Brighton and Bognor: 30 miles between Meaning and Survival.
Just 30 miles separate Brighton and Bognor Regis. On Thursday this week I experienced once again the astonishing polarities that can occur in places separated by such a small distance yet light years apart in experience and mindset. The old and the new. The trendy and the downtrodden. The striving to be born and the struggling to survive. Two perfect examples of the tensions we are trying to solve as we navigate our way into an uncertain future where so many ‘norms’ are shifting like quicksands under our feet.
So yadder, yadder, what am I on about? On Thursday the annual gathering of people who are interested in positive future change met in Brighton at Meaning Conference. On the same day in the evening Channel 4 broadcast a very cleverly edited documentary called British Workers Wanted; a snapshot of a recruitment agency in Bognor focused on the lowest paid worker/gig economy sector. Two worlds; oceans apart.
For the first time this year I had to participate in Meaning Conference from afar via Twitter as work commitments took me elsewhere — Bognor as it happened. Meaning is one of those small pockets of hope where you can make connections with others who are striving to activate change through social and commercial enterprise, and hear cutting-edge speakers open windows to new knowledge.
Warriors for the human spirit arise
Speakers like Margaret Wheatley who so eloquently cuts through the denial and dross of those of us engaged in trying to re-shape corporate business and makes a plain appeal for individual action. Stand up and stand out as a warrior for the human spirit, is her call to action.
What a wonderful aspiration; to create a good human community wherever we are with whatever we have, with the people who are here with us now. We rely on joy arising, knowing that joy comes from working together as good human beings, independent of external circumstances.
Margaret Wheatley is one of those rare and gifted individuals that makes your heart sing.
Other speakers included Kate Raworth author of the ground-breaking book Donut Economics whose reframing of the tension for companies of increasing shareholder value while recognising the need to be distributive and generative by design, is brilliant.
Kate completely understands the interconnections between the global challenges we face. Donut Economics is one of the best offerings of how we might try to navigate a way through future change. My best book of 2017 so highly recommend a read. It has been so helpful in my work with organisational change this year. Just to have even a small vision of how things could be different is deeply encouraging.
Her understanding of how to shift the culture and structure of organisations from extraction to contribution is exemplary.
The other side of the coin
And so to Bognor. Why did I watch British Workers Wanted late on Thursday? Simples. I am deeply interested in the future of food as a critical factor in the future resilience of people and planet, and a small part of my work focuses on helping organisations in the food business transition culture from past to present to future-fit. Especially in the South of England where in the past 15 years, food growing businesses have flourished.
Many of these businesses use seasonal workers who are part of the lower paid economy. Many of these businesses are now gradually replacing human labour with robotics and drones, but that’s taking time. Other types of businesses in the South that use transient labour are event organisations such as Goodwood who run Goodwood Revival and the Festival of Speed among others.
A lot of this labour is resident in and around Bognor Regis, many of the people Eastern Europeans who came to the UK as borders opened looking for gainful employment. British Workers Wanted focused on a small recruitment agency called Opus Loco run by the ‘charismatic’ Sarah Duke and her partner Gaynor Heath and their struggle to recruit British workers in the face of finding out that their pool of Eastern European migrant labour is exiting back home due to Brexit. Which of course both Sarah and Gaynor voted for.
“If we’re not getting the Brits who will work for the wages the Eastern Europeans will [work] for and the Eastern Europeans are going home, we’re kind of going to be a bit scuppered,” said Sarah. It’s a pressing conundrum: 98 per cent of their recruits are migrant workers. How to vote yourself out of a job!
Depending on your worldview, Sarah and Gaynor were “immensely likable, terrifically funny characters — chain-smoking and hard-working but also not afraid to dish out a bloody good rollicking to anyone who crossed them” as the Daily Telegraph described them — or painful, embarrassing caricactures of a Britain you would rather not know existed if you’re an academic futurist or intellectual snob. Many views exploded on Twitter about their exploitation of immigrants and Brits alike by the opportunity put in front of them by low paid work.
I’ve got to be honest, I cringed all the way through it, even though I can recognise clever editing when I see it. It has probably seen a much greater response than the makers anticipated, because it touched so deeply on that still throbbing divide in the UK public called Brexit.
Did the documentary deliberately vilify a vulnerable section of our society — unemployed poorly educated Brits — along with Sarah and Gaynor simply for the purpose of a good bit of telly? Or was it in fact a really good vehicle to drum home how very hard some sections of the public are struggling to survive?
As they drove around dragging sleepy Poles from bed to the Goodwood Revival to make their numbers, with their obligatory nail art on show and their long slim cigarettes dangling, the Opus Loco team and their workers were the epitome of an era many hope is passing. Except that it isn’t.
What it failed to do is bring any real rigour to the debates we need to be having.
How is it that a country as wealthy as the United Kingdom has such a burgeoning under class of people who are expected to survive (never mind thrive) on £7.50 an hour?
What does the future hold for these people and how are they going to be cared for and helped as we shoot at exponential speed towards a robotics-led future where what’s valued about humans and what creates work is creativity, innovation, ingenuity?
Are we creating a class of untouchables such as they are still fighting to disband in India?
What does the agricultural sector in the South need to do to compensate for the lack of low paid workers that the documentary suggests is coming at them like the force of a freight train? How quickly can they adjust and automate — as businesses like Tangmere Nurseries have done with their hydroponic pepper farm.
Above all, how do we reconcile the enormous differences between the intellectual hope of Meaning Conference and the grubby, down at heel reality of life in the back streets of Bognor?
I don’t have any answers but I do believe we need much more joining of dots across these divides. I would so have liked to have seen Sarah and Gaynor on the Meaning Conference stage as a wake up call to those of us in the business of change to encourage us to redouble our efforts. Not to showcase them like performing seals but as a reminder of the breadth of the social divide.
My head knows that change is always led by a visionary few and that’s the importance of Meaning Conference. I personally know the value of finding your tribe to keep your personal resilience afloat in tough times. We have to have a vision of ‘better’ to strive for. But we mustn’t get lost in our own bubbles.
My heart bleeds more than slightly for those inhabitants of BritishWorkersWanted who might get left behind in the slipstream of change.
You can find our more about Meaning Conference here
You can watch British Workers Wanted on demand here.
