Foreword: Many protests, one answer

They’re back: banners, bull horns, whistles, and threats of strikes. Unions, students and internet activists lost no time in the new year launching themselves at ministers’ plans for cuts—and at ministers. Jeremy Hunt was the target of one boisterous disruption, as 30 students banging drums invaded the culture minister’s talk at the LSE.

It’s noisy; is it serious? Yes, say Ed Howker and Shiv Malik in “The new age of protest.” They argue that the scale of unrest is a threat to the coalition, and that even though union power has dwindled, the sour disaffection of a new generation could take its place. That’s surely right.

Across Europe, unions say they plan more strikes than for 30 years. Fear of the new austerity flickers through Prospect this month. Roger Boyes describes how tough times have inspired German nostalgia for Prussia, while Vicky Pryce, a leading City economist, writes of the struggles of her native Greece to keep its young people. In the US, Dahlia Lithwick relates how Republicans want to scrap the rule that if you’re born there, you’re American. Sam Knight reports on the regret at the space shuttle’s last flight; Nick Harkaway says the new superhero films reflect American anxiety.

Yet this is not the 1980s. In Britain, unions now represent only 15 per cent of private sector workers, compared to 44 per cent three decades ago, although half of public sector workers are members. It’s harder for strikes to win support; many people are resentful of public-sector job security and pensions. Greece, Ireland, France and Spain have forced through big cuts without sustained protest.

Our investment supplement reflects this turmoil, and these social changes. People move job often, and do more to manage their own finances (see “Best and Worst Investments,” and Max Hastings's howl of rage at his advisers) The outlook is not all gloomy; Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs reckons that the US market will rise by a fifth, and Jim Rogers, a starry fund manager, ebulliently says you can still make good money in China.

But, turning back to the protests, students and web activists are clearly a new force, not just because of their digital skills, although Hugh Orde, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers, describes the “generational divide” in tactics. The coalition’s problem is the distaste for representative government—any government—which many feel. Ministers’ tweets, or LSE lectures, will not take them far. Their best answer will be economic growth—not fanciful, but hardly yet secure.