31

The Changeling

IN EARLY 2016 I found myself at the head of an angry mob. An acclaimed artist and activist named Ellie Harrison announced a new project on social media titled the Glasgow Effect, which drew derision from the public almost immediately. The aims and objectives were stated vaguely on a Facebook page where she’d chosen to use a picture of a bag of chips to capture, visually, the spirit of her year-long project. Unsurprisingly, many people took offence.

Harrison’s project borrowed its title from a scientific study of the same name which attempted to explain why health statistics in Glasgow were worse than comparatively poor cities in the UK. In 2010, the Glasgow Centre for Population Health concluded that the deprivation profiles of Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester were almost identical, but that premature deaths in Glasgow were over 30 per cent higher. And also that all deaths were around 15 per cent higher, across almost the entire population.

Glasgow’s mortality rates are the highest in the UK and among the highest in Europe. With a population of over a million, life expectancy is 71.6 years for men and 78 years for women – around seven and four years below the national average, respectively. In 2008, the World Health Organisation estimated that the life expectancy for men in the Calton area of Glasgow was just 54 years. To put that in some context, had I been born in the Calton, then at 33, I’ve already lived more than half my life; marked for death more than ten years before my retirement age.

When the study was published, the Glasgow Effect became shorthand for poverty. The pertinent finding being a link between the early years brain development of children living in poverty and the health conditions and precarious circumstances that often plague them later in life. The report found that ‘chronically activated stress responses, especially in children, affect the structure of parts of the frontal lobes of the brain, and that these determine the physical reaction to stress, which could result in chronic ill health’. Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns also suggested that the ability to attain good health depended, in part, on whether people felt in control of their lives, and whether they see their environments as threatening or supportive.

For those of us affected by this phenomenon, the Glasgow Effect was proof that we were not insane or paranoid – at least not completely. Proof that while we must take personal responsibility for our actions, that the social conditions we are exposed to have a lot to answer for. The Glasgow Effect eloquently described, in scientific terms, the reality of our existence; going about our days, oblivious to the social and psychological disadvantages that define our chaotic and abbreviated lives. It described why social mobility was so low, why opportunity was so scarce and how living in conditions of chronic stress had inhibited, impaired and deformed us.

Ellie Harrison’s year-long contemporary art project, symbolised by a greasy bag of chips, seemed to mock the seriousness and complexity of this issue.

Harrison’s project, though she didn’t make it very clear at the time, was an attempt to investigate how being restricted to one geographical area for a year, in this case Glasgow, impacted on her ability to live and work as a professional artist. Throughout the year, she would document and reflect on how this limitation affected everything, from her social life, identity and mental health to her employability and even her carbon footprint. The project reflected Ellie’s personal interests as an activist, artist and citizen living in Scotland. Interests which, while legitimate, were sadly not shared by many of Glasgow’s poorer residents, for whom the Glasgow Effect was not merely a concept but an oppressive matrix of overlapping inequalities. Ellie’s cause was not helped by the fact that she chose to use academic language in the vague description of her project, which naturally aroused prejudice among those who had grown wary of jargon – because they associate it with political exclusion and exploitation.

On a Facebook page, created for the project, Ellie wrote:

The Glasgow Effect is a year-long ‘action research’ project/ durational performance, for which artist Ellie Harrison will not travel outside Greater Glasgow for a whole year (except in the event of the ill health / death of close relative or friend).

By setting this one simple restriction to her current lifestyle, she intends to test the limits of a ‘sustainable practice’ and to challenge the demand-to-travel placed upon the ‘successful’ artist / academic. The experiment will enable her to cut her carbon footprint and increase her sense of belonging, by encouraging her to seek out and create ‘local opportunities’ testing what becomes possible when she invests all her ideas, time and energy within the city where she lives.

This short description, without even intending it, was encoded with everything people from deprived communities have grown sceptical of over the years. Culture, participation, the arts; all these things that people claim are accessible but which always appear to be the exclusive preserve of those who use phrases like ‘action research project’ and ‘sustainable practice’ – high status language that sets alarm bells ringing. Then there was the money. Not only was Ellie being paid £15,000 to spend a year analysing the plight of the ‘successful artist’, she was going to benevolently ‘create local opportunities’. Her concerns, pertinent as they might have been, were not shared in those communities where people have little time or headspace to consider carbon footprints or the personal sacrifice of successful contemporary artists. This clumsy initial approach, rooted in a deep lack of understanding of the cultural dynamics at play in the city, fertilised a social media storm that very quickly got out of hand.

The consensus was that ‘some artist’ ‘from England’ ‘was being paid 15 grand’ to ‘live in Glasgow for a year’ to see how being stuck in one geographical location affected her ability to work. To be honest, the consensus was not inaccurate, despite many claims to the contrary. People rightly felt offended that someone was being paid £15,000 to simulate being stuck in Glasgow when so many people really were stuck in Glasgow. The premise of the project appeared to mock those who were not as socially mobile as people like Ellie, a university lecturer as well as a professional artist, by attempting to mimic the painful reality of many Glaswegian lives.

For many people, the Glasgow Effect was a symbol of class inequality, expressed in myriad ways. To Ellie and her supporters – and funders – the Glasgow Effect was a catchphrase, gentrified and reappropriated for a contemporary arts project, illustrated by a soggy bag of deep-fried food. Had such a brazen misunderstanding occurred about any other group in society, the very people applauding Ellie would have been crying foul; accusing people of revictimising the marginalised, of triggering people, of reifying the interdependent structural oppressions of capitalism or patriarchy. But none of that mattered in this instance. Or at least, that’s how it seemed.

So it fell to me to try and set them all straight. I decided to do that by going for Ellie directly, vindicated by the many online supporters willing me on to represent the plight of the working class. I wouldn’t settle until everyone understood why her project was misguided. Why it was offensive. And why they had to reconsider their position if they genuinely couldn’t see that. I wouldn’t stop until I had proved my point. My first course of action was to publish a strongly worded piece in which I made the case that public anger at Harrison’s project was justified and that it was, primarily, rooted in anger about class disparity:

Shake yourselves awake. This was never about attacking one unfortunately titled project.

If only influential sections of the arts community were as insightful and articulate as they seem to think they are. If only they could grasp the fact people are not actually annoyed at Ellie or even conceptual art. If only they could grapple with the thorny reality that people are actually annoyed at the big floppy-haired elephant in the green room: they are annoyed at rising social inequality and how this expresses itself culturally.

We have to get honest with ourselves about where scepticism of certain forms of art and culture comes from. It comes from the fact we are living in two different worlds.

In working class communities, symbols of culture and identity are ripped out, renamed, sold off, mysteriously burned down or demolished – in the name of progress.

So, when Creative Scotland decides to bankroll one artist’s investigation into how being stuck in Glasgow with no road out affects your social life, career and mental health then you better fucking believe some Glaswegians are going to be fuming about it.

The piece was widely read and within 24 hours had generated some responses. I was soon approached for comment by the Daily Record and I obliged; sensing an opportunity to spin the controversy into a debate about class. I took some time to consider how best to reframe Ellie’s project.

The next day I gave the following statement: ‘There are thousands of artists who articulate what living in poverty is like. These artists are often marginalised. A recent study in the Guardian showed the arts is dominated by middle class people. Ellie’s project epitomises that. It’s horrendously crass to parachute someone in on a poverty safari.’

And there it was: ‘Poverty Safari’. Many people scratched their heads, wondering what I meant by the phrase. When I intervened in the debate, I was trying to articulate what I felt the public anger was about. My aim was to lend some context to it, as I could see that much of it was being lost in translation and misunderstood. This was an issue I’d been struggling to express, having gained a modest public platform in an arts and media culture dominated by liberal, middle class perspectives. I was used to having things explained to me whenever I piped up with an opinion, so I felt this was the perfect time for everyone to sit down and have this stuff explained to them for a change. I saw it as my responsibility to try and act as a translator between the classes, making sure that everyone understood that Ellie’s project was not solely what people were upset about. That much of this anger was a convergence of disparate themes – early years, education, lifestyle, deprivation, social mobility and political exclusion. That unfortunately for Ellie, she came to epitomise what many people believed the real issue was: class. Unsurprisingly, I was soon shut down by the commentariat and influential sections of the arts; by people who’d been cut into the action in some way.

The uproar from sections of the public about Ellie Harrison’s project – and scepticism of politics, arts, media and culture, generally – must be seen in this broader context to be truly understood. For the people who were angry about it, this was just another example of their needs and aspirations being ignored, stepped over, vilified, sneered at or exploited. When I came up with the phrase ‘Poverty Safari’ it was not simply a cheap swipe at Ellie’s project, it was an attempt to distil everything I had learned in my experience as a working class person, attempting to escape poverty whilst traversing these wildly different cultural domains. ‘Poverty Safari’ was an attempt to hold a mirror up to Ellie’s good intentions and show exactly why they were doomed to be misinterpreted. ‘Poverty Safari’ was my answer to the question: ‘Why are you so angry?’

But even that was regarded by many as either misguided or offensive.

However, that was not the whole story. As is usually the case, there was something else at play which had conveniently escaped my notice as I threw myself headfirst into the cauldron of a national debate. While many of my arguments were correct and I had successfully expressed the thoughts and feelings of many people who were being written off as angry and abusive, my motives for getting involved were less clear. My entire posture towards Ellie’s project, while orientated by my lifelong interest in the topic of social inequality, was also shaped by my assumptions and prejudices about Ellie herself – as a middle class person. I was viewing her through my class lens. In truth, all I knew about her project was what I had heard on social media. If I’m completely honest, I only got involved because there was an expectation that I should. ‘£15,000 to live in Glasgow for a year? Outrageous. I wonder what Loki will have to say about this?’ This social expectation that I should be the one to involve myself was what had catalysed my intervention. The stage was set for me to say something, so I did, but I hadn’t stopped to really consider what was going on. Really, deep down, I saw the opportunity to use Ellie as a way of lashing out at something else. The backlash from her project had created such a controversy that the conversation was becoming global, and, perhaps unconsciously, a part of me resented the prominence her project was receiving. A part of me was angry, jealous even, that hers should be the one at the heart of so much interest, debate and discussion. To me, the issues her project was concerned with were detached, indulgent and exclusive; the fact so many people were arguing about them seemed like a terrible waste.

But as the days passed, I began to reflect more deeply on my reasons for getting involved. What emerged was quite startling for me. Beneath all the rhetoric about class, and the insight about cultural inequality and social mobility, ran a river of pure resentment which coursed through me like a drug. This resentment, to which I was either blind or believed legitimate, had clouded my mind precisely at a moment when I believed I was thinking most clearly. This is to say, I acted believing I was motivated by one thing when, in truth, it was about something else entirely. My impulse was attack, pounce, maim and devour, without attempting to comprehend even the most basic facts on the matter. This impulse was so strong, and stimulated such a potent sense of righteousness, that there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I was justified to go after Ellie. There was no doubt that Ellie’s project had to be taken down and that she, as an artist, had to be discredited in some way.

There are certainly circumstances where this approach may have been appropriate but what became apparent to me later was that I was acting out of revenge. Not against Ellie, who I had never met, but against something more vague, elusive and indefinable. Deep down beneath the almost arrogant veneer, I felt so powerless that the opportunity to land one on a perceived enemy was impossible to resist – even if it meant being petty or disingenuous. What I had turned a blind eye to, when the opportunity to insert myself into the conversation arose, was that I had dehumanised Ellie, reducing her to a caricature and therefore easy to dismiss. Her ‘middle classness’ became a way to whittle her and her supporters down to a more manageable size, so that I could retain a comforting false belief. I retrofitted Ellie with a middle class identity, despite not knowing anything about her, and then used that as a justification for trying to derail her project. But easy and tempting as it was to hide behind the common left-wing trope of ‘punching up’, in the pit of my stomach I knew, regardless of the validity of my argument, that I had adopted it under false pretences. This wasn’t about class, or cultural inequality, at least not in the way I thought it was. This was about striking back and hurting the people I believed were excluding me. The problem here was that, while Ellie appeared to fit the profile of an oppressor in my head, in reality she was nothing of the sort. Therefore, whatever legitimate grievance I had with her project was severely undermined by the manner in which I attempted to air it out.

When the opportunity to engage an international debate about class presented itself, I sabotaged it to settle a score, while draping myself in the veil of an activist. And it wasn’t the first time. (Since then, I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of anger and, ironically, the first words that came out of my mouth when the lynch mob darkened my digital doorway were ‘Please, calm down.’) Much as I hate to admit it, I should have taken some time to properly consider the best way to respond to Ellie’s project. I’d been raised to think that any anger I felt was legitimate, merely by virtue of the fact I was lower class. But even if this were true, the anger itself was only useful when expressed at the correct moment, in the correct way. It’s only legitimate when it’s deployed with the right quality of intention and even then, its utility is time-limited. Just like the booze, the fags, the drugs and the junk food, the novelty of righteous anger soon wears off, leaving you only with a compulsion to get hot and bothered, when often the solution to the problem is staring you straight in the face. This isn’t a popular thing to say on the left, but it’s an honest one. In this case, I had used righteous anger as a smokescreen to conceal something more self-serving. I had used the ‘working class’ as a Trojan horse to advance my own personal agenda. And I did all of this while believing myself to be well informed and deeply virtuous, unaware of how personal resentment was subtly directing my thinking.

I am sure you have no idea what I’m talking about.

Had I looked a little further into Ellie’s project, I would have found many areas of common ground between us. Ellie was a renowned social activist with a keen interest in the renationalisation of buses – hardly a hot topic for the chattering classes. And while her environmental concerns may have appeared detached or indulgent to me at first, the truth was, Ellie’s politics were almost identical to those of the Pollok Free State, a group I’d been harping on about since my teens because I regarded it as the epitome of community ethics. As I began to consider her work more deeply, what I found was someone with deep principles about social equality, political participation and the environment. These were not simply pretensions she harboured or platitudes she spoke in, but principles she had chosen to live by that were reflected in every aspect of her life. From her diet, to her chosen modes of transportation, to recycling and in her own art and career, Ellie had striven to live in alignment with her values, which were about taking responsibility for how we live in the world. I started to see her in a new light, grudgingly at first, but as I let go of my false beliefs it made some room for new insights to emerge.

These irritating tropes of middle class life, around veganism, cycling and healthy eating, really served a practical function and were not necessarily as pretentious as I thought. As well as being markedly cheaper, many of these seemingly indulgent lifestyle choices were about living in accordance with the needs of the wider community, the environment and devising a sustainable lifestyle that integrated those needs. Trends and products that I thought were for posh people and hipsters were often about practical, healthy, more environmentally friendly alternatives to products and lifestyle choices that were counter-productive, or unethical in some way. Ellie’s attention to detail, her aspiration to live an ethical life, for the benefit of everyone, were manifest in her Glasgow Effect project. She was actively trying to find out if it was possible for a working artist to remain in one city for a year, devoting her time to a single community, while reducing the environmental impact of her day-to-day existence.

In many ways, her investigation was the practical extension of my own investigation into poverty. But where I was keen to understand the context of what came before, whether it be the housing schemes or my own upbringing, she was articulating what might come next. She was beginning to reimagine the society that had left so many in my community feeling excluded, apathetic and chronically ill. But I didn’t give myself a chance to see all that. I wasn’t open to that possibility. My urge for retribution was so strong that it blinded me to the fact we were fighting for the same thing. When I realised the depth of my error, it reframed my whole perception of class and, to some extent, of poverty. Having conceded my approach had been misguided, I was then forced to ponder what else I might be wrong about. And surprise, surprise, when my attitude became less adversarial, the people who didn’t see eye-to-eye with me in the beginning became far more willing to concede where they were at fault too.

Rather than allowing the facts of the matter to be held hostage by false belief and personal bias, informed by a cascade of self-delusion, prejudice and lingering resentment masquerading as communitarian concern, I simply held my hands up and said: ‘I’m sorry. I was wrong.’ Instead of attempting to reorder reality around my own petty emotional impulses while presenting myself as a virtuous and rational observer, I decided to turn my critical eye inward.

Who’d have thought that, believing myself to be of clear mind, I was behaving vindictively? Who would have known that my desire to bring clarity to an issue was really obscuring my view of it? And this wasn’t just any issue. This was an issue that was fundamental to my own development as a human being. This was an issue that I specialised in and that had come to define my life. Yet here I was, on a wild goose chase of my own making, believing myself to be firmly in the driver’s seat. Such a lack of insight into my own nature undermined any claim I had to know anything at all, let alone how to understand and solve the complex litany of problems facing our society.

Perhaps none of this seems relevant to a discussion about poverty. Perhaps, when you identify as a ‘poor person’ or some other form of injured party or oppressed or marginalised group, then you shouldn’t be expected to scrutinise your own thinking and behaviour. But it strikes me that much of my thinking and reasoning throughout the years has been peppered with similar hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, where I absolved myself of responsibility for behaving the same way as those I criticised, while wondering why dialogue was so frustrating and disheartening. At the root of my motivation, in this intervention, lay a deep resentment about class. A resentment that was validated and legitimised by my politics – politics which I had inherited by pure chance and weaponised at the earliest opportunity as an extension of my own personal resentments.

Again, I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about.

A few weeks after the Glasgow Effect scandal died down, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion with Ellie. When I arrived at the venue I immediately noticed her at the front door wearing a lollipop lady’s jacket. The air of pretension I assumed she would emit was actually an air of self-deprecation; she clearly didn’t take herself as seriously as I took myself. My heart rate quickened, as I had been anticipating the moment we would first speak and suddenly found myself thrust into her path unexpectedly. Fortunately, she was swamped by fans keen to hear about her experience, so I made my way into the venue, having dodged a bullet, and composed myself. It was my intention to apologise to Ellie before the public discussion took place, but now in the venue, it was too busy to give it the attention it deserved.

I sat down with a friend who’d written one of the many responses to my intervention that had forced me to reflect on my actions. To my right, Ellie was meeting and greeting friends and audience members. Being in the room with her, I could now get a sense of the immense strain Ellie had clearly been under since the outrage earlier in the year. She looked nervous, shell-shocked and exhausted. The reality of what it must be like to be the one the social media hounds are chasing began to hit me; Ellie had been through a horrendous personal ordeal. The backlash had lasted for weeks, made worse by the fact her funders and employers had to get involved to clarify publicly certain details about her job and application. This had led to even more scrutiny and speculation of her personal life. Ellie had not only been on the receiving end of robust mainstream media criticism, but scrolls and scrolls of vile, misogynistic hate-filled vitriol. Everything from her career to her personal appearance and sexuality had become fair game, as thousands of armchair critics joined the pile-on – a pile-on I had helped to create. As I sat there, rather awkwardly, reflecting on my part in all of this, another of Ellie’s friends arrived.

They hugged, the embrace lasting a little longer than a simple hello. I wondered if perhaps they been reunited after a long period of time or that maybe this was the first time they’d crossed paths since Ellie became public enemy number one?

Then, despite the noise all around me, I heard gentle sobbing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ellie’s head rise and fall as she leaned into her friend’s chest. When confronted with the reality of this woman, as opposed to the caricature I had created, it was a little harder to retain the beliefs I had entertained previously. Here was a decent, fragile human being who had acted with good intentions, sobbing her heart out. A woman who was almost broken. The self-justification about class, culture and ‘punching-up’ suddenly felt hollow, self-serving and delusional. Yes, her approach was misguided, clumsy and poorly conceived. Yes, her assumptions about life in working class communities deserved to be challenged. Yes, there were important questions that had to be answered about why so many people felt politically excluded and culturally misrepresented and sometimes anger and rage was justified – even necessary. But as she wiped her eyes, and I pretended not to notice, it suddenly became apparent how destructive my class politics had really become. I was so consumed by my own anger and moral certainty, it had blinded me to the fact that Ellie Harrison, in all her middle class glory, was not an enemy, but an ally in the war I’d been fighting all my life. It then occurred to me, grudgingly, that should I ever feel like ‘punching-up’ again in future, I might want to double-check who I’m hitting first.