Trying to write a book about a moment in which things are falling apart is hard; doing so while living through that same moment has often felt like madness. More than anything else, I’m stupendously grateful to all the people who gave up their time to sit down and talk with me about their lives during a period when, as the poet Louis MacNeice put it in ‘Snow’, ‘World is suddener than we fancy it / World is crazier and more of it than we think’.
In the final chapter I refer to the extractive impulses of Big Tech. At its worst, which is frequently, journalism can also operate as an extractive industry, displaying insufficient curiosity about the way its own cogs work and little regard for those caught up in their teeth. Many of the individuals interviewed for this book had good reason to distrust reporters and yet were generous enough to share their stories with me, describing past or ongoing traumas with a clarity, dignity and agency that left me humbled. This is as true for those whose tales didn’t end up making it on to the page as it is for those whose did. I hope that, in a small way, this book does those tales some justice.
I owe a great many thanks as well to the organisations that let me in to their inner circles, their planning meetings and their marches on the streets. Their energy and vision have helped me to make some sense of late-capitalist Britain, and to discern the fuzzy outlines of what might come next. Raymond Williams argued that to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing, and – with one obvious exception – all of them are engaged in struggles for a future that does exactly that for me.
Spending time with people fighting against the odds to change things has made me better appreciate the role played by the invisible support crews that orbit each of us. My own is vast, and without their love and encouragement this book would never have materialised. Foremost among them is Amy Horton, who restores and inspires me daily. I’m grateful to all my friends and family, especially Issy and Gabriel for their critical manuscript work, Shelley for everything, Jack and Nabs, Skye and her family, Caroline, and Dora. My agent Karolina Sutton and the amazing publishing team at The Bodley Head and Vintage have been a relentless source of professional encouragement – I owe a particular debt to David Milner, Aidan O’Neill, Chloe Healy, Sophie Painter, Stuart Williams, and above all Will Hammond, who is the kind of editor that authors can normally only dream of.
Parts of Chapter 2 are based on a long read of mine that was originally published in 2017 by the World Post, and it is thanks to Rob Stothard that I ever went to Tilbury at all. Parts of Chapter 7 are based on an essay about digital technologies that I produced for Aeon magazine, and Sam Haselby offered invaluable assistance in making it somewhat readable. The writing of this book was aided by a generous grant from the K Blundell Trust and the Society of Authors, and by a Carlyle Membership at the London Library.
As well as my own reporting, I relied on a huge number of existing sources to provide crucial background details, and to help shape my thinking about the issues I was exploring. Wherever possible I have tried to credit them in the main text or endnotes; if there are any omissions, please accept my apologies and let me know so that I can put them right. The work of a few people has been especially useful in clarifying my ideas: Will Davies on neoliberalism, the late Mark Fisher on capitalist realism, Wendy Liu on Silicon Valley and workers’ resistance, Callum Cant and Jamie Woodcock on organising in the precarious economy, Anna Minton on housing, Jem Gilbert on platform politics, Tom Blackburn on political education, Satnam Virdee, Michael Richmond, Alex Charnley and Arun Kundnani on race and empire, Natalie Bloomer and Samir Jeraj for their vital investigations into the impact of the hostile-environment regime, and Peter Frase on futures.
If the book deserves any credit it is due to all of those mentioned here; the mistakes and missteps are my own.