Strikes are thankfully much less common as a form of protest in the UK than they used to be.
Growing up in the 1980s, the news was full of striking miners, striking teachers, railway workers and it seemed countless other occupations who all seemed to be in dispute with government for one reason or another. Nowadays, strikes are relatively rare and in many ways this is a relief. Our normal everyday lives are much less disrupted by non-running trains, post that is not collected or delivered and bins that are not emptied. They do happen occasionally though, and the right to withhold labour as a means of raising genuine concerns remains, certainly according to unions, an important part of our democracy.
But what about other occupations? Last month, there was a strike by an unusual section of the population for an unusual reason. Thousands of school children across the country staged a oneday walkout of school in protest against climate change. This unusual demonstration was designed to capture the interest of the nation and raise awareness of the challenges facing their generation over the next 50 years or so regarding global warming, rising sea levels and so on.
As a means of generating publicity, it worked pretty well. Journalists took the airwaves, commentators opined on social media and politicians asked questions in parliament about this student strike. There was much focus on the originator of the action, a 16 year old Swedish political activist, Greta Thunburg, who has been striking every Friday for the past six months.
Her message is a simple one – you are stealing my future. That is, adults, politicians, business people and others who hold power in society, are making decisions which will be catastrophic for today’s children. There is no doubt that the issue of climate change is real and serious. But, is she right? Is striking the best way to address this crisis?
I’m not so sure. Whilst a one-off event such as the one on February 15th did its job by generating publicity, you could argue that the issue became about whether it is right for school pupils to strike rather than climate change itself. Should pupils to voluntarily miss a day’s school, or indeed bunk off as some journalists described it? Is it in fact possible for pupils to strike at all? They aren’t paid to be in school; they aren’t withdrawing a service that has an impact on others. In many ways, the very people who are supposed to be being protected by the strike – the youth of today – are the very ones who are being hurt by it.
As ever, the answer is subtler than that. Whilst I clearly don’t condone skipping school, the impact of one day’s action is arguably sufficiently great to make it a useful signal for protest. However, missing one in five days of school, as Greta is doing, is a sacrifice that I believe is too great. The key way that youngsters can build a case against those responsible for climate change is through education. Learning about the issue of climate change is something they do in their geography lessons; learning how to build an argument and to use language to persuade is something they all learn in English lessons; learning about how society works and the means by which you can change things is covered in citizenship lessons. In a world which does face the realest of challenges, a world which, if we don’t act, may be unrecognisable in 20- or 30-years’ time, the strongest weapon we have to fight with is our education.
As well as a right, education is a privilege and all of us, whether schoolchildren or not, have a responsibility to use it to build a better world.
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