Tuesday 10 February 2015

Being Blunt about classism

Several weeks ago saw James Blunt hitting the headlines after penning an open letter to Chris Bryant, Labour MP and Shadow Minister for the Arts. Bryant had spoken openly about the dominance of an elite, privileged class within the arts, naming Blunt (real name James Hillier Blount) and his Harrow background as an illustration. Blunt’s reply, a vitriolic open letter, slammed what he dubbed the ‘politics of envy’, referring to Bryant himself as a ‘classist gimp.’ A large part of the letter focused on how Blunt feels his boarding school education not only failed to help him find success in the music industry, but actually held him back. He stated that ‘every step of the way, my background has been AGAINST me succeeding in the music business’. This view has been echoed on Twitter by various journalists, writers and artists, arguing that they have occasionally been turned down for jobs for being too posh, or having a ‘plummy’ accent. Ironically, the reason I read those tweets is that all of these people were speaking from a platform they had reached by becoming successful in their field. Their views could be heard by a lot of people because they had made it. Perhaps yes, along the way there were rejections, but they had made it. A privately educated journalist living comfortably in London trying to argue that she had been hard done by because of her accent, jars on me when such a small amount of working class people manage to break into her profession.

This failure to recognise privilege is mirrored in Blunt’s letter. Perhaps nobody at Harrow (which this year is charging fees of £34,590 ) walked up to Blunt on the last day of term to offer him a contract with Syco, but it is ridiculous to claim that his class and background were of no help to him at all. The music lessons he had as a child, early exposure to different music, the financial freedom to pursue a career in the arts, the confidence to take a risk and know that if it went badly he wouldn’t face the bailiffs, or have to choose between food and heating. Perhaps to Blunt these things don’t seem like much; despite being invaluable, they are only truly noticed in their absence. In his letter Blunt spoke of how he saved up money from a holiday job to buy a guitar as if expecting a pat on the back; apparently the fact that this would be simply impossible for some seems not to have occurred to him. Young people forced to plough every penny they earn into rent, or back into the family, is a concept so alien he just refuses to acknowledge it. His detachment from reality coupled with his unwillingness to acknowledge his own privilege is infuriating, especially in his argument that to level the playing field would be to ‘remove the G from GB’.

Julie Walters added her voice to the debate by stating that she wouldn’t have been able to become an actress if she was trying to break into the industry today, criticising the lack of opportunity for working class actors and how rarely working class life is depicted in written drama. Steve McQueen, Oscar winning director of 12 Years a Slave, was told at school that his best option was to train to become a plumber. He had already been ‘marked for labour’ as a teenager, told what his place was. It is chilling to think about the talent we could have lost and the talent that we are still losing every day that we fail to change the system. Students are routinely told that undertaking a degree in an arts subject such as history, English literature and drama, will leave them jobless- oh, unless they have the connections and the money to make a name for themselves, in which case, they’re actively encouraged. We are very much becoming part of a culture that is steadily equating the arts with unemployment; a culture where excited, creative students try to convince themselves that, no, a job in the arts doesn’t matter that much, they’ll settle for something else.

One of the issues about privilege is that often, it’s invisible to those who possess it, prompting claims such as ‘anyone can make it if they work hard enough.’ Privilege gives you the ability not to shrink away to a corner at a networking event. It gives you the time and space to be truly creative without worrying about having too much month left at the end of your money. The confidence to jump head first and know you’ll survive anyway. The chance to follow a career path that doesn’t have a clear, regular income set out from the beginning. Whether James Blunt knows it or not, he has been lucky enough to have this behind him. Although I don’t dispute that he worked hard for his success, there are so many people who never get a fraction of the chance that he did. How much talent are we losing in this country because we’re sitting back and allowing a career in the arts to become the preserve of those with the right contacts, the right circumstances and the right amount of money? How contemptible is it that someone’s wide-eyed, childlike, irrepressible passion is stripped away by their early twenties because they realise ‘people like them’ can’t have that sort of career? I am constantly told that an English degree will leave me unemployable. I am constantly told that journalism won’t work for someone like me. But James, you’re wrong about the ‘politics of envy.’  I’m not jealous. I’m searing white hot angry.

Recently, I’ve witnessed a few different instances of hard working, talented, incredible people losing out on something because of game playing and the way the system works. It’s gutting to see, because it sends out a message of bleakness, a message of ‘what’s the point?’ What’s the point in pouring your heart and soul into something if the result is inevitable from the start? Why work your arse off day after day when the system will never change? It’s a hard knock to take, a difficult truth to stomach. However, also recently, I was lucky enough to listen to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, talk at my university. She left a clear message: you will have knocks. They will hurt. But you have to pick yourself up and carry on, because the alternative is much less palatable. She spoke of how, currently, we don’t have a meritocracy- but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep striving for one. Giving up will only allow classism to reproduce itself, protecting those and the top and condemning those at the bottom. Over the past few years I’ve learned how it feels to throw away what you really want. I’m not willing to make those choices anymore. For some people at the top, striving for equality is synonymous with giving up their privilege, a fear that they disguise with rhetoric about ‘positive discrimination.’ The past few weeks have taught me that giving up is exactly what people like this would like to happen. So I won’t. And I will carry on hoping for change.