Orwellian: Top honour for Scotsman columnist
Scotsman columnist, rapper and writer Darren Mcgarvey has been awarded the UK’S most prestigious prize for political writing after his book Poverty Safari scooped the Orwell Book prize at a ceremony in London last night.
Scottish rapper and Scotsman columnist Darren Mcgarvey has been awarded the UK’S most prestigious prize for political writing at a ceremony in London.
Mcgarvey, also known as Loki, was honoured with the Orwell Prize for his “searing examination” of workingclass life in his book Poverty Safari.
The prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation each year to the book which comes closest to the English writer George Orwell’s ambition “to make political writing into an art”.
The book, Mcgarvey’s first, aims to give a voice to people in deprived communities across the country and features autobiographical notes from the rapper on his own experience of growing up in Pollok.
Chair of judges Andrew Adonis described similarities between the book and some of Orwell’s work, adding: “George Orwell would have loved this book. It echoes Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.
“It is heart-rending in its life story and its account of family breakdown and poverty. But by the end there is not a scintilla of self-pity and a huge amount of optimism.”
He continued: “It made me see the country and its social condition in a new light.”
Mcgarvey joins the likes of Labour home secretary Alan Johnson and novelist James Meek as winners of the prize.
Fellow judge Alex Clark added: “What distinguishes Poverty Safari from a ‘straight’ description of a workingclass life is his searing examination of the narratives that surround poverty and the way in which no individual, least of all him, can neatly be fitted into them.”
Mcgarvey was presented with a cheque for £3,000 by Richard Blair, George Orwell’s son, on what would have been Orwell’s 115th birthday at a ceremony at the Royal Society of Arts building in London.
Speaking after being awarded the prize, Mcgarvey said: “I can’t quite believe it to be honest.”
He added: “I’ve been living in a bit of a whirlwind since the book’s release last November, so had been too busy to give the Orwell Prize much thought.
“As a writer, obviously this is tremendously satisfying, but what’s more important is the subject I’ve chosen to write about – poverty. It’s something that even the people fighting it often misunderstand.
“What I hoped to emphasise with the book is that poverty is more than data or statistics. It’s an experience that shapes values and attitudes and a failure to understand this and address it has led to great political instability in the UK.”
Mcgarvey continued: “I’m justhappytodomybitindrawing attention to a lot of the nuance that is missed whenever we discuss the issue.”
Families of gang members living in council housing should be evicted, according to Home Office minister Victoria Atkins. She recently gave the thumbs up to a roll-out of the pilot scheme currently being trialled in north London. It means whole families in council housing may face eviction if their troublesome sons, daughters or siblings do not curb their criminal behaviour.
Atkins, the privately educated daughter of former Conservative MP and MEP, Sir Robert Atkins, claimed it would force gang members involved in violent crime to “understand the consequences” of their actions.
She told a newspaper last week: “In the most serious cases, with these people who are exploiting young people, making the lives of local residents a misery, putting fear into people’s hearts when they’re picking children up from the school gates, I think absolutely they should understand the consequences of their criminal behaviour.”
This is the sort of thing I am obligated to get utterly furious about. Not only the policy but the political party that dreamt it up. But I’m having a good day today, so I’m going to attempt to rein in the fury in a genuine attempt to persuade as many people as possible that this idea is extremely unsound.
Unlike many of my comrades on the left, I try to take Conservatives on their merits. Even more so since becoming a father, because I now have something to conserve. I make a lot of effort not to conflate the average Tory voter with the average Etonian politician or the average Tory policy and do my best to at least understand the logical trajectory of a Conservative opinion, even if I do not agree with it. I also recognise many people currently vote Conservative because Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, has lost much of its centrist appeal.
But every now and then, my tolerance is pushed to its absolute limit. Every now and then, I’ll read or hear of a Conservative policy that makes so little sense to me that I feel I have no choice but to summon my inner left-wing Hulk. So please, let me outline, in a brief way, the problems I have with a policy that would threaten whole families with eviction due to the behaviour of one member.
Firstly, it’s wholly unjust. You cannot hold other people responsible for crimes committed by someone else. It’s an infringement on the most basic human rights.
Secondly, this policy discriminates against people who live in social housing. If gang members happened to live with family in a mortgaged home, this policy would not impact them in any way. Lastly, local authorities have a statutory obligation to provide suitable accommodation to anyone presenting as homeless, meaning a family, once evicted, would simply be added to the lengthening list of people in crisis. This at a time when a social housing shortage, wage stagnation, a precarious labour market and an extremely hostile welfare system are pushing increasing numbers of UK households into poverty and destitution.
This deterrence strategy is part of an initiative that involves police working with councils, probation workers, psychologists and social workers to try to stop people getting involved with gangs. This holistic approach must be acknowledged as positive; gangs become attractive to many young people because they provide safety and security in communities where the threat of violence is acute and constant.
Superintendent Nick Davies, the police commander spearheading the scheme in north London, told a newspaper that the power to threaten families with eviction “seems to be a particularly effective strategy in changing the behaviour” of the gang members – which gives me pause for thought. It appears the threat of eviction is a last resort that would only be invoked if the holistic approach failed to produce a behavioural change.
Still, on the surface, this policy looks and feels wrong. But should my reasoning be guided solely by my initial moral impulse? Like me, many have reacted instinctively, based on an understanding that gang violence is often a symptom of deeper social problems. It looks like an attack, launched by pampered Conservative politicians, on people living in deprived communities, many from ethnic minorities. But let’s not lose sight of some vital context. Moped robberies, murders, post-code wars and acid attacks are rife in London. In 2018, there were 1,296 stabbings up to the end of April, according to official statistics. In February, more than 250 knives and swords were seized in just one week.
For the families of those affected by violent crime, it must be hard to hear people like me arguing that gang violence must be treated as a public health problem and not simply a criminal justice issue.
The government continues to pin the rise in violence on drug-related gang culture and social media, while underplaying cuts to policing and youth services. I’d be inclined to grudgingly support threatening families of gang members with eviction if it had been demonstrated that every other approach had failed.
But, given the loss of thousands of police officers, it’s hard to view this policy as anything but cosmet- ic – an attempt to appear tough at a time when services are either being under-resourced or cut completely.
This idea can be added to the long list of social policies enacted by the current Conservative government that reveal a deep lack of understanding of the role stress plays in creating the insecurity that drives a lot of behaviour in deprived communities. It’s difficult to see how plunging families into residential instability will achieve anything but more social dysfunction.