Billy gives unions something to Bragg about
EVEN the simple act of buying a cup of coffee is a political statement for Billy Bragg.
“Not Starbucks, they don’t pay their tax,” Bragg warns as we scour Melbourne’s Southern Cross Station for somewhere to grab a quick breakfast snack.
Minutes later, we are ensconced in a suitably benign café, and Bragg is tucking into his breakfast of a ham and cheese croissant and a cappuccino.
But the food is in danger of going cold as even at 8 o’clock in the morning, the veteran English singer-songwriter-activist is full of ideas and pouring out the words at a rapid speed.
The morning we meet, Bragg has agreed to perform a couple of songs at the railway station for Fluro Fightback, a rally organised by the National Union of Workers to raise awareness about their campaign for better rights and conditions for casual and labour hire workers.
It is drizzling and grey — weather that reminds Bragg of the Old Blighty — but there was no hesitation by the singer about climbing out of bed at dawn to do the gig.
Bragg honed his craft as a busker on the streets of London, and has always been willing to perform at rallies and picket lines for causes he supports, particularly unions. He also sees gigs like this as being fully in the footsteps of the iconic dustbowl singer-songwriter whose tradition and legacy he has inherited, Woody Guthrie. Indeed, the reason why Bragg is in Melbourne in late-October, is to perform Guthrie’s songs, along with his own, for the city’s arts festival.
“No political party is willing to hold bosses to account. Only unions do that.”
Guthrie has been the inspiration for several generations of performers, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Joe Strummer. Bragg has been associated with him since Guthrie’s daughter Nora asked him in 1998 to add music to a treasure trove of lyrics left behind by her father when he died in 1967.
“There’s sometimes when you have to think to yourself, well, what would Woody do if someone called him up and said we’ve got a little demo for the lowest paid workers, can you come down and play a couple of songs?” Bragg says. “I think he’d be getting out of bed and coming down so, I suppose, [I’m here because of] my sense of solidarity and Woody’s sort of behind me going come on boy, step up.
“Woody never played anywhere like the Hamer Hall, trust me,” he continues. “The gigs he played were like on the steps here. And when I play these kinds of gigs I feel closest to what Woody did and doing Woody’s work. In some ways, that’s what Nora Guthrie when she asked me to write these songs gave me a kind of responsibility too.”
‘Like a civil war’
Although he is sick of being dismissed as only a political songwriter, Bragg is as famous for his political activism as he is for his songs. It’s a reputation he forged in the early-1980s when he played a series of benefit gigs during the British Miners’ Strike.
Surprisingly, Bragg says he wasn’t very politicised before then, and grew up in a non-union family.
“It’s the personal experience during the miners’ strike, you know really, that sort of plugged me into not only organised labour but the tradition as well, there’s a great tradition of music with unions which Woody was part of and Joe Hill earlier than that… It really was like a civil war, a class war, in a way that young people now I don’t think would recognise.
“And Margaret Thatcher’s government was such a threat to us, such a real threat, that some of it had to be confronted.”
Bragg was a founder of the Red Wedge collective of British musicians who campaigned against Thatcher in the 1980s, and has leant his name to numerous causes over the years. But it is unions that remain closest to his heart. Bragg also has no time for the argument that unions have lost their relevance; quite the opposite in fact.
“In my country from 1945 to 1980, the gap between the rich and poor got narrower every year. From 1980 onwards it started getting wide again and it’s continued getting wider to the extent that the people at the top are so far out of sight now it’s ridiculous.
“Interestingly the peak of union power in my country was between 1945 and 1980. Since 1980, the unions have been busted and now our economy is busted as a result.
“It makes a lot of sense to involve workers in decisions, to get them to have input where they can, but also to understand what’s really going on. I would like to see more unions in the boardroom. I would like to see more companies be accountable for the communities in which they work, I think unions are able to do that. I think accountability is a key idea in the 21st century and nobody is willing to hold employers to account any more. No political party is willing to hold employers to account.
“Only unions do that, and that’s why they’re still relevant in the 21st century.”
Part Two
ALTHOUGH Billy Bragg is proud to wear his politics on his sleeve, it does frustrate the writer of such honest love songs as ‘Valentine’s Day is Over’ and ‘The Milkman of Human Kindness’ that he is pigeonholed as a political songwriter first.
And he is fully aware of the limits of agitprop music.
“Does music have a role in society? Yeah, well, it can’t change the world, if you want to change the world, there’s a very simple way to do it, you’ve got to organise. Singer-songwriters can’t do it, ultimately it’s down to the audience really to organise.
“Even with Occupy, who I’ve got a lot of admiration for trying to find a new way of articulating the reality of the hyper-capitalism we have, how divisive it is, they still have to organise. That hasn’t changed. Everything else may have changed, but people getting organised hasn’t changed.”
Another thing that hasn’t changed, says Bragg, is the relevance of Woody Guthrie’s music.
“He’s got a song of his called, ‘I ain’t got no home in this world any more’, which I perform. It’s about people losing their homes to the banks, it’s about families being broken up because they have to travel to find work. It’s about people not getting proper healthcare.
“It could’ve been written any time in the last five years. In fact, it’s over 70 years old, but don’t tell me it ain’t relevant.”
“If you want to change the world, there’s a very simple way to do it, you’ve got to organise.”
As he finishes his last morsel of his croissant and contemplates the dregs of his coffee, Bragg reflects on the long journey he has travelled from naïve busker to global political activist. And he remains optimistic about the future, which he sees in grassroots movements like Occupy joining together and adopting tactics from organised labour.
“I think 25 years ago I had to dance to the tune of a Marxist rhetoric that I wasn’t very comfortable with when I wanted to talk about these issues.
“And I’ve never really had time for people who tell me we can’t do anything about anything until we first overthrow capitalism. I haven’t really go time for that. I want these families here to have a decent Christmas, you know. I haven’t got time to wait around until we storm the Winter Palace again.
“So now we live in a post-ideological world, it’s harder to focus these ideas perhaps, but I think more people are involved in things like Occupy, and through the internet, more people are involved and engaged in the debate, young people as well. So I’m more encouraged now than I was back then. Because when we were fighting Thatcher, capitalism was rampant and it was just not a lot you could do to contain it. Now it’s on its fucking arse.
“Now is the opportunity for us to say, look, we can lift this together, but only organised labour can really do the lifting here. You’ve got to work with us, make them understand that.
“Because they’re as ideological as any Marxist, our opponents in capitalism. And the version of capitalism they’re using at the moment is broken, severely broken, it needs to be looked at again and worked out how to have a sustainable economy where people have long-term prospects, decent wages, profits are shared and that’s what I’m hoping the Occupy movement will start to articulate.
“Meanwhile, there’s organised labour to put the word out.”
A humble man
As the interview concludes, Bragg is approached by a woman in fluoro holding a pen and a piece of paper.
The night before Sophie Harris, an educator with the NUW, had sung Bragg’s song ‘There Is Power In A Union’ at a union function and she now wants him to sign the lyric sheet. Bragg obliges.
Afterwards, Harris is gushing with excitement.
“The whole thing of seeing Billy Bragg perform at a union event, and singing ‘Power in A Union’ with a group fellow unionists for such an important social cause, all of it. It’s amazing,” she says.
“What a humble man. It says that he’s a true socialist because it’s not about him, it’s about working people achieving justice, and everyone has a role to play in that and do something and he’s come here today to support the event and do his bit.”
