Blog
A Need For Unity
On Wednesday, I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
I was struck by how a ceremony which would normally be met with thunderous applause and enormous crowds (1.8 million people for President Obama in 2009) was, this year, an extremely quiet and subdued affair due to Covid restrictions.
In the USA, the extraordinary past four years has brought the longest government shutdown in American history, increased racial tensions throughout the country, and a record-breaking two impeachments for the president – including one for accusations of encouraging an armed takeover of the United States Congress. This is without mentioning the twenty-five million cases of Covid and the four hundred thousand tragic deaths from the virus in the US alone; the worst-hit country in the world by far.
We’ve seen conspiracy theorists inciting violence, a refusal to accept the outcome of a democratic election, and – most shockingly of all – the centre of US democracy becoming the site of a terrorist incident, when crowds invaded the building illegally and murdered a police officer. I wondered: where does America go from here? Is it now an irreparably broken country?
I was very interested to hear what President Biden had to say, and wondered what lessons this might hold for those of us on this side of the Atlantic ocean. He spoke about the need for people to treat one another with respect, to ‘join forces, stop the shouting and lower the temperature’. He told us that ‘the forces which divide us are deep and they are real… without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos.’
In our country, too, there is a need for unity. On 16 June 2016, at 12:53pm, the Member of Parliament for Batley and Spen and mother-of-two Jo Cox was about to hold one of her regular meetings with the people who lived in her constituency and wanted to seek the help of their local MP. Before this meeting could begin, a man with links to far-right extremism shot Jo Cox three times and stabbed her fifteen times.
He claimed that he had murdered her because of his political beliefs, in the midst of the Brexit referendum campaign. This sent shockwaves throughout the country, and opened our eyes to how much division and hatred has seeped into our society and our politics – into what should be a civil and respectful exchange of differing ideas.
President Biden’s speech reminded me of what Jo Cox had said in June 2015, in her first speech in the House of Commons: ‘we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us’. I think this is something we should all keep in mind as we form and express our own views.
What lessons can our students take from this, when for many what happens in London or in Washington, D.C. may seem a world away from their lives?
At the moment I’m reading A Promised Land, the first volume of President Barack Obama’s account of his time as US President. I learnt that Obama was raised by his mother in a single-parent household, spent years living in Indonesia as a child, then lived with his grandparents in Hawaii whilst his mother stayed in Indonesia for work.
I was surprised to discover that for all his accomplishments in later life, Obama was not the hardest-working student in secondary school, and in fact when he first went to college was known more for his partying than for paying attention to his studies! Michelle Obama describes Barack as having been a lazy teenager (and I’m sure many of us can relate to that!) but at the age of 20 he made a simple decision that changed the course of his life, setting him on a path to one day become the most powerful person in the world. He decided to leave his college behind, and all his friends, to move to Columbia University in New York City. He decided to work as hard as he possibly could, to surround himself with the right people, and to make an opportunity for himself rather than waiting for one to come along. Who among us can’t learn something from that?
We often tell our students that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to, but I wonder how many of them really believe us. Despite having had what must have been a challenging childhood, Barack Obama made the decision to make something of himself. I think that many young people believe it’s about having ‘natural talent’ for something – I often hear students saying: “I’m not good at…”. However, you can have all the talent in the world, but without making that decision (work as hard as you can, surround yourself with the right people, make your own opportunities) it’s going to be far harder to achieve your goals.
I wondered if students in Maidstone might find it difficult to relate to a young man from an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, so I thought about who in our own country has had a ‘rags-to-riches’ tale which might help show young people that anything is possible with determination.
In 1955, a 12-year-old boy named John Major had to move with his family into a cramped flat because his father was unable to repay a business loan, so he had to sell the family house. John left school with only three O-Level passes, but on the long journey from his home to school he read the newspaper to pass the time, and developed an interest in current affairs. In 1990, he became the prime minister.
Angela Rayner left school at the age of 16, pregnant and without any qualifications. She studied part-time at a college and qualified as a social care worker. She worked for years as a care worker and developed an interest in politics. In 2020, she was elected the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.
Let’s move outside of politics and think about a working-class boy from Manchester. His mother had to work multiple jobs to feed her family, sometimes not eating herself so that her three sons and two daughters could eat. He began playing football at the age of five, starting out as a goalkeeper, and in school studied for a BTEC in Sport. He and his mother visited homeless shelters to hand out essential items for the Christmas period, but he was frustrated that he couldn’t do more. As you may have guessed, this young man raised £20 million to feed millions of children who were no longer receiving their free school meals during the first lockdown in March 2020. He has (more than once) forced the government into action to feed young people in need, has launched a book club to help improve child literacy, and has been awarded an MBE by the Queen – all whilst playing football for club and country, and still only being 23 years old. He is, of course, Marcus Rashford.
Politics is about people and stories – and what do these stories, from the US to London to Manchester, tell us? What do these people have in common? They worked as hard as they possibly could, surrounded themselves with the right people, and didn’t wait for an opportunity to make a difference – they pushed for one.
Taking that decision to do those things can come at any time. To any students not daring to have high aspirations, I point to examples of those who didn’t do well at school, or who didn’t necessarily push themselves as hard as they could at first, and still ended up changing the world. What could you accomplish if you started today?
One final thing these stories have in common is that they all show a commitment to public service, to devoting their time to trying to make life better for the less fortunate. They all believe that no matter our disagreements, we all have more in common than we realise.
Just one more story to finish: Amanda Gorman grew up with a speech impediment and a hypersensitivity to sound. She went to Harvard University and at the age of 17 published a poetry book. Aged 19, she became the first ever national youth poet laureate in the USA. At President Biden’s inauguration ceremony - aged 22 - she read out her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’, to call for us to ‘close the divide because we know, to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.’
Her aspiration? She wants to be president.
