TV doc shows filmmaker’s ordeal at far right protest
AHARD-HITTING documentary shows the moment rapper Professor Green is subjected to a tirade of abuse as he challenged Britain First members during a march in Rochdale.
The rapper-turned-filmmaker questioned BF deputy leader Jayda Fransen during July’s protest, as the Observer reported at the time.
Scenes shot for the Channel 4 show White Working Class Men, show far-right supporters chanting ‘no surrender to the P*** scum’ as they marched through the town centre protesting against the 2012 Rochdale grooming scandal.
Professor Green is also filmed asking Fransen whether she thinks the march ‘incites hatred.’
She replies: “It makes sense to us to say don’t build a mosque on every corner of our Christian country.
“I am here because I want these Pakistani Muslims to get their filthy hands off of our kids.”
When Green challenges her views he is targeted by BF supporters who accuse him of ‘defending rapists,’ prompting him to shout back that he would ‘never defend rapists.’
While speaking to a protester he later adds: “The country has not been very kind to you and that’s not the fault of anyone Muslim or foreign. It’s a class problem it’s not a race problem.”
In an interview after the documentary, which follows six working class white men from across the UK, Professor Green described the march as ‘horrible,’ adding: “I hated every minute of it.
“I was really reluctant to go. But I felt as though I wouldn’t be doing my job properly if I didn’t. I suppose when people don’t have anything, the only thing they feel they have is their whiteness.
“They’re angry, their lives aren’t great, and there’s someone they can blame for it.”
Earlier in the documentary the presenter meets 20-year-old right wing sympathiser David, from Bolton, as he plays football with his cannabis smoking friends in a park.
David, the documentary hears, lost both his parents about five years earlier and is living in a hostel.
Unable to read or write, his prospects appear bleak.
Professor Green is shown accompanying David to a takeaway in Bolton which gives out free food to the homeless and people living in hostels and later to his dad’s grave.
He tells the presenter that his dad died of a heart attack and his mum died of cancer shortly afterwards when he was ‘about 15 or 16.’
David added: “I suffered with it bad, I went missing for about a month. There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed. I am never going to be happy.”
Professor Green says learning of David’s experiences was one of the most difficult parts of making the show.
He said: “Finding out that David had missed out on two housing opportunities because he was illiterate, and he had no-one to read the letters to him, because he’d lost his mum and his dad. That was hard.”
But six weeks after the Rochdale march the pair meet up again, and David’s life appears to have taken a turn for the better.
Now working as a roofer and living with his girlfriend, David says he has rejected his far-rights views. Everyone is the same, we still bleed the same blood, we still have hearts,” he said.
He added: “I have a girlfriend I can come back to. She is good for me. I just want to keep working. I don’t want to f*** it up.” »●White Working Class Britain is available to view at channel4.com. The second episode is on Channel 4 at 10pm on Tuesday, January 16.
“It was horrible, I hated every minute of it”