The punchline is obvious. 'Poisonous values' is a phrase you can expect to hear again and again and again as Theresa May and friends (not all of them Conservatives it would appear) work to enact the new anti-terrorism strategy of denying 'oxygen' to radical values. This somewhat trepidatious approach wobbles on the less than firm foundations of 'British values', a fighting ground that I expect to see trampled by all parties as we approach the general election.
Even in the present these values are hard to define. The obvious paradox inherent in May's speech is that 'freedom of expression' is front and centre and yet the policy denies that very thing. The wiggle round for this is the contention that 'with rights come responsibilities', that tired get out clause that politicians of all hues wheel out to justify everything from cuts to out of work payments to all day licensing, from the sublime to the (potentially) ridiculous and many points in between.
For 'British values' are a slippery eel at best. Unlike Germany, where listeners to the excellent 'Germany - Memories Of A Nation' on Radio 4 will already be aware of that country's public demonstrations of reconciliation with the dark chapters of its past, Britain's history, and therefore its values, are a ragbag of the admirable and the detestable with little or no attempt to come to terms with the latter. Even focusing on the recent past, and avoiding the contradictions between the Chartists and the Highland Clearance, the direct clash of the promotion of the slave trade and its abolition or the instigation of the Poor Laws and the reality of the workhouse, leaves you with the legalisation of gay marriage up against the pursuit of an illegal war, the welfare state standing across a chasm from the 'shoot to kill' policy in Northern Ireland.
No country can in truth hold itself as a beacon of universally acceptable values. For the Tories (or any political party) to trade policy on this basis goes beyond disingenuous and into dangerous.
What we saw today was not a moral commitment to eradicating extremism but a play to middle England for votes in 8 months. To hear Radio 4 ask whether the policy would stop young British men from travelling to faraway places to behead other travellers was to see how this could play out. To get some sense of perspective here, one British citizen is not emblematic of any more than himself. You may as well frame policy on the basis that Pete Doherty plays guitar and has a drug problem so we should stop all young men playing guitars. Tautology is not a substitute for serious analysis.
That extremism exists is not in question. That it has always existed is never discussed. Faces and belief systems may change but as a 13 year old I spent a few months believing that armed revolution was the only solution to the problem of Thatcherite Britain. Had Twitter existed I would no doubt have been straight online to say so. Even within my peer group I was not the only one to believe this, Blackpool in 1984 was not a welcoming place.
The key to dealing with extremism in its Islamic context remains as evident as it always has. Given that the UK has just committed to more bombing in the Middle East the irony is crushing. Short of helping the Israeli government stick a few more flats on the occupied territories it couldn't become any greater. Palestine remains a festering sore, the duplicity of support for states that fund extreme Islam with men and materiel continues, the economic collapse of the 'home countries' of Islam, precipitated by that illegal war, the Western funding of puppet states throughout the area in the post war era and a willingness to only pay lip service to the genuine efforts of the (overwhelmingly) young people to change their situation witnessed in the collapse of the 'Arab Spring' are all factors far more powerful than the preachings of a few guys in urban conurbations and a barrage of rhetoric on Twitter and Facebook.
Without those subjects much of the ire would be meaningless. Theresa May and co may want to think about dealing with the cause rather than the symptoms. But I doubt that, expect a long few months of 'British values' and 'poisonous extremism'. To pick up another politico buzz phrase we will all be sick of before too long, we can all do it 'together'.
Tuesday 30 September 2014
Monday 29 September 2014
Das Capital
London bias seems to be a thing at the moment. Joining political elites and the financial overlords theory comes 'Is the Mercury biased towards London?' That's the suggestion of Tim Ingham, editor of Music Week, in this week's issue and ties the music industry in with finance, the Commons, media and law in a suggested metropolitan conspiracy against the remainder of the UK.
Given that the Mercury judges are drawn predominantly from a metropolitan crew of media types with a couple of artists thrown in and are also beholden to that media given the demands of pr oxygen for any awards ceremony this is an argument that holds some weight. However hard judges may try to base decisions purely on musical merit I would suggest it is nigh on impossible to be deaf to the cultural positioning of many of the suggested acts prior to the judging process or the possible opinions on those choices from their peers. Add into that the absence of certain musical representatives on the panel, no room for a Kerrang writer or editorial representative, and you are already in a process of self-selecting before you begin. Similarly there is a definitive absence of regional voices. No Scottish writers, no room for a Northern based figure like Mike Walsh of XFM or John Robb. Therefore Tim's argument would seem to have some basis in fact. Dotted across the panel are BBC faces, ICA types, broadsheet music editors, all based in London and all, to some extent, the very epitome of the 'London media type'.
The Mercury shortlist isn't really the point here though. The list is reflective of a trend rather than an individual example of a narrowing of scope.
In a previous post I bemoaned the lack of authentic contemporary working class voices on our televisions. Music and its attendant media share a similar problem. And before we degenerate into a Pythonesque comparison of social ills, I appreciate that there are a few faces that buck this trend but, much like the Oxbridge intake demographics, with its frantic pointing at the state school kids, those fig leaves cannot cover the reality. Transpose 'London' for 'metropolitan middle class' and the workings of not just the Mercury shortlist, ultimately a subjective assertion of what is 'good', but the whole process of the trajectory of a new band to prominence becomes less opaque.
The Mercury lays claim to existing to promote new albums from a variety of genres to a new audience. In truth, and in particular with this year's shortlist, it is concerned with 'buzz' outside of its non tokenistic (jazz and classical nominees, the cannon fodder of the shortlist) choices. Given that 'buzz' in the music industry is (like so much else in the UK) centralised on London in a feeding chain that links blogs to music sites to broadsheets and the NME to the ultimate goal of Radio One it is little surprise that London acts, on the doorstep of an industry and media increasingly unwilling and, at times, financially unable, to travel in that way that A & Rs and media did 20 years hence should draw in an ever myopic gaze on the capital. More than ever, and ironically given the supposed liberation of the internet from geographical tyranny, playing London is an absolute necessity for a band looking to get noticed.
Meanwhile access to the non-London outlets for national notice, whether the labels like Factory or Postcard or regional voices whether writers or bloggers or DJs are greatly reduced. Whilst bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division or The Stones Roses were championed from their home areas that situation is almost impossible under current media constructs. The paucity of mainstream national media voices in even cities like Manchester or Liverpool, musical centres that have produced time and time again, demonstrates an increasingly tight grip of the London agenda on the music media and therefore, the industry itself, given its new found tendencies to replace innovation and confrontation with social media chasing and audience fulfillment - the 'how many followers?' new orthodoxy of gauging a band's worth.
Thus finance rears its ugly head. The cost for a non London based band of playing London is a self selecting barrier for all but the most well off, especially given the all consuming trend for free entry shows. But finance and background also play in more subtle ways to cement this hegemony of a metropolitan takeover of what I shall call 'visible' music.
Cultures tend to correlate. The intake across the music industry is increasingly predetermined by the internship. That has become another self selector in the make-up of our industry, excluding those kids who are ex Home Counties or from non monied backgrounds from getting their first foot on the ladder. Who can afford a three month soujourn in London post University without a free bed or a trust fund? The same is true in the media that promote music, the publishing houses, the radio stations, the BBC, the PR's and pluggers and management companies. Whilst I am not suggesting that those in positions across the music industry and media do not deserve to be there when you are selecting salaried staff from a predetermined pool (and internships are now so prevalent that this is the case) you invariably end up with an intake that is in no way reflective of the totality of the social make-up of the UK.
And that matters. Culture is not strengthened by a takeover from a subsection of society. The history of popular music in the UK is not one of any particular strata ascending, the mix of a Mondays with a Radiohead, a Depeche Mode with a Pink Floyd, a Culture Club with a Kinks, the particular melting pots of the two titans, The Beatles art school / working class clash mirrored by the Stones (Jagger posh, Richards poor)demonstrate a strength that has run through our music making, that of cross class and cross cultural experience. What the Mercury list truly reflects is a segment of taste, reflected through an increasingly homogenous media that, despite much talk of ever greater opportunities, narrows our world and prescribes a vision of music that bears no relation to that enjoyed by the wider public.
Given that the Mercury judges are drawn predominantly from a metropolitan crew of media types with a couple of artists thrown in and are also beholden to that media given the demands of pr oxygen for any awards ceremony this is an argument that holds some weight. However hard judges may try to base decisions purely on musical merit I would suggest it is nigh on impossible to be deaf to the cultural positioning of many of the suggested acts prior to the judging process or the possible opinions on those choices from their peers. Add into that the absence of certain musical representatives on the panel, no room for a Kerrang writer or editorial representative, and you are already in a process of self-selecting before you begin. Similarly there is a definitive absence of regional voices. No Scottish writers, no room for a Northern based figure like Mike Walsh of XFM or John Robb. Therefore Tim's argument would seem to have some basis in fact. Dotted across the panel are BBC faces, ICA types, broadsheet music editors, all based in London and all, to some extent, the very epitome of the 'London media type'.
The Mercury shortlist isn't really the point here though. The list is reflective of a trend rather than an individual example of a narrowing of scope.
In a previous post I bemoaned the lack of authentic contemporary working class voices on our televisions. Music and its attendant media share a similar problem. And before we degenerate into a Pythonesque comparison of social ills, I appreciate that there are a few faces that buck this trend but, much like the Oxbridge intake demographics, with its frantic pointing at the state school kids, those fig leaves cannot cover the reality. Transpose 'London' for 'metropolitan middle class' and the workings of not just the Mercury shortlist, ultimately a subjective assertion of what is 'good', but the whole process of the trajectory of a new band to prominence becomes less opaque.
The Mercury lays claim to existing to promote new albums from a variety of genres to a new audience. In truth, and in particular with this year's shortlist, it is concerned with 'buzz' outside of its non tokenistic (jazz and classical nominees, the cannon fodder of the shortlist) choices. Given that 'buzz' in the music industry is (like so much else in the UK) centralised on London in a feeding chain that links blogs to music sites to broadsheets and the NME to the ultimate goal of Radio One it is little surprise that London acts, on the doorstep of an industry and media increasingly unwilling and, at times, financially unable, to travel in that way that A & Rs and media did 20 years hence should draw in an ever myopic gaze on the capital. More than ever, and ironically given the supposed liberation of the internet from geographical tyranny, playing London is an absolute necessity for a band looking to get noticed.
Meanwhile access to the non-London outlets for national notice, whether the labels like Factory or Postcard or regional voices whether writers or bloggers or DJs are greatly reduced. Whilst bands like Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division or The Stones Roses were championed from their home areas that situation is almost impossible under current media constructs. The paucity of mainstream national media voices in even cities like Manchester or Liverpool, musical centres that have produced time and time again, demonstrates an increasingly tight grip of the London agenda on the music media and therefore, the industry itself, given its new found tendencies to replace innovation and confrontation with social media chasing and audience fulfillment - the 'how many followers?' new orthodoxy of gauging a band's worth.
Thus finance rears its ugly head. The cost for a non London based band of playing London is a self selecting barrier for all but the most well off, especially given the all consuming trend for free entry shows. But finance and background also play in more subtle ways to cement this hegemony of a metropolitan takeover of what I shall call 'visible' music.
Cultures tend to correlate. The intake across the music industry is increasingly predetermined by the internship. That has become another self selector in the make-up of our industry, excluding those kids who are ex Home Counties or from non monied backgrounds from getting their first foot on the ladder. Who can afford a three month soujourn in London post University without a free bed or a trust fund? The same is true in the media that promote music, the publishing houses, the radio stations, the BBC, the PR's and pluggers and management companies. Whilst I am not suggesting that those in positions across the music industry and media do not deserve to be there when you are selecting salaried staff from a predetermined pool (and internships are now so prevalent that this is the case) you invariably end up with an intake that is in no way reflective of the totality of the social make-up of the UK.
And that matters. Culture is not strengthened by a takeover from a subsection of society. The history of popular music in the UK is not one of any particular strata ascending, the mix of a Mondays with a Radiohead, a Depeche Mode with a Pink Floyd, a Culture Club with a Kinks, the particular melting pots of the two titans, The Beatles art school / working class clash mirrored by the Stones (Jagger posh, Richards poor)demonstrate a strength that has run through our music making, that of cross class and cross cultural experience. What the Mercury list truly reflects is a segment of taste, reflected through an increasingly homogenous media that, despite much talk of ever greater opportunities, narrows our world and prescribes a vision of music that bears no relation to that enjoyed by the wider public.
Friday 19 September 2014
EDDIE ARGOS In conversation for the first time tells you how to form a band and become famous
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE BELOW
OCTOBER 22nd, The Hen & Chickens Theatre
Pop music, as we all know, can be an uncertain business. Whilst a chosen few achieve their dreams of riches, world travel and mass adoration for many a spot at their local battle of the bands is the limit of their fame.
Enter Eddie Argos, world renowned lead singer and songwriter with Art Brut, the London band that have spent the last decade redefining the meaning of stardom. For the first time Eddie is stepping into the limelight to tell the story of how he put the world beating pop behemoth together, from playing the vacuum cleaner onstage to lying to people in London about how he could sing like Aretha Franklin. This is his story.
The show begins at 9.30pm on Tuesday October 22nd at The Hen & Chickens Theatre, Highbury, N1 2NA.
Tickets for this unique opportunity are very limited and go on sale priced at only £10 on Thursday 18th September from:
http://www.unrestrictedview.co.uk/page/more-info.php?id=1757
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/eddie-argos-i-formed-a-band-tickets/142775
FOR MORE INFORMATION - LOUDHAILER PRESS
Lewis Jamieson - lewis@loudhailerpress.com / @LewJam
07718 652582 / 020 8714 0139
MORE ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Eddie Argos grew up fantasising about being the singer in a band that would tour the world, despite the fact he can't really sing. Somehow he managed it and now he is going to tell you how. Heartwarming story or cautionary tale? You be the judge.
https://www.facebook.com/eddie.argos
https://twitter.com/EddieArgos
http://www.the-eddie-argos-resource.blogspot.com
http://www.artbrut.org.uk/
OCTOBER 22nd, The Hen & Chickens Theatre
Pop music, as we all know, can be an uncertain business. Whilst a chosen few achieve their dreams of riches, world travel and mass adoration for many a spot at their local battle of the bands is the limit of their fame.
Enter Eddie Argos, world renowned lead singer and songwriter with Art Brut, the London band that have spent the last decade redefining the meaning of stardom. For the first time Eddie is stepping into the limelight to tell the story of how he put the world beating pop behemoth together, from playing the vacuum cleaner onstage to lying to people in London about how he could sing like Aretha Franklin. This is his story.
The show begins at 9.30pm on Tuesday October 22nd at The Hen & Chickens Theatre, Highbury, N1 2NA.
Tickets for this unique opportunity are very limited and go on sale priced at only £10 on Thursday 18th September from:
http://www.unrestrictedview.co.uk/page/more-info.php?id=1757
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/eddie-argos-i-formed-a-band-tickets/142775
FOR MORE INFORMATION - LOUDHAILER PRESS
Lewis Jamieson - lewis@loudhailerpress.com / @LewJam
07718 652582 / 020 8714 0139
MORE ABOUT OUR SPEAKER
Eddie Argos grew up fantasising about being the singer in a band that would tour the world, despite the fact he can't really sing. Somehow he managed it and now he is going to tell you how. Heartwarming story or cautionary tale? You be the judge.
https://www.facebook.com/eddie.argos
https://twitter.com/EddieArgos
http://www.the-eddie-argos-resource.blogspot.com
http://www.artbrut.org.uk/
Wednesday 17 September 2014
A Working Class Hero Is Something To See
We live in a country that is based on inequality. That is without doubt. If you need reminding of that fact here are the numbers from The Equality Trust – the poorest fifth in the UK have 8% of the wealth, the richest fifth 41%. Go to the top 1% and that fraction becomes so stark as to be almost meaningless, the top 1% in the UK have an average annual income of £248,000 and wealth of around £1million compared to £8,628 annual income and £12,500 wealth for the bottom tenth. Go beyond that to the ultra-wealthy clustered in London and the disparities become so ridiculous as to make you wonder why there aren’t enraged neuvo-peasants at the gates wielding pitchforks.
Wrapped up as we are in the Scottish devolution vote, this inequality has seemingly fed into a disparity of influence, as best explained by George Monbiot today in The Guardian in this erudite essay on the lack of established media support for the ‘Yes’ vote and, in some quarters, blatant misrepresentation of the campaign for independence.
Whilst Monbiot rightly points out the mirroring of a Westminster political elite and a London media elite, equally remote and disengaged from real people, the runoff from his point goes beyond news gathering and feeds into our culture at all levels. It is not hysterical to suggest that unless a rebalancing of influence, representation and access to all levers of our culture is put into practice, the disengagement of the establishment from a rump populace will reach a point where harmful and potentially fatal cracks develop not just in the United Kingdom, that may already be too late, but across regions, cities and within even the smallest communities where the poor sit cheek by jowl with outrageous wealth.
A few weeks ago supporters of Middlesbrough FC unveiled a banner that read ‘Being Poor Is Not Entertainment’ in response to the arrival of Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’ in their area. Of course, it is. Not just ‘Benefits Street’ but a whole raft of television programming works on this principal. Think of the social class take up on an average (non celebrity) reality show and the motivation of producers behind the challenges and tasks set for them or the average social status of characters and their portrayals in high profile dramas. When was the last time a contemporary drama led with a positive working class character? When the lower orders are allowed on screen it is generally as victims. Murder victims, law breakers, social outcasts and desperate single mothers abound across our screens, painted in one dimension, raped, murdering and murdered and imprisoned for our entertainment. Soap operas, for so long a vehicle for representation of ‘normal’ people, (see ‘Coronation Street’ at its sixties height or ‘Brookside’ in its earlier days) have become caricature knockabout, stuffed with an ever revolving story set of violence, sexual misdemeanor and family breakdown that parallel the red top and middle tabloid scare stories of a lower order in our cities and towns, bent on destruction and chaos.
Spin back in time however and you can’t move for grubby working class folk seemingly demonstrating good character. ‘The Village’ styles itself as a gritty drama and posits Maxine Peake’s Grace as a proto proletarian smasher of glass ceilings. John Simm’s John plays the straight man, fashioning a working class meme as the silent type, hard working and aware of his place in the grand order gamboling around him. Various other cast members fulfil their roles as, variously, salt of the earth widow, fallen and rescued woman and young lad yearning for a better world. Whilst the first series strove for some realism, not least of all in the execution of a shellshocked deserter, this latest run is a playground version of the Britain of the early 20th century, in large part swept clean of the general strike, civil unrest and grinding pre NHS and Trade Union poverty. There are seemingly no children with rickets or TB in this idyllic part of the North.
Thus the fallen woman marries the magistrates son, some of the folk from the ‘big house’ demonstrate social conscious beyond the realms of realism, one sleeping with a maid to enable a divorce for his trapped wife (to marry the idealistic working class lad made good school teacher) and destroy the fixing of an attempt to imprison him and the yearning lad following a re-enactment of the Kinder trespass in miniature and a decade too early made violent by Socialist agitators from the city (shudder) whilst the bastard son of the youngest aristo daughter is returned to her and welcomed into the family. Only the eldest son, the gay Tory Home Secretary, resists this attempt at modernism. The working class inhabitants of ‘The Village’ are presented as simple minded good folk or deferential aspirants, looking for non confrontational outlets for their watered down financial problems and lack of real political clout. To cap it all, the plot has now switched from betterment of the workers to protecting the rural ‘idyll’ threatened by the imposition of a reservoir for the working masses of Sheffield. From the plight of the the workers to old Tory defence of the green and pleasant land in two series, all mention of the huddled masses contained in two lines from the one dimensional Labour politico, working class hero turned destructive villain via this plot device.
On ITV the return of ‘Downton Abbey’, that perfect misrepresentation of the lives of early 20th century stately home life returns next week to further pantomime-ise the period. Already way beyond the bounds of realism with its Fenian arriviste to the gentry, another bastard child story and a deferential servant class that beggars belief if you read any of the memoirs of real working class people bounded into service with their thankless, sweaty, backbreaking work, it is unlikely that this new series will travel in the opposite direction.
Arm in arm with this nostalgic view of the working class as romantic changelings or happy serviles both ‘The Village’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ promote an establishment that is, to a great degree, capable of sacrifice for the greater good. Whether intentionally or not, the confluence of this reimagining of the rulers of the past with the contemporary reality of that same social class retaining all the levers of power creates an opium to the masses that, were one inclined to conspiracy theory, could be seen as a deliberate attempt to nullify the increasing social differentials being created in the UK, but, in more temperate tones is undoubtedly a balm to the idea of the establishment being as rapacious and power grabbing as their current behaviour and the outcomes of their decisions. Like Dick Dastardly, the baddy upper and middle class characters are foiled by their social equals, the covert message being that the establishment goodies will always look after the poor downtrodden. Which, when you think about it is pretty much what the producer of ‘Benefit Street’ meant when he said this of the previous series:
"It's not demonising the poor. It's a very honest and true portrayal of life in Britain and people are frightened of it. If you are telling me that shining a light on poverty in Britain is pornographic, so we shouldn't pay attention to poor people, I think that's outrageous.”
Until the working class see their own heroes on screen and hear their own voices through the media our culture will replicate out finances; a divided and ever dividing society in which the establishment increasingly talk only to themselves and the rest are excluded from not just the spoils, but the very conversation itself.
Wrapped up as we are in the Scottish devolution vote, this inequality has seemingly fed into a disparity of influence, as best explained by George Monbiot today in The Guardian in this erudite essay on the lack of established media support for the ‘Yes’ vote and, in some quarters, blatant misrepresentation of the campaign for independence.
Whilst Monbiot rightly points out the mirroring of a Westminster political elite and a London media elite, equally remote and disengaged from real people, the runoff from his point goes beyond news gathering and feeds into our culture at all levels. It is not hysterical to suggest that unless a rebalancing of influence, representation and access to all levers of our culture is put into practice, the disengagement of the establishment from a rump populace will reach a point where harmful and potentially fatal cracks develop not just in the United Kingdom, that may already be too late, but across regions, cities and within even the smallest communities where the poor sit cheek by jowl with outrageous wealth.
A few weeks ago supporters of Middlesbrough FC unveiled a banner that read ‘Being Poor Is Not Entertainment’ in response to the arrival of Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’ in their area. Of course, it is. Not just ‘Benefits Street’ but a whole raft of television programming works on this principal. Think of the social class take up on an average (non celebrity) reality show and the motivation of producers behind the challenges and tasks set for them or the average social status of characters and their portrayals in high profile dramas. When was the last time a contemporary drama led with a positive working class character? When the lower orders are allowed on screen it is generally as victims. Murder victims, law breakers, social outcasts and desperate single mothers abound across our screens, painted in one dimension, raped, murdering and murdered and imprisoned for our entertainment. Soap operas, for so long a vehicle for representation of ‘normal’ people, (see ‘Coronation Street’ at its sixties height or ‘Brookside’ in its earlier days) have become caricature knockabout, stuffed with an ever revolving story set of violence, sexual misdemeanor and family breakdown that parallel the red top and middle tabloid scare stories of a lower order in our cities and towns, bent on destruction and chaos.
Spin back in time however and you can’t move for grubby working class folk seemingly demonstrating good character. ‘The Village’ styles itself as a gritty drama and posits Maxine Peake’s Grace as a proto proletarian smasher of glass ceilings. John Simm’s John plays the straight man, fashioning a working class meme as the silent type, hard working and aware of his place in the grand order gamboling around him. Various other cast members fulfil their roles as, variously, salt of the earth widow, fallen and rescued woman and young lad yearning for a better world. Whilst the first series strove for some realism, not least of all in the execution of a shellshocked deserter, this latest run is a playground version of the Britain of the early 20th century, in large part swept clean of the general strike, civil unrest and grinding pre NHS and Trade Union poverty. There are seemingly no children with rickets or TB in this idyllic part of the North.
Thus the fallen woman marries the magistrates son, some of the folk from the ‘big house’ demonstrate social conscious beyond the realms of realism, one sleeping with a maid to enable a divorce for his trapped wife (to marry the idealistic working class lad made good school teacher) and destroy the fixing of an attempt to imprison him and the yearning lad following a re-enactment of the Kinder trespass in miniature and a decade too early made violent by Socialist agitators from the city (shudder) whilst the bastard son of the youngest aristo daughter is returned to her and welcomed into the family. Only the eldest son, the gay Tory Home Secretary, resists this attempt at modernism. The working class inhabitants of ‘The Village’ are presented as simple minded good folk or deferential aspirants, looking for non confrontational outlets for their watered down financial problems and lack of real political clout. To cap it all, the plot has now switched from betterment of the workers to protecting the rural ‘idyll’ threatened by the imposition of a reservoir for the working masses of Sheffield. From the plight of the the workers to old Tory defence of the green and pleasant land in two series, all mention of the huddled masses contained in two lines from the one dimensional Labour politico, working class hero turned destructive villain via this plot device.
On ITV the return of ‘Downton Abbey’, that perfect misrepresentation of the lives of early 20th century stately home life returns next week to further pantomime-ise the period. Already way beyond the bounds of realism with its Fenian arriviste to the gentry, another bastard child story and a deferential servant class that beggars belief if you read any of the memoirs of real working class people bounded into service with their thankless, sweaty, backbreaking work, it is unlikely that this new series will travel in the opposite direction.
Arm in arm with this nostalgic view of the working class as romantic changelings or happy serviles both ‘The Village’ and ‘Downton Abbey’ promote an establishment that is, to a great degree, capable of sacrifice for the greater good. Whether intentionally or not, the confluence of this reimagining of the rulers of the past with the contemporary reality of that same social class retaining all the levers of power creates an opium to the masses that, were one inclined to conspiracy theory, could be seen as a deliberate attempt to nullify the increasing social differentials being created in the UK, but, in more temperate tones is undoubtedly a balm to the idea of the establishment being as rapacious and power grabbing as their current behaviour and the outcomes of their decisions. Like Dick Dastardly, the baddy upper and middle class characters are foiled by their social equals, the covert message being that the establishment goodies will always look after the poor downtrodden. Which, when you think about it is pretty much what the producer of ‘Benefit Street’ meant when he said this of the previous series:
"It's not demonising the poor. It's a very honest and true portrayal of life in Britain and people are frightened of it. If you are telling me that shining a light on poverty in Britain is pornographic, so we shouldn't pay attention to poor people, I think that's outrageous.”
Until the working class see their own heroes on screen and hear their own voices through the media our culture will replicate out finances; a divided and ever dividing society in which the establishment increasingly talk only to themselves and the rest are excluded from not just the spoils, but the very conversation itself.
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