Why I am not waiting for your revolution, and I am not sorry.
by Katy McEwan
There are a few reasons why I think I could make a most excellent revolutionary, chief of these is my propensity for idealist thinking, in combination with being, repeatedly, done over by ‘the system’. I have gone through having something and nothing more than once- I’ve been picked up, chewed over, spat out, humiliated, lied about, and rescued in the process. Not necessarily in that order. I don’t have a Facebook profile for lots of reasons, but a big one is that I don’t want you to judge me, and if you knew some of the previous lives I have led you would, yes, even you. Or at the least pity me, and to me, that is even worse, you can keep that, thanks.
Watching I Daniel broke my heart, I was biting the inside of my cheeks, and I hung in there, tear-free, until Katie sits on the stairs after a tile breaks off when she’s scrubbing the bathroom clean. I left bereft, grateful to Loach (and Hayley Squires for telling our story with such grace), and to the good human beings who would watch it and care. But it did not fuel me for revolution. Instead, it refilled me with a desire for pragmatism, because I do not want people to suffer so much that they (may) eventually revolt, and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would.
I don’t doubt in general people are angry, I worked in one of Teesside’s local council’s call centres for a bit, people would ring in furious, their voices vibrating with rage, as their bin had been left unemptied. I would run tallies some days about how many times I would hear “I pay (more than my fair share of) council tax” yelled down the phone at me. Are we, as a people, experiencing uncertainty and insecurity, and, justifiably angry at our condition, misdirecting it? Maybe. I chatted to some psychotherapists at a conference last year about writing a paper entitled: You Seriously Can’t Be That Angry About A Bin. I am still convinced there is an interesting tale to be told there.
I don’t want to be dismissive of thought that is different to mine, something, as a working-class woman I would love to be afforded to me in return. The outright snobbery and passive aggressive tone of the Guardian irritates me as much as the diabolical Mail. Being pitied and patted on the head feels as corrosive as being hated, at least one is honest. In general though I worry expert and academic thought often does not reflect the overwhelming contrary views of those I live with, socialise with, have worked alongside, supervised in the community, taught, spoken to as a call centre operative, or those who have participated in my research interviews. What I do hear a lot is that they feel that the people who get big money to represent us are not doing that in anyone’s interest but their own, and that they cannot be trusted- politicians and professors alike. People are struggling and they are worried, for themselves and their children. Call them the ‘squeezed middle’, ‘hard working families’ or ‘just about managing’, whatever suits today, but times are hard, and people are looking around for someone to blame for that.
Do some poor people take the piss out of the system we have? Damn right they do, I’ve seen it, but it’s not easy, and it’s rare. Rich kids never have to do this crap I’ve noticed, they can mess up as many times as it takes their fancy, someone in the family will see them right. Likely, they will do that with a family wealth accumulated and supported in some way by the system, through subsidies or blind eyes. We’re all living off the state in some way or another. The biggest problem, as I see it just now, is that social security is no longer respected or understood, rather it is resented and disdained. If tinkering at the edges of the system starts bringing in some security, in any sense, so people feel more disposed to be social, then I am all for it. We can grow from that, it seems a hell of a lot more likely than a revolution, which, outside of tiny groups of radicals who talk primarily to each other, few seem to think is coming.
The ebbs and flows of UK social policy have dramatically affected my life, and the lives of those I love. So, as much as it burns when middle class people tell me which hoops I should be jumping through now for their satisfaction, or what this week they know better about my life than I know myself, I will not give up. You can’t do social policy without engaging with politics though, and who stands for me now? I have a huge amount of sympathy with those who have given up on Labour, it frequently feels like they have given up on us. No surprise maybe when they have lost themselves too. I am a Labour Party member, I would love to campaign for them, but I can’t until they make their mind up who they are and give me something to fight for. I do have faith they will do that though.
A little trust in ourselves, each other, and the country wouldn’t go amiss, and accepting things as they are, not as we would ideally like them to be, may sound like the kind of New Labour pragmatism that has many on the left retching (I’ve been there myself) but maybe we could just listen more? One of my research participants works in the service industry, on apprentice wages which leave him with a few pounds a week after he has paid his basic living expenses. He works across numerous shops in Teesside and told me he gets the most tips in the poorest places, I asked him why he thought people with the least were the most generous, he replied; “‘cos they know, they are all in the same boat. I can see that. But then people with money try to keep as much as they can as that is what they know”. I think he is very wise, we don’t need to fight each other, we need to understand each other, inequality and separation is toxic, no matter which front you are fighting from.
I was prompted to write this blog as I am helping host a workshop put together by Dr Michael Orton at Teesside next week. The event is predominantly to gather academics, politicians, practitioners and interested parties together to discuss how we can seek to put the security back into social security. Are we then, in turn, potentially party to supporting a system that recreates the many horrors of bureaucracy, cruelty and unfairness, as well as likely institutional classism, racism and sexism to boot? Yes, and I am not overjoyed by that. But the alternative of cheerleading for a revolution, that no person I know appears to desire, would be a dereliction of duty to my fellow Katy’s; there is nothing moral or principled in abandoning us all as we sit weeping on the stairs.
