crossposted from Paul Sagar
A few months ago I saw Billy Bragg play at the launch of Searchlight’s “Hope Not Hate” anti-BNP campaign. I’ve been a Bragg fan for some years, and it was a great performance.
On the way home, my girlfriend Beth and I got talking about Bragg’s songs and the strand of left-wing tradition he hails from. Beth felt that whilst Bragg’s tunes are enjoyable and it was a good performance, there was something about it all that made her feel fundamentally excluded. The reason was quite straightforward. She’s neither a man nor a trade unionist.
That might sound strange, but it really isn’t. The gig took place at the TUC‘s Congress Centre, and was directly affiliated with the trades union movement. Bragg himself talked about the importance of trade unionism, of the struggle of the workers, and of the tragedy that the grandchildren of workers who went to Spain to fight fascists might now be voting BNP. He gave performances of There’s Power in the Union, Between the Wars and a stirring version of The Internationale.
But for a woman who comes from a lower-middle class family, who is not a member of a union and whose parents were not union members, in an era where union membership has declined enormously, all this rhetoric of “the workers” – which, given the historical context, of course meant unionised working men – was all rather exclusive. So whilst she enjoyed Bragg’s songs, Beth couldn’t help feeling that this was a performance for people from another time and place and of another gender, and that she wasn’t really welcome. (Me, I enjoy pretending that I live in the 1930s and am off to Spain to kill fascists, so the dis-juncts between Bragg’s words and my identity were easier to ignore due to deeply-entrenched personal delusions).
Such issues clearly go beyond Billy Bragg. How “the left” self-identifies in an era when most of the working class are holed-up in low-grade, low-paid, non-unionised service sector jobs is an important question. What it says to women in that kind of work, as well as those who are managing to do better, is another. The question of how “the left” will appeal to wider audiences now that its traditional unionised base is a shadow of what it was is perhaps the biggest of all.
Yet I’m going to put those issues aside and focus on being fair to Bragg. For he is certainly not the macho, working-man obsessed (chauvinist?) I may have made him out to be. Indeed, one song in particular offers insights into the perceptions and applications of gender politics which are quite intriguing.
Bragg’s Greetings to the New Brunette is song-writing at its best. A catchy tune with lyrics that make points and get you thinking, the song describes Bragg’s relationship with a woman (“Shirley”) who has outspoken feminist beliefs. Some of the lines are cracking:
Sometimes when we’re as close as this/ It’s like we’re in a dream/ How can you lie there and think of England/When you don’t even know who’s in the team?
Just a clever turn of phrase and a good rhyme? Maybe. But also perhaps pointing to something more subtle: the idea that female sexual pleasure can and should extend beyond merely lying back and thinking of England – and the incomprehension of a man who cannot understand what it is about female sexuality he’s missing that’s causing his partner to lie back and think of England in the first place.
Shirley/Your sexual politics have left me all of a muddle/Shirley/We are joined in the ideological cuddle
The point about confusion inferred above seems reinforced here – but with beautiful effect. Bragg can’t understand a lot of Shirley’s politics, but rather than pushing her away they’re joined together in the ideological cuddle. It’s a beautiful example of anti-machoism; accepting his partner’s beliefs though he confesses to be muddled by them, and embracing a special intimacy which follows.
Politics and pregnancy/Are debated as we empty our glasses/And how I love those evening classes
Again, the conjoining of pregnancy with politics appears quite deliberate and going beyond mere alliteration. Along with the line
I’m celebrating my love for you/With a pint of beer and a new tattoo
there’s a definite nod to class identity, but the point of Bragg seeing these debates about politics and pregnancy with a feminist partner as evening classes is instructive: he loves to learn from this woman, who is introducing him to ideas perhaps not previously encountered, and which given Bragg’s male identity in a patriarchal society, must be something of an eye-opener.
Like all the greatest song-writing, however, Bragg’s is attuned to the ups and downs of life. A sexual and emotional relationship is not always plain-sailing, after all:
Shirley/You really know how to make a young man angry/Shirley/Can we get through the night without mentioning family?
Bragg confesses to be at times exasperated. This could, I suppose, be interpreted in at least two ways. Negatively: Bragg only indulges his partner’s politics when it suits him, and he soon tires of it and wants this nagging woman to leave him be. More ambiguously: sexual relationships are hard work, and perhaps made noticeably harder by the awareness of (radical?) gender politics. I prefer the latter interpretation, not least because it reflects my personal experience. I also like to think that Bragg feels the same way I do: that such relationships are more difficult, yes, but also infinitely more worthwhile.
It is the final verse, however, that contains the most depth and fascinates the most:
Here we are in our summer years/ Living on ice cream and chocolate kisses/ Would the leaves fall from the trees/ If I was your old man and you were my missus?
Those last two lines are wide open to interpretation. Is Bragg attempting to talk his partner out of her views, to subdue and subjugate her? I hope not. It certainly isn’t the way I hear those words: not a straightforward proposal for marriage, but rather the posing of a deeply relevant question about identity and compromise. Would the world go so much worse – would the very leaves fall from the trees? – if Shirley compromised some of her beliefs and accepted the institution of marriage, for all its glaring anti-feminist aspects and history, in exchange for the benefits such a betrothal might bring?
If that is indeed what Bragg is asking, then he opens important questions about integrity and compromise when it comes to living out one’s gender politics. Whilst many feminists (both men and women) may know themselves implacably opposed to marriage, the question for many others is not so clear cut. Bragg poses an important question – and like the best poets he leaves it open for us to answer ourselves.
In doing so he also shows that feminism and gender politics is not just for women or liberal, University-educated men with time on their hands, but also for working class lads from Essex as well. If only there were more popular artists (and Essex lads) like him.
Posted by Left Outside 
