The Young Fabians Blog

In Britain we don’t really like children and teenagers. Just think about it – children and teenagers get a bad press. The media love to call them ‘yobs’, ‘thugs’ and ‘feral’. It wouldn’t be acceptable for mosquitos (a device that emits a high-pitched piercing sound that can’t be heard beyond the age of 25) to be used against any other section of the population to keep them away from a public place. The latest invention is a pink light that shows up acne to embarrass teenagers into vacating public areas. In short, children and teenagers are, more often than not, treated as a nuisance by society, or portrayed as something to be scared of. Yet when we think about equality we usually forget to talk about how young people are treated.

I recently told a friend that I was running a consultation event to gather young people’s opinions on things that affect them. He laughed and said “do they just grunt?”. I retorted a little defensively “If they did just grunt I would be doing a very bad job at facilitation”. The reality is so different to his perception. The young people I’m in contact with through my work have really good, practical ideas. They’re straight to the point, quick-thinking and solution-focused. They’re creative and they remind you about important, obvious things that adults have forgotten. They’re not interested in things being slick, instead they want to know whether you really care. And they’re willing to work with you even when things aren’t perfect. Most of all they bring enthusiasm, humour and energy.

The group of young people I’m talking about don’t come from easy backgrounds. They’ve got a dad in prison, or a mum they’ve been taken away from, or a dad who is heroin addict, or a family who have lived with domestic violence. And yet they show incredible resilience. We have to listen to children and teenagers and respect them, not only because they’re the future but because they are the here and now, because they’re equal citizens even though they can’t vote, and because they have so much to contribute, if only we would let them.

Christine Quigley is a Young Fabian member. She is Chair of London Young Labour and sits on the Compass Youth Organising Committee. In this guest post, she argues that Labour needs to work harder to properly reflect the people it represents.

Being young and interested in politics often puts you at a disadvantage. Older party members can sometimes totally fail to take you seriously, thinking that since you didn’t live through the dark days 1980s opposition, that you couldn’t possibly have an opinion worth holding. Your apolitical friends are likely to regard your political activities as a slightly suspect and murky habit. It’s difficult for many young people to walk into their first CLP meetings, often knowing nobody and out of the loop on internal politics. It’s one of the reasons for the existence of organisations like the Young Fabians and Young Labour, which provide a space where young activists can meet other like-minded people and receive support to develop their political activities.

What we don’t think about enough is the question of intersectionality, or multiple disadvantage. It’s hard enough to get involved in politics sometimes as a young, white, middle-class man – what about people who are young and black? Or young and a woman? Or young and with a disability?

Within the youth movement, we’ve been working hard to make our activities more inclusive. From the end of this year, the London Young Labour executive will be 50% female, after voting to introduce quotas at last year’s AGM. Our Liberation Evening last month brought together the women’s, LGBT, black and minority ethnic and disabilities caucuses together to discuss how we reach out to young people in these groups, who remain underrepresented in political organisations, as in many facets of public life. And we’re trying to make sure that the events and activities we run are as inclusive as possible; holding more social events in venues other than pubs makes it easier for Muslim colleagues (and under-18s) to get involved, while following guidance on venue accessibility allows young people with disabilities to come along to events they might otherwise be prevented from participating in.

But it’s not enough to try to encourage young people from minority groups already inside the Labour movement to get more involved. We need to be reaching out to the huge numbers of young people who mobilise, organise and campaign on issues without ever considering themselves party political. Taking our activities out of Westminster and into local youth groups, schools and universities and community organisations is the only way that we can encourage more people from different backgrounds into the Labour Party. Compass Youth’s recent Creative Campaigns Camp in East London is a case in point – it brought together young people of all backgrounds to talk about youth unemployment, engaging people who with direct experience of unemployment as well as those campaigining to end it.

Let’s face it – the current Labour front bench doesn’t look like the rest of the country. It’s up to us as younger people to ensure that it becomes more reflective of the diverse, vibrant, multicultural society that is Britain. Our party needs representatives who are women, who are working-class, who are BME and LGBT and disabled, because we need people in power with direct experience of disadvantage fighting for our rights.