England’s Beast of Burden
Posted by Freyja Peters PhD | May 12, 2010 | Comments Off
Last week my colleague over at the Daily Mail, Leo McKinstry, published a hard-hitting, but long-needed, expose on the current state of ‘Great’ Britain . Inspired by his work, I asked my editor David Guy if I could follow-up on it, by going on a rail and road tour to see some of the places McKinstry describes. Taking my own journey upriver into the heat of darkness; wherein I might perhaps find that our own bloated Colonel Kurtz is none other than a maniacal villain with a Scotch accent and a glass eye.
The newly re-configured Yorkminster
David tried to discourage me, fearing not only for my safety, but also my emotional and intellectual well-being (not to mention the threat a weekend of Northern ‘cuisine’ might pose to my digestive system). But I was resolute: how can we help heal this rift without knowing what barriers we must overcome? I must, like Michael Buerk in 1984, show the world what had become of one of its forgotten corners.
Boarding a train at Euston a cold knot forms in my stomach.
The journey is uneventful until we pull out of Birmingham New Street, when I become painfully aware that I am now longer surrounded by my fellow citizens. An ill-wind has swept them off the train, and brought a whole new breed in their stead. Barbour jackets, broadsheets and brioche are supplanted by Gregg’s packets and unmoisturised faces.
At Wolverhampton two women in burkhas scuttle onto the train and distribute copies of the Socialist Worker to all, even children and the elderly. Most take it without argument. One man calls it ‘Tory claptrap,’ but later completes the crossword anyway.
The situation worsens at Stafford, where armoured plating descends noisily to cover the exterior of the train. This is covered in pebbledash and grey stone cladding, to give us the appearance of an innocuous council estate. Our lone, smiling and ruddy-cheeked guard departs and is replaced by a 12-strong team of Virgin Militia personnel, toting machine pistols and smoke grenades. I had been warned about this, but I was yet unprepared for grim reality.
The only light in the carriage now is from the braziers hastily improvised by tribes from various northern urban communes. I engage one of these groups, all dressed in hi-vis jackets, for as long as I can stand the stench of gravy and hand-rolled cigarettes, and the permeating threat of physical and sexual violence. They have been to London, they tell me, as part of a state-sponsored cultural-enrichment outreach programme. Although heavily subsidised by the Department of the Proletariat, this trip has still cost them £38 each, which is, unbelievably, a week’s wages here. But for that they did get tickets to see Amanda Holden in Kevin Spacey’s production of Waiting for Godot, a trip on the Docklands Light Railway, and a meal at a Pizza Express of their choosing, so clearly not money and time unwisely spent. They enjoyed themselves, but how much of that, I was forced to ask myself, was due to the participation we had allowed them in our artistic endeavours, and how much of it was due to the crate of cheap lager they’d clubbed together for. You can lead a horse to water…
If you drive northwards you will see nothing but the picked-clean carcasses of roadkill and human dung.
At Macclesfield station I catch glimpses of a clash between a gang of black youths and an elderly man who is naked but for a toga made from a tattered St Geroge’s flag. It is hard to see any winners here.
An impoverished and threatening scene greeted me on Edinburgh's Princess Street
At Preston I hire a four-wheel drive to continue my tour. Public transport will not go past here. In his piece for the Mail, McKinstry wote that ‘You could drive southwards the whole way from Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight without leaving Conservative terrain.’ If you drive northwards, I can now attest, you will see nothing but the picked-clean carcasses of roadkill and human dung.
I had keenly anticipated my afternoon’s excursion into the wilds of the Lake District, but when I arrive there, I find that it has been paved over and replaced with the UK’s largest debt advice call centre.
I forge on for several more hours to the Highlands, where all the peasants were, quite literally, told to ‘clear’ off in the 17th and 18th centuries, helping to establish Sir Walter Scott’s rugged, romantic wilderness. But to my dismay, it’s now a wind-farm run by lesbians. Lindisfarne (aka Holy Island) is a day spa for Africans and Eastern Bloccers awaiting deportation. Chatsworth House is an abortion clinic.
‘Who did this?’ I ask again and again, in place after place. There is only ever one answer: ‘Broon’.
'Maggie', 47, hopes to escape the NHS for a new life in Berkshire
Disconsolate, I decide that the landscape is a lost cause, and instead speak to some of the people here, to see if there are any rays of hope amongst them. In Harrogate I meet a nurse, Maggie. Maggie isn’t her real name, but she fears reprisals from hard-liners within her community: a group with the slogan ‘Better dead Foot than broken (C)Legg!’.
‘I wanted to do a business and finance degree,’ she says, ‘but Mum and Dad told me it was a fool idea – a road paved only with long hours and hardship, and no gratitude from
the people you were supposed to be helping. I remember Dad’s exact words: “Why choose a hard life when you can grow fat off the public sector, darlin’? Get into the NHS, and you’re set-up for life! Only disability benefits is better, and God never saw fit to bless us in that respect.”’
Linda pauses and looks down at her hands. ‘So now here I am. Do I feel good about the choices I’ve made in life? No. But the fortune I’ve amassed inserting IVs and wiping up old folks’ shit has afforded me a better life for my family, so can I say I regret it? No. We might….we might even get to move down to Reading in a year or two. I mean, it’s a long way off – maybe more like 10 years. But we’ve got family there, so maybe they could help us get started. Just whilst we build up our share portfolio and whatnot.’
‘The fortune I’ve amassed inserting IVs and wiping up old folks’ shit has afforded me a better life for my family.’
Donny now works with youths
Donny from Alnwick is less optimistic about the future. ‘My mum and dad were social workers. Their parents were all social workers or teachers, and we come from a long line of people who laboured (pun intended) under the delusion that helping people was a morally good and socially productive thing to do with your life. So what hope was there for me? I’ve got an MBA, but every interview I go for, they get to the part of my CV that says I’m from the north-east, and it’s straight out the door. I used a friend’s Hampshire address for a while, but they’d always catch me out somehow. In one interview, I was just leaving, thinking I’d got the job, when they cracked a joke and I laughed. I didn’t get the job. It was only later that I realised they had been quoting Peter Kay at me.’
‘I’ve ended-up working as a youth worker now – telling kids they’ve got a future, pretending we don’t live in a shithole that hasn’t even been voted best place to live in Britain since 2002…It’s a joke, and it’s a sickness that goes right to the very heart of this part of the country.’
But there is still hope amongst some. In Glasgow and in Gunchester I visit several projects set-up by charitable trusts, and sustained by the tireless efforts of volunteers, to improve the quality of life for those who are not yet completely lost to the ravages of the social welfare system. In the South Gunchester suburb of Chorlton, I meet Gemma Cloud-Atlas and Dave Cameron (‘No relation, sadly!’), of philanthropic group Northern Rocks! who have been in this area for 7 months working and even living amongst these people, selflessly taking unpaid career breaks to show the few tribesmen here with most of their teeth and a clutch of GCSEs that there is hope, even in this interminably fruitless scion of humanity. ‘Once we arrived, the turnaround was almost instantaneous’, explains Gemma, in her irrepressibly charming Surrey voice, ‘we started with the absolute basics: emergency hummous handouts, career coaching triage tents, a week-long amnesty on Iceland food, etc. Within a week, there were the green shoots of semi-polite society. Miracles can happen.’
‘Then last month we tried our most ambitious tactic yet: taking a group of the most promising guys on Eurostar to the Dordogne. There were some incidents, most notably an unfortunate faux pas with the nose of a brie, but on the whole it was a success for everyone, and we’re looking into the feasibility of leading a trip to Goa in 2012.’ ‘That sounds ambitious!’ I say. ‘Yes, but we’ve got to take some risks. This generation is essentially lost, but perhaps, if the foundations have been laid, the children, or more realistically grandchildren, of these northerners may just hope to become the future’s southerners.’
Northern Rocks! have transformed this row of beaten-up immigrant shops into a civilised enclave of bars and gastro-eateries, galleries, and Paul Frank outlets (seen here during a trade unions rally). Perhaps not be what we’re used to, but for these people it’s the dab of pesto on a dry and moulding barm.
And, as Gemma quite rightly reminds me, once this crumbled city was the founding home of this very publication, during its 19th century halcyon days as a capital-driven centre of human strip-mining. Can’t it be that great again? Can civilisation return here? ‘We don’t want to give false hope’, says Gemma’s colleague, John Rhombus, ‘after all, we’re basically talking about complete desolation of the fundamental human spirit of aspiration. It’s baby steps. But, yes, perhaps one day. It’ll never be a Guildford or a Maidstone, but maybe, one day, a Luton.’
‘The woman added, “And I don’t even give a shit about Stephen Fry.” At that point I just had to walk away. ’
Students in Hull model their new school uniforms, supplied by Saatchi and Saatchi
On the day I join the team they are handing out free iPhones and Blackberries. The uptake is good and enthusiastic. But, as Dave points out, it’s only half the battle. ‘We can hand out all this gear, and they appreciate it up to a point – texting friends and calling their “Nannas”, but simple acts that we do everyday are anathema to these people.
‘I mean, one woman described Twitter to me as “Arse-clenchingly awful, solipsistic nonsense.” She then added, “And I don’t even give a shit about Stephen Fry.” At that point I just had to walk away. Or I would have hit her. You just have to accept that some people just can’t be helped. Won’t be helped.’
At the end of my two days in the land that time (but not crime) forgot, I return to my studio apartment in Welwyn Garden City, reflecting on my experiences. I have seen the depths to which parts of England have sunk. But we are all responsible for this tragedy, still playing out, even as I write. They are more responsible than us, of course, but can we really blame these tattered souls for their ignorance? For their poor earning potential and lack of BUPA health plans? For buying into the fallacious and insidious dream of equality for all? Yes, we can. I for one am glad that this publication backed Nick Clegg’s Tory-lites for victory. Because now I may live without fear that I will one day have to wake up between Primark sheets in a faux-leather Argos bed.
Leeds