Brassed Off: Still Relevant 20 Years On
I went to a unique event last night. It was an open-air screening of the 1996 film ‘Brassed Off’, at Millennium Square, in the centre of Leeds. What made it unique was the live performance of the soundtrack with the Opera North Orchestra and the brass band that played in the film , the amazing Grimethorpe Colliery Brass Band, all held together brilliantly by the conductor, Ben Palmer.
Before I get on to the politics, let’s deal with the aesthetics. This was an incredibly moving event. The playing was exceptional, the screening pin-sharp (despite bright sunshine at times) and the sound and synchronisation of music to pictures faultless. There were some really powerful musical moments, and the addition of the live experience lifted what was already a classic set of acting performances. The spontaneous standing ovation (spoiler alert) when the band played at the Albert Hall was genuine and heartfelt.
The brilliance of the playing is then followed by the now-famous polemic by the much-missed Pete Postlethwaite:
New Labour’s John Prescott credited that speech with committing to support the coal-mining communities. The audible sobs from people around me reminded me of the power that great art has, not just to entertain, but to educate. But there’s something else about the event that I think is relevant to our times. I was brought up in a community like Grimley. We lived in back-to-backs in Jarrow. I’m not overly romantic about the coal industry, or living in that kind of poverty. I witnessed some pretty miserable scenes after drink had been taken. But there was a palpable spirit about the place, that I felt a little echo of last night.
Seeing this film at the end of a truly depressing week — where this government decides that it will no longer share weekly updates on No-Deal Brexit preparations because it will cause panic; that Facebook had been targeting ads by BeLeave the day after Jo Cox’s murder — ads that were are disgusting as they were untruthful; that news emerged that senior Tories met with Steve Bannon, and it barely registers on the news cycle — it graphically demonstrated the two forces that seem to be missing in political and social discourse in 2018: passion and community — two qualities that Jo Cox had in bucketfuls. They’ve been replaced by cynicism and self-interest. And apathy.
The scene in Brassed Off, where the heroine realises that the decision to close the pit had been taken 2 years before her report on its viability had been commissioned, reaffirms that cynicism in politics is nothing new. But in this post-truth world turned upside down, we seem, as a nation, to be sleepwalking — a recent study showed that we Brits are finding the news either too scary or too depressing — only 6% considered themselves to be well informed, with 60% feeling their views weren’t represented in politics. In contrast to ‘woke’ America, we’re turning to Love Island for something to distract, or numb, ourselves with.
In ‘Between The Wars’ Billy Bragg summed up the heart of the British working class: “Sweet moderation, heart of this nation, desert us not, we are between the wars”. If you look at social media these days, it’s hard to find that sense of moderation. Truth is the currency of democracy, and we’re looking down the back of the sofa, desperate to find something, anything we can believe in. And if we don’t, we’re facing the death of democracy and the rise of fascism.
Can you be passionate and moderate at the same time? I believe you can. In ‘Out of The Wreckage’, George Monbiot chronicles how we disassembled our sense of community: the loss of public/social spaces; the death of adult education; the erosion of civilised public transport; the de-socialisation of education; the privatisation of social housing — the list goes on. He argues that we need to build a sense of political community, a participatory culture and find a common purpose. He maintains that we can’t look to politicians to do this for us — if we want to take back control of our lives, we have to do it from the bottom-up, and not rely on politicians. He’s got a point, but many are saying that the existing political structures are irreparably broken anyway — so we’ll probably see a radical reconstruction of the political party system over the next decade, whether Brexit happens or not.
As Danny says: “If this lot (the miners) were seals or whales, you’d all be up in arms. But they’re not, are they? They’re just ordinary common or garden decent human beings, and not one of them with an ounce of bloody hope left”. The crisis that we face now is far less obvious than that experienced by communities faced with neoliberal Thatcherism. But it’s just as existential — because it’s about how we find purpose, how we find meaning and truth, and even how we find each other.
Brassed Off gives us a warning, 20 years after its release, at what is at risk if we allow ourselves to be an irrelevance to political cynicism.
It’s being live screened again in Birmingham and Newcastle on September 7th & 8th — don’t miss it.
