knitting him some).

It's easy to criticise the idiotic incidents of violence in the recent protests. Cameron and his colleagues are no doubt delighted to have something to distract us all from the important issue, the vote itself. We should not lose focus of the fact that these were isolated acts, and that the vast majority of those taking part were there to excercise their democratic right to express the anger they feel, and the sense of betrayal.

During the Newsnight coverage of the vote and the demonstrations on Thursday, a reporter made the point that we were watching an unprecedented form of uprising, a national rebellion, that was fuelled not so much by students as by sixthformers - schoolchildren. In this borough we have already seen our own homegrown sixthform protest. Local MP Mike Freer and other Tories criticised this demonstration. This is predictable, of course: there is a huge gulf now between the political system of representation and the people it is supposed to serve. Whether it is nationally, in parliament, or locally, here in Barnet, until the politicians start to take notice of public opinion, this gulf will become unbroachable, and violent protest will increase to an unsustainable point.

It's often said that we've never had a revolution in this country because our class system has traditionally allowed for social mobility and such flexibility has defused the potential for any uprising. I'm not so sure. I think that the social effects of this Coalition government are going to be so profound that it will imprison people within new constraints of poverty, and the frustration that they will feel is going to find an outlet in more and more extreme acts of protest.

See that look on Camilla's face? That expression of outrage at the intrusion of mob rule is one of those defining moments of history. It's going to be an iconic image of these times: the day we redefined the meaning of class war.