Man of Steel
Before I write about my interview with Mark Steel, comedian, Independent columnist and occasional broadcaster, I ought to start with a disclaimer. I love Mark Steel passionately, and have done since I read his book Reasons to be Cheerful when I was seventeen. It changed my life, turned me into a lefty, and showed me that you can put across your point of view in a funny, forceful way. So if you hate the articles I write for Redbrick, blame Mark Steel; it’s probably his writing style that I imitate subconsciously.
Reasons to be Cheerful, published in 2001, details the main political events of the past twenty-five years. Steel tells of his small part in those events, as a Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP) activist. How could an impressionable seventeen year old not love its first paragraph, which is one of my most favourite passages in any book ever. If Gordon Brown wants a motto for Britain, he could do worse than this:
“The people I find most infuriating are the perennially miserable: the sort who say, ‘just my luck’ or ‘story of my life, that is’. I feel like saying to them, ‘Look. If you are a Hutu from Rwanda who accidentally strolls into an armed Tutsi warrior camp, then you are entitled to go, ‘Huh, just my luck. Story of my life’. But if you've gone down the shops for a packet of biscuits and they’ve run out of your favourite sort, shut the fuck up and get on with it.”
My views have changed beyond recognition since first reading Reasons to be Cheerful. But has the author changed his political views since he wrote the book?
“I don’t think so; not fundamentally anyway. But if you don’t change your views at all, you are either not listening to people, or being dishonest to yourself. Most say that they haven’t changed their views when they obviously have. Like all these radical students who become cabinet ministers and suddenly start supporting unsupportable wars.
“I interviewed Peter Hain for a programme I did for Radio Four about Rock Against Racism (RAR). Hain was one of the three founding members. He was Northern Ireland Secretary when I interviewed him, and he had two guys from Special Branch with guns in his office. One of them said, ‘Thirty years ago we would have been chasing him, now we are protecting him.’
“It was the day when Parliament was voting on Trident [In March Parliament voted to renew Trident, the UK’s Nuclear submarine system, at an estimated cost of £20 billion]. Peter Hain did this fantastic piece about RAR and the Anti-Nazi League, and how important it was in combating the National Front. He praised the SWP for its role in the RAR campaign. As soon as he finished his mobile goes. It’s an MP, and Peter Hain is trying to twist this person’s arm into voting for Trident”. Not exactly the act of a left-wing firebrand, is it?
What does he think are the “Reasons to be Cheerful” for us at the moment? “I chose the title at the time because things obviously weren’t all that great. I find feel-good films – ones that end with everyone sat around a fire with a fluffy dog – the most depressing kind of film. Life just isn’t like that. The true feel-good film is full of pain and nastiness, like a good blues song. The point I was trying to make was that the little contributions can change the world. All those little Tom Paines and little Tony Benns really do make a difference.”
Steel is at the University of Birmingham to talk at a “Troops Out” meeting arranged by the Stop the War Coalition. It is part of a nationwide tour of universities, in which he speaks along with Ben Griffin, a former Marine and Stop the War activist.
It seems strange that despite the opposition to the Iraq war increasing, that the numbers at anti-war protests have fallen in that time. Did he think that the 1 million strong march in 2003 made a difference? “I think it did make a difference. Demonstrations always make the other side nervous. The Project for the New American Century had every intention of attacking Iran, but four and a half years down the line it still hasn’t happened. So the anti-war movement has had an impact”.
“The troops in Iraq aren’t there to liberate the people of Iraq. The American establishment don’t give a toss about them. They went there because they (America) are an empire, and they want to control as big a piece of the globe as possible.
In the talk later Steel says, “All the reasons they gave for the war have been proved wrong. The United Nations announced that there is now more torture taking place in Iraq than under Saddam.
This is an achievement of pure genius, as spectacular as Puff Daddy covering a Sting song and making it even worse. When Blair was justifying the war by reciting the levels of torture under Saddam, no one realised he meant Saddam wasn’t doing enough.”
We move from Iraq to the state of the left. This is the subject of Steel’s next book, What’s Going On? Another book with a musical themed title, it is due to be released next summer. “There seems a massive confusion in the left. More people are hostile to world domination by the demands of big business, and are hostile to war and global warming. The confusion is about what to do, and who to vote for. In the past those with a social conscience would vote Labour, but now that’s not the case. The Labour left has never been weaker. The Scottish Socialist Party, which was doing well, imploded in a row over whether Tommy Sheridan went to a swinger’s club.”
It’s typical of the left, I reply. (Despite being a part of the left, whinging about how useless parts of the left are is one of my favourite hobbies). “Yeah. I say in the book, in other parts of the world, if the left gains life, its leaders would be shot or put into exile. Now, the parties just disintegrate in a row over a swingers club. Or Big Brother”.
This is a reference to Respect MP and party leader George Galloway appearing on the reality show, and neglecting his constituency to impersonate a cat on national television. Since the interview with Steel, Respect has imploded. One faction of the coalition locked the other faction out of its national offices, in a row which has moved from obscure left-wing blogs to the national press. All of this would seem to prove Steel’s point about the state of the left.
Despite all that, talking to Mark Steel did make me optimistic again, and made me want to campaign and try to change the world. I don’t get that by listening to politicians – for some reason Alistair Darling and Jack Straw don’t inspire the same fervour in me. I suspect I’m not the only person for whom this is the case, and that Mark Steel has lit several torches that still burn. Reasons to be cheerful indeed.
