This essay was originally published on a blog called Cloudbanks and Shimbleshanks on 8th May 2015, the day after the Conservatives won an outright majority in the General Election. Re-reading it a couple of days ago, I felt that it warranted re-publishing on Harping On. In spite of some of my more youthful writing, it’s shocking how pertinent it still reads, in particular with the idea that we need to use creativity and public space to combat inaction and apathy. As the world has been on a slippery political slope of increased austerity and hate ever since 2015, it is even more urgent that we are engaged and active now.

The 2015 General Election result undoubtedly set a precedent for everything that has followed since: most obviously with Brexit, but also for the much needed rise of Jeremy Corbyn and a regenerated socialist discourse. I know I did not do nearly enough during the EU Referendum campaign to get the result that I wanted and that didn’t come to pass. I hope, however, that in the publication of my novel ‘Tender is the Gelignite’, past me will be satisfied with my attempt at using creativity politically; the mad beastie of a book I have produced that explicitly critiques, mocks and performs the chaos that the 2015 election result laid the foundations for.  

When the broadcasting Exit Poll was published last night showing a Conservative outright majority, for a lot of people alarm bells started ringing. So many, myself included, were convinced that a hung parliament was on the cards only to see a seemingly endless sea of sickly, putrid blue envelope the country. For anyone who regards this country more as a society and a community than an economy perpetuated by self-interest and individualism, the result has been disastrous.

We all know what’s coming: the sinisterly named welfare ‘reforms’, a word that suggests progression and change but now signifies cuts and rolling back; tax cuts to the wealthiest and most affluent proportions of society; the NHS being carved up and sold off on the sly; security and protection services cut and contracts given to private companies; more people using food banks; cuts to sexual and mental health services; cuts to domestic violence services; council houses not being built, and those that are built being sold off; large corporations benefitting from state funding and not paying their taxes; banks still not paying back the £1 trillion that public money paid to save them because of reckless lending; and schools following an increasingly archaic and redundant curriculum. Just the tip of the iceberg for a party that had almost half of its members vote against gay marriage, who have ballsed up various inquiries into the sexual abuse of children because they have too many links to the perpetrating Establishment, and who want to abolish the European Human Rights Act. With David Cameron declaring in an uncanny and not at all un-ironic way that he wants to lead a ‘one-nation’ government, harking back to Benjamin Disraeli’s paternalistic One Nation Toryism, it looks like we’re set to be dragged back, even further than we already have been, into the recesses of the 19^th century.

Again, we have seen that this country is held to ransom by Rupert Murdoch. It was easy to start believing that the power of social media could become a meaty force to be reckoned with, what with #milifandom, the fuelling of the #greensurge on Facebook and Twitter and the ease with which we can now engage with other people and with politicians themselves. It seems, however, that the old-school newspapers and tabloids, those slabs of tangible news (sic. bollocks) have seeped into public consciousness more successfully. Facebook has been recently heavily criticised for an algorithm that essentially filters what we see and read depending on our clicks and likes, thus ensuring that our newsfeeds become clogged up with articles and posts that we want to see: it is the blatant construction of false hope. Nothing I or anyone else of a left persuasion could have posted would ever have been able to compare with the reams of nasty vitriol spewing forth daily from the front pages of The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Times in supermarkets, on buses and everywhere in between. Once again, as with the case of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, the Murdoch-run rags have undoubtedly helped their Tory pals to seal the defeat of the opposition. It proves that once again, he should never be underestimated; the media is society’s main ideological machine, the conveyor of hegemony, and boy did Murdoch’s cronies take themselves to a whole new level of spiteful this election with the industrial smearing of Ed Miliband. They even managed to track down @twcuddleston, the girl who founded #milifandom, turning up on her doorstep having mysteriously found her unpublished address.

After the initial shock and panic of the election results, everything has become very clear. We need to shout louder, make our points clearer and harness this anger and sadness that so many of us are feeling right now and do something to counter the predominant narrative. I would argue that people have voted Conservative because of the endless diatribe of fear and austerity that we have been pummelled with. In these times of crisis, it looks like many people have decided to vote in a way that they will think will better them and their families specifically, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is that it facilitates a climate whereby people don’t vote for the sort of society they want to see as a whole, but for what will benefit them and their own for the longest time possible. This is an idea that has appealed to people of all social circumstances and is, perhaps, one of Thatcher’s most lasting legacies. It is time for hope: an end to the fear of difference in any of its racial, sexual or gendered forms and a return to the compassion and empathy that years of crisis in the early twentieth century created within the people of this country.

One of the books Michael Gove famously removed from the GCSE syllabus was To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel is full of important questions regarding race, gender and the interpretation of the law; but perhaps the most prominent ideological feature that can be read within the language and plot is the idea of trying to relate to another person’s ideas or actions, with Atticus most famously telling Scout, ‘you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it’. It’s such a simple concept, walking around as though you are another person, seeing with their eyes, feeling their emotions, but it can be, understandably, incredibly difficult and disconcerting. But that doesn’t make it any less important or worthwhile to do. We need to stop being so self-involved and think about a society that is fair and kind, not run on a heady quest to make ever more profit for oneself, no matter the cost to human lives and human experience.

In his book on the Establishment, Owen Jones talks about the need for grassroots political activism, think tanks and assemblies, and I completely agree. I seriously recommend the aforementioned book (the chapter on corporations scrounging off the largesse of the state in particular makes for simultaneously fascinating and sobering reading), but I think this is also the time for arts and creativity to, once again, to walk hand-in-hand with the political ideas. We need to produce more literature, more music, more film, more comedy that challenges the ideas that the Tories stand for. Whether we lean with Labour, the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, TUSC or that empty shell of a party the Liberal Democrats, we need to be united and organised in our challenge to Tory and neo-liberal dogma. Undoubtedly, the SNP are going to give the Westminster cartel a complete headache with their grit, determination and passion, and we can do the same. The writers, the musicians, the film-makers, the academics, the twenty-somethings lost in the 21^st century maelstrom of debt, unaffordable housing and a struggling NHS that we have inherited, need to use our creativity to reverse the consensus. Political activists need to join forces with bands, artists need to represent the struggle of unions and workers, we need to use our talents to hammer home that even though the Tories have this majority, they are not good enough for us. The pages of magazines and newspapers should be full of hope, images of like-minded people from different races, cultures, genders and sexual orientations in solidarity with one another.

Director extraordinaire Michel Gondry once said that ‘Every great idea is on the verge of being stupid’, which is both comforting and empowering. Here’s a potential one that could work: I always used to think that university elections were one and lost in toilets: stalls used to be plastered with mass produced stickers and flyers, and what better time to get to know someone’s policy than when you have a bit of time to kill in the loo? Similarly, in light of Protein World’s Beach Body advert, billboards were defaced and edited in small acts of powerful protestation. Maybe if we start reclaiming public spaces like loos or even better advertising boards (that invade almost every inch of our lives to make us aspire and feel insecure) on a big scale, on an un-ignorable scale, maybe we can start helping people to see beyond their front gardens, encouraging critical thinking, undercutting the power of the media and thereby the ideological dogma of our new government. This is the time for ideas and creativity as well as activism, and hopefully in 5 years time, we can shake of this exhausting, dead Tory weight that’s been holding us down for years.

Thanks again to the monument that is Florence Welch for the lyrics that inspired and serve as title to this essay.