Another speaker, a local Methodist minister I think, commenting on the recent riots in Northern Ireland following the violent attack by a Somali individual, noted that he had spoken to a fifteen-year-old youth involved in the riots. This youth had apparently told him that he was rioting because ‘they are slitting our throats and nobody is listening to us’. Rioting, the youth suggested, was the only way for people like him – young, working class, white – to be heard. The minister concluded by affirming that it was essential that we do listen to individuals like this young rioter and that their voice is heard, or else we will never address the real issues.
My answer to this is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Since the riots I have seen both Ken Loach’s 2023 film, The Old Oak and Russell T. Davies’s Tip Toe on Channel Four television. Both are hard hitting social dramas and both, in their own ways, attempt to give a voice to those, like the young rioter, who are not heard in our society, those who are now voting for Reform, or Restore, or supporting even more radical groups.
Loach sets his drama on the coal fields of Durham and focuses on the impact of a group of Syrian refugees who are bused in to live in an ex-mining village that is already struggling with the destruction of their livelihood, identity and community. It is older men, ex-labour voters no doubt, who remember the community and the pride of the mining past but who now have nothing, and resent the arrival of new people who appear to be given preferential treatment while they are ignored and rejected by the state. The film is ultimately positive, showing how eating together, sharing stories of suffering and mutual aid can lead to renewal and a revitalised sense of community.
Tip Toe is much, much bleaker. The focus here is sexuality, and more tangentially trans identities. The series notes how hard-won freedoms and recognition within the queer community are being lost and how new (old?) prejudices are being given permission to be expressed in public. The protagonist, if that is the right word, is an electrician who has little work, has been banned from building sites for bullying, and who is trying to hold together his own, masculine, identity within his family (with two late teenage sons) when all that makes up that identity has been taken from him, not least, in his eyes, by those who appear to be benefiting from the current EDI culture, in this case the gay community personified by his neighbour, a successful club owner in Manchester’s gay village. I will not say more about the plot so as not to give away any spoilers. Suffice it to say that this does not follow Leach towards a positive outcome.
Both the film and the television series are excellent at giving voice to those, like the young rioter in the Northern Ireland, who have undoubtedly been silenced in recent years and who are now looking to right wing causes to give then permission to voice their frustration and hurt. It is not, therefore, that rioting is the only way that such people, primarily men, can be heard. However, neither Loach nor Davis are entirely sympathetic to those in this position, at least not politically, and in both cases the voice of the frustrated, disenfranchised, silenced men is portrayed negatively, as something that can only lead to violence, something that needs to be overcome.
Listening, therefore, is only ever half of the issue. Yes, we need to listen, to recognise this discourse, the men and women out there who have been overlooked, left behind, silenced, by the dominant discourses of the last twenty years or more. There are important things that need to be said and to be heard. However, we need also to recognise that simply giving voice to such groups, and doing nothing more, will only ever lead to negative outcomes.
My first reaction to hearing the Methodist minister on the radio was to say ‘yes’ let’s listen, but we also need to help that young man to see how negative his view is, and how wrong it is. ‘They’, as a group, are not murdering his people in the street. This was the act of a lone, probably damaged, individual. Not all immigrants, or all black people, or all queer people, or whoever it is, can be lumped together as ‘the enemy’. There is an educational task as well as a listening task.
Part of me, however, wants to be wary of such a response. Am I not being patronising, all very white liberal, in saying that we must educate, put right, such individuals? Perhaps I am, but that does not necessarily mean I am wrong. What is the alternative. Of course we must also rebalance the structures. In both Loach and Davies, the underlying issue is economic; the lack of work, the inability to claim the traditional white working-class male identity. We might question the basis of that identity, and the (toxic?) masculinities that underpin it, but we must also see that society needs to offer work and hope to such individuals as well. These things are never easy, but this is, perhaps, the most critical ( and dangerous) issue facing society today. Let’s hope a new Prime Minister sees this and can begin to address some of the underlying issues.
Martin Stringer Quartet 