{"id":4648,"date":"2015-07-03T15:54:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T14:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=4648"},"modified":"2015-07-03T15:54:48","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T14:54:48","slug":"being-on-the-right-side-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=4648","title":{"rendered":"Being on the right side of history"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paloma Faith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s political warm-up act, Fox News\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u015bbraying jackal\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 and The Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u015bcamera-chasing Guardian goblin\u00e2\u20ac\u0165. Owen Jones provokes many descriptions but for many he is Britain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s leading left-wing commentator.<\/p>\n

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The Guardian<\/em> columnist and author of the highly-acclaimed books Chavs<\/em> and The Establishment <\/em>is more than happy to re-live his university days at Oxford in his old college bar in University College. Having started his writing as deputy news editor of the student newspaper Cherwell<\/em>, he graduated with a BA in History in 2005.<\/p>\n

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We chat over a glass of red wine. He shares with me the woes of living within his overdraft until the age of 27 with the help of daily trips to Ahmed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kebab van and widens the discussion to whether Britain will be able to cope with five years of this government.<\/p>\n

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His passion for change and equality, which is so prevalent in his writing, is clear when he tells me of his thoughts on the fight for a living wage, Oxbridge elitism and social mobility.<\/p>\n

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He is quietly charming and easy-going, making me feel as though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m having a friendly discussion with a fellow student rather than a formal interview with a journalist who has a world-wide reputation and over 310,000 Twitter followers.<\/p>\n

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After debating with me the rivalry between Ahmed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (his favourite) and Hassan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (my favourite) kebab vans and sharing with me how he broke up with someone in 3rd\u00c2\u00a0year on the sofa next to us, he tells how his time at Oxford was \u00e2\u20ac\u015bquite an emotionally intense part of my life, with relationships, breakups, getting drunk, doing silly things, essay all-nighters. You meet friends who in some cases you know for the rest of your life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I always feel quite emotional coming back to Oxford \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s surreal.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Jones has recently written about transgender-rights and transgender-people in which he interviewed three transwomen to talk about their experiences. He was critical of himself for not having provided a platform for this under-represented voice earlier.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI just thought if I am going to be useful I need to write about stuff like this \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to give a platform to voices that otherwise aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t heard properly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really important to me.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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He shares with me his thoughts on Oxford\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s campaign towards a living wage for its staff. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe idea that anyone in work who keeps this university afloat, who the university, students and academic staff depend on to keep it functioning, live on wages that are too low and that have to be subsidised by the tax payer at a great expense is unacceptable. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a basic principle: everyone in work must have a wage they can live on.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bYou want to be on the right side of history. Do you want to be on the side of history where you oppose working people having a wage they can live on? he asks.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Real vindication <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

With Oxford University having become an accredited Living Wage employer in April, Jones responds, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bAll I will say is that the fact the university voted for it is a real vindication of people fighting back; it shows if you protest and campaign you can win.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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I question Jones on his article for LabourList in 2011 on the abolition of Oxbridge. He replies, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bOxbridge is elitist but the point I was making was that we have an unnecessary emphasis on two universities where there are lots of other very good universities.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bMy argument was more that I oppose grammar schools and selection. My problem with Oxbridge is that unless you are social Darwinists who believe that rich people were born more intelligent than poor people, you look at the make-up of students at Oxbridge and think this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t acceptable.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bYou shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t punish people because they went to private schools but I think that Oxbridge should be more representative of ability. If you went to Ashington \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a former mining village with mass unemployment and poverty and you get AABB you have done better than somebody who went to Eton and got AAAA.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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So how would he solve this inequality? \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI would automatically enrol the brightest working class kids so you have a system where maybe at least half of students are enrolled from those backgrounds.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI think this is a good idea because that way you recognise that people start from different places and if you have the odds stacked against you from day one and you still manage to do incredibly well, that shows you have got huge potential and that should be rewarded.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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We discuss how social mobility has declined and Jones assertively states that he has a strong problem with this phrase because it accepts inequality. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bYou just parachute a tiny group of people from a certain background to the people at the top and then you think the job is done.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI want equality; I want to narrow these gaps. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not about getting 5,000 working class kids into certain upper-middle class professions but still having a massively unjust society. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want that \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I want an equal society as best as we can achieve, so I want to break down all the barriers that stop people locking their talent in.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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He also raises issue with unpaid internships, which he is, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bvery passionate about because with the media and lots of other professions, often to get in you have to work for free for months if not longer. Who can afford to do that unless you can live off the bank of mum and dad? I want professions to be cracked open.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Having previously worked as a parliamentary researcher for\u00c2\u00a0Labour MP\u00c2\u00a0John McDonnell and being a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098big name\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 at the moment, I ask Jones on his thoughts on the recent criticism of Oxbridge students dominating the government and media.<\/p>\n

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Privileged backgrounds <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe problem we have in this society is that people from privileged backgrounds dominate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the key problem.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI have never regarded myself as a working class hero. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not. My Dad was a white collar local authority worker and my mum taught IT at Salford University. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a man, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m white, I went to Oxford, I am gay, but I have all these privileges stacked in my favour \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I am always very open and clear about that.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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He continues: \u00e2\u20ac\u015bTake Parliament \u00e2\u20ac\u201c politics has become professionalised. I want more people who have been supermarket workers, care workers, dinner ladies, people who understand what it is like be on the social housing waiting list, people who have not even gone to university.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Jones discusses the role men should play in helping women fight for equal rights, exploring the complexities of this issue.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIn a media dominated by men, men automatically have their voices taken more seriously than women. Men say something in support of women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rights that women say and is ignored and the irony is that I am privileged being a man and people are more likely going to listen to a man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s voice so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite contradictory and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite awkward.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bPeople like me have to be clear about our privileges and about representation of other people and support others voices as best we can without dominating them in a way that often white middle-class men do in society.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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Finally I ask if he thinks Britain will be able to survive another five years of this austerity-driven government.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe NHS will be shredded, the social welfare state will be even more shredded, rich people will have their tax stashed up even more; we will have a society even more skewed in favour of the rich while ordinary people struggle.<\/p>\n

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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bObviously we will survive, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think society will collapse, but the lives of millions of people will be a lot worse and the lives of a tiny elite will be much better. Do we want to live in that society? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

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