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People Just Do Something is a relaxing and possibly enraging podcast about people who might self-identify as activists. Join professional busybody Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins, The Bristol Cable’s in-house Columbo, Priyanka Raval and a special guest each week as they attempt to untangle the means of effecting change in Bristol, broken Britain and beyond.
Episodes release ever other week with the first season spanning 6 episodes.
To secure the future of the show and The Bristol Cable, head to www.thebristolcable.org/join
Priyanka Raval
Hey, Isaac, how was camping on the River Wye?
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Why it was actually quite uncomfortable, and George had a proper hammock, and he was much comfier than me.
Priyanka Raval
That is such a Producer George move…
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
it was I had a women's bivvy bag, and it was an extra large women's but I'm quite a large man, and it was like being tucked in by an aggressive Nan. Like, every time I tried to move, I was like, oh, it's pinning me. It's pinning me. And I’m like, no, granny, stop it. And then I got woken up in the middle of the night by, what am I gonna say to people… like amorous foxes? For an hour at like 4am just like and I think if I’d not been so tired, I think I would have been scared.
Priyanka Raval
Do you want to tease what you were doing out there?
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Well, quite a lot of drinking, actually, in the end, woke up with an empty hip flask and a headache in my bag. Five in the morning…
Priyanka Raval
You were supposed to be out there doing investigative journalism.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
We did find a cult, not connected to what we were doing. We were like wandering around, and we came out, and then there was a centre, and people were speaking in tongues. And then we went to a pub next door, like, what's going on here? And he was like, oh, sorry, you can ask her, she, she runs the place. But yeah, we heard full like, speaking in tongues. Proper, speaking in tongues. I thought it was a den I was like, George, like, what do you think that is? And he was like, that is a fire. Do not, do not get in a den like that. I could so easily be tricked into being a kind of human sacrifice. If you went, look, oh, cool. I'll go hang out in that for a while. Yeah, I could be fed to a cult quite easily.
Priyanka Raval
It turns out, for people who have been religiously listening to the series, this is the same story which has yielded Isaac's crazy wall and being chased with sticks and now has resulted in a sleuthing weekend with multiple cults, multiple cults… all will be revealed.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
This is People Just Do Something, a podcast where we try to uncover what it takes to be an activist by talking to people on the front lines of political movements. I'm Isaac Newborn Hopkins,
Priyanka Raval
and I'm Priyanka Raval.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Episodes of this podcast come out every week, on Friday for cable early access members and Monday for everyone else on all podcast players. If you love the podcast, then do something about it and subscribe to people. Just do something on your podcast app today and give us five star reviews so the algorithm gods don't put us in their sacrificial pyre while you're at it. You should join the Bristol cable at the Bristol cable.org forward slash, join and let us know if the podcast made you want to join.
Priyanka Raval
Today, we bring you our first ever live show. Well, our live show in the CUBE, the start of our monthly live shows, and we kicked off with Taj Ali. We are recording this a month later, towards the end of May. This episode is particularly interesting given the fact that there was a UKIP demo in Bristol this last Saturday. Obviously, it's post WECA mayoral elections and the rise of Reform. But I thought what was interesting about this is that we often have said, and in previous episodes as well, that, you know, trade unions are a way that people can just do something. They are this like ready, baked means of collective organising, which consolidate collective bargaining power. Stick it to the bosses, but I think it's offered a kind of nuanced view of how useful trade unions are in the broader landscape of pushing for social goods, because trade unions have not always been this big bastion of progressive politics, and I thought it was an interesting nuance which builds nicely on other podcasts that we've done on this topic, right?
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Yeah, I think so. Like, you know, the sort of the traditional joke is that trade unions used to be, you know, boys clubs with smoke filled rooms and, like, examples we gave in this where they were not necessarily on the right side of things that as organisations, doesn't happen so much anymore. But like, as we talk about in this, it doesn't mean that the membership are inherently all socialist, just because people like me, the bureaucrats might be. So I think it was like not taking this kind of progressive bloc for granted, and making sure that it's not just being a union, but it's like being a union and push your colleagues, as well as the organisation, towards progressive social change is vital, I think, is one of the kind of key messages from all this. I'd say,
Priyanka Raval
Let's get into it. Really enjoyed this chat, actually.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Whose job is it to tell us once we've spoken for an hour? George! Do the helicopter. The system's in place. Let's go.
Priyanka Raval
Let's start there. Why were you arguing with my colleague Begonia about being an activist? Are you not in some form an activist?
Taj Ali
I think as a journalist, sometimes we get more credit than we actually deserve. Are we the people actually active in a community making change, or are we simply reporting on it and sharing the conversations we've had, the ideas we've had? We spend a lot of time commentating about how things should be, the problems in the world, issues we encounter. How much time is actually spent doing something about it? And I don't think I spend enough time doing something about it.
Priyanka Raval
So how we got around that was to do a podcast about people who might be doing something about it. So that was our fix. How did you come to be where you are at now in life, trade union industrial correspondent at a time when that job had basically disappeared, former editor of Tribune, now writing a book about South Asian history, what led you up to here in your young life?
Taj Ali
So I'm British, Pakistani from Luton, and I think growing up, Luton was always demonised in the press, first thing people will say is, oh, Tommy Robinson, now we hear Andrew Tate. He's also from the town. It wasn't the best place to live. We had a lot of problems, a lot of deprivation, a lot of inequality, and so we kind of grew up with this kind of demonisation of the place we're from. I think my identity growing up in kind of, I was born in 98 post, sort of 9/11, generation. We'd hear a lot about injustice around the world in places like Palestine and Iraq and and also, you know, the rise of the far right, the English Defense League in 2011 marching through our town, you're being told at the age of 11, you can't walk into your town centre because there's a group of people around who don't like you, and so that forces you to try and understand the world around you. And so I think politics, in some ways, was kind of inescapable. We were always trying to make sense of what is the far right, what is going on overseas? Why is our town depicted in a certain way? And so I was always quite curious about the world. I guess I was always interested in current affairs. My dad's experience in Luton in the 70s and 80s, where there were certain roads you couldn't walk through. He talked about it, and he was, I would say, apolitical. In some ways, he hated politicians. I don't have a kind of political background in that sense. But in some ways, he also did give a damn about the world, and it's not in a party political way, yeah. More like they're all a bunch of pricks, like, you know? And in some ways, that itself is political, because he'd have a comment on everything as much as I say he was apolitical. He'd still be like, watching what was going on in the news and making, you know, his statements about it, but he never wanted me to pursue anything to do with politics. In fact, he has this kind of a lot of pessimism about the world, like, you know, this is a racist society, and they'll always see you a certain way, and things won't change. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who grew up in the 70s and 80s who had that view. I think, you know, I went to university. I studied history and politics at Warwick, and that was quite a shock for me. I went to a school, a high school, that was 99% Black and Asian. There was only one white person in my entire year group, and even he was Irish. And so it was basically Tommy Robinson's worst nightmare, like and we were poor. Growing up, my dad worked at the Vauxhall factory. Was made redundant in 2002 he worked as a cabbie, and then he had lots of health problems, three heart attacks and a brain hemorrhage. And so growing up, we we never felt like we were working class, because everyone around us was quite poor as well. Like you never really understand class properly, I think, until you see the difference and when it was, when I went to Warwick, and people are talking about I went to a skiing trip and I went to a safari, and you almost get a sense of, oh, wow, this is how people are living. And so class was a big thing for me. Most of my friends did not go to university, and I felt very alienated at Warwick. I was also making sense of like racism and Islamophobia as well, with the increase. So I was very passionate about these things, and I studied history and politics. I graduated in the middle of COVID. Couldn't find a graduate job, so I was working in a bread factory, 12 hour night shifts in the factory, yeah, a naan factory, a naan factory in Luton, which is like, I don't know a stereotype like but you know that even that job taught me a lot about society, it was mainly with migrant workers. And we were talking earlier about, like, applying theory to real life, and I was saying that I'd read about Marx's theory of alienation, but when I was in that factory on the assembly line. I felt it. I didn't want to see any naan – when I go into Sainsbury. I was like, I hate that, you know, because we're the ones doing the worst thing. What I mean is, like it was my kind of understanding of the world, my politics and the way I view it wasn't by reading loads of theory. It was seeing things around me, the youth centre closing down, the libraries, cutting their hours, a lack of investment in the town, and that is what shaped my journalism and my politics. So while I was in that factory, I kind of had to fill like, the void, you know, like do something with my history and politics degree. So I started freelance writing. I wrote about Islamophobia, I wrote about class. And you know, Tribune took a chance on me. They said, like we think you're quite a good interviewer, maybe you should interview some of these British Gas workers who are facing fire and rehire. And so I got that story. And then Ronan Burtenshaw, who was the editor of Tribune, he kept trying to convince me to join them full time as an industrial correspondent. By this point, I'd managed to get a graduate scheme in the civil service, fast stream, project management. And if you know Asian families like you're telling them you're going to leave a prestigious graduate scheme to join a magazine they've never heard of, they were like, What the hell are you doing? And after a year of doing the civil service stuff, it was really dull. It was easy work, to be honest with you. It was good work, life balance, but it wasn't me, like I am political and I do have opinions. And I felt like it wasn't for me. I think summer 2022, the RMT rail union went on strike. I could see the cost of living crisis. I could see others going on strike, and there weren't many people covering unions or the world of work. And so I made the decision to leave my job and join Tribune, and it was the best job I've ever done, like I absolutely loved
Priyanka Raval
Do you want to say what Tribune is?
Taj Ali
Yeah, Tribune magazine is a historic magazine of the left. It was established in 1937 it was known for having George Orwell as a literary editor. Nye Bevan served as an editor. So he's got that history. It's not as big anymore. It was sort of tied to the Labour left and so, yeah, it was, it was quite a left wing magazine. I could say what I think, kind of thing which is quite rare in a lot of spaces. But doing that job as an industrial correspondent, I was going out to picket lines. I was traveling the country. I was speaking to workers about why they're going on strike, and telling the human element story. And it really made my career, because there used to be, in the 70s, 50 industrial correspondents. Now there's like, three or four. And so it meant I got opportunities with the BBC and Times Radio and LBC, because they never had a specialist industrial correspondent. And so in terms of, like, getting into sort of mainstream media, that was my way in to be the guy seen as, oh, he knows what's going on in the negotiations. But I really enjoyed it. I think it shaped my worldview and my understanding of the world, meeting all these people in different sort of places, and understanding different industries. And I think that's the job you can really enjoy, where you're constantly learning something, you're constantly meeting people. No day feels the same. And so yeah, that was a real privilege. And then I think when you cover unions for so long, you learn a thing or two about negotiation. And I wanted a pay rise. And so when my editor left, I said, Well, I want a bit more money. And they said, Well, if you want a bit more money, you've got to take the editor job. And so that's what I did. So I did that until this summer, and I was also at the same time working on a project documenting British South Asian history. A lot of this history is at risk of being lost. A lot of the Asian youth movements and people who organised against the racist in the 70s and 80s. We only know these stories, because people will narrate them anecdotally about what happened. And so I felt there was a duty to kind of preserve that history. And so while I was kind of working on this project, I questioned, where did their politics come from? And actually, there's a really broad history of South Asian political organising in Britain, Indian revolutionary students in North London in the early 1900s seafarers in the British port cities, organising on the ships. There's just so much history out there. And I think in the summer, I decided that I wanted to work on this book full time, and so I went freelance in the summer, and I'm about halfway through, right. In this book. And yeah, that's the story so far.
Priyanka Raval
Was there a political awakening moment, or was it kind of gradually building up as you went on?
Taj Ali
I feel like I was always quite political, and my views have changed over time. I don't think there was a particular moment in journalism necessarily. That was an awakening. I felt like, I always, like, had that political instinct. There's been moments that have changed the way, I think, I guess, but yeah, I wouldn't say there was like a particular like…
Priyanka Raval
Well, to bring all of that history up to the present moment, you recently wrote a column for Hyphen saying that the left had failed to capture rank and file workers, and that those workers who might have traditionally voted Labour are now somewhat captured by Reform?
Taj Ali
Yeah, I think there's a tendency to think trade unions are a bastion of progressive politics and very, very left wing. And there's certainly a lot of left wing people who dominate internal structures of unions or become general secretaries. But I think as an industrial correspondent, what you find with the average trade union member is actually they come from across the political spectrum. So when I was interviewing postal workers in Luton, you know, a lot of them might have voted Brexit. They might have been quite concerned about immigration, but they'll defend the terms and conditions, and they might not listen to the General Secretary when they talk about defending free movement. And these were the realities that I was I was seeing. I mean, I spoke to a firefighter who'd grown up in a racist household, who'd kind of unlearned that racism and had through the union structures, developed a certain politics. But I found in a lot of trade unions, there wasn't really that sense of political education. It was more like your job is to defend my terms and conditions. Don't preach to me about anything else that unfortunately, there are a lot of trade unions who think like that. And if you look at the 2019 general election, what you find is there was one poll that found that 39% of Unite the Union members in 2019 under a left wing Labour leader, voted Tory. That was under Corbyn, 42% voted Labour. 39% voted Tory under one YouGov poll.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
I mean, to a certain extent, there's something understandable about that, right? Like the places that are highly unionised are like, nuclear power stations, carbon intensive industries, arms manufacturers, and those jobs where the left is often just like, well, they're just bad. I'm just gonna get rid of them. And they're not willing to engage with those workers in the kind of process of being like, right? How do we take you from doing this thing which is not socially beneficial, saying, if we want to frame it in that way, and how do we make this something that enriches both you, your family, your community and society? I mean, we see, you know, you write about Port Talbot, where, you know, that was steel works. It was very carbon intensive. You can go to Port Talbot, you can see the kind of the fumes coming off it, but that community relied on that, like, I guess, how do we then, knowing that and knowing that there's this sort of drift? And actually, the kind of answer you often get is like, well, what have you done for me lately? And if you turn up and they've never spoken to you before, and you're going, what we're gonna do is gonna shut down your work, but don't worry, I've never done anything for you before, but we'll open a new work and they don't believe you. So what? What is the way into working against that? How do we change that sort of attitude?
Taj Ali
I think there's a few things to say. Firstly, there was no real glorious past where trade unions were like these, these, you know, very radical like left wing progressive spaces. There was a time when, when there were racist riots in 1919, in Liverpool and many of the port cities where people were quite literally pelted to death. The Trade Union Congress was putting out motions condemning Asiatic Labour, when Enoch Powell made his rivers of blood speech. You had East End dockers and meat porters marching in support of him – so he made that speech in 1968 I believe. But also, like you in you know, Wolverhampton, you had trade unions organising a strike in support for colour bar.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
And so same in Bristol, the Bristol Bus Boycott was in part because the Trade Union were exactly were defending the colour bar.
Taj Ali
And so to get to a point where you had trade union, I mean, you had certain activists in trade unions who were left wing, who were progressive, who were anti imperialist, who were anti racist, and the reason they were able to influence things is because they were very good on the bread and butter issues. They could win you a pay rise. They were an effective voice in the workplace. And so when you think about the National Union of Mineworkers under Arthur Scargill before the 1984 strike, they were a very powerful union who would often win big. And so when Arthur Scargill told these predominantly white working class miners in Yorkshire stand with Asian women going on strike at Grunwick, the film processing centre. That they were willing to oblige, and that was because he was rooted in the workplace. He had some clout among those workers, and I think there was this sense like that he's fighting for us. And I think we've, we've kind of lost that culture somewhat. I mean, trade unions have lost a lot of influence anyway, but it's not, it's not the same level of influence that they once had. Trade union general secretaries, for instance…
Priyanka Raval
For people who maybe might not know the sort of broadest overview of trade union history. I guess it started off radical.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
I hope you're ready for a three hour lecture about the topic…
Priyanka Raval
A brief overview of trade union history.
Taj Ali
I think for a lot of people, it was common sense that you're working in manufacturing, you're working in industry. If you want a pay rise, you guys can vote with your feet and say, we're only going to work the machines if you pay us a bit more money. It was like a common sense logic, regardless of what your political views were on a certain thing. And I think the political kind of trade unionism was often in defense of those rights, right, many of the things we take for granted today, the weekend, sick leave and all of these things, they were fought for in terms of the political aspect of it. I think it was they were trade union leaders and general secretaries who were very influenced by Communism and left wing politics. And you know, when you think about Lenin and others talking about anti imperialism and internationalism, this idea that all workers all over the world are oppressed, I think that had quite a bit of support among some and again, what we tend to find is that the most left wing trade unionists and shop stewards and general secretaries tend to be the most effective because they were so committed to improving the lives of those workers. But you also were rooted in a community. This is the other thing about trade unions back in the day. So when you think about the National Union of Mineworkers, you used to have a miners welfare centre attached to the industry. You would have sports that was connected to industry, and so they were rooted in the community and in the workplace. And we've lost a lot of that since de industrialisation, and what that's meant is we're in a situation now where Reform are going to win seats in Durham, which is it used to be, you know, a heartland of the Labour movement, where you have the Durham miners Gala, Doncaster, again, you used to have all of these institutions tied to the Labour movement and reform are picking up support. And what is most disheartening about this whole thing is Nigel Farage is someone who used to say that he was the only person keeping the legacy of Thatcherism alive. If you go into many of these mining communities or places that lost industry, they detest Thatcher. They hate her. They would never vote for anyone associated with her. But Farage has come along without the baggage of the Tory party, and he was once campaigning for a statue of Margaret Thatcher in Trafalgar Square, and he's saying to them, you've lost your industry, you've lost your jobs, and those immigrants on small boats are coming into your community. And this government, they care about those people over there, but they don't care about you. And that message sells. That message really sells. And so I think people are willing to look past Farage’s floors, because for them, they feel like they've got nothing to lose. They feel alienated. You've got no spaces for social interaction. In many of these areas where reform are picking up support, you've not just lost your industry. You've lost your spaces to talk to one another, and that's a serious problem in areas where you've got diverse, multicultural working class communities, immigrant organisations have often had to fight for welfare centres and social spaces, and there is a very strong sense of community, in some ways, born out of the racism they faced. And so, like the Pakistani community, will fight for the Pakistani welfare centre, the mosques and the temples and the gurdwaras will play a massive role in the communities in areas which are predominantly white working class, what spaces do you have for social interaction. And I visited, you know, places like Great Yarmouth where Reform, well, he's not in Reform anymore, Rupert Lowe, he was too extreme for Reform, which tells you a lot about how mad he is. But you know, when you go to Great Yarmouth and many of the coastal regions where reform also pick up a lot of support, you see the decline of the High Street. There's a lot of seasonal work. There's not that much migration in these places, but it's visible. So when, if you're an asylum seeker, you're in really crap Airbnb housing. There's no communal space, so you tend to congregate outside. And these people, all they see is the, you know, the sea, and they see a group of people they've never met before, and they're quite insecure about their economic situation, which they're right to be, but they're seeing refugees and migrants and this, they're drawing that connection there, and I think it's quite a powerful one. When you've seen your community change over time, in terms of the decline of the seaside town, at the same time, you're seeing a new group of people move. In and it's very easy for politicians and journalists to say those people in those hotels, that's your tax money that's giving those people benefits. They won't tell them that these people aren't even allowed to work while their asylum applications are being processed.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
The thing about community is super interesting, because, like embedding the unions in something wider, because there's one thing like being a scab, if that’s still a word, but if, if you're a scab and everyone's annoyed with you, and that is also the pub you go to is run by the Union, and the football club you play and is run by the union, it suddenly becomes like, much more, like we like, I've known trade unions who've had bosses who are being shit, and they basically called their five a side team. We're like, do you know your guy on your five a side team is being terrible to his workers and basically his five side team going, we're not going to play football with you anymore until you sort out what you're doing to your employees. Like that resolves things and like having that kind of being embedded in the infrastructure that social pressure, being not just at work, but your whole life, like that, is how you kind of bring people along. And once you're actually doing the actions of being involved in the union, involved in the struggle. That is where they suddenly go. They actually like it. Sort of doesn't matter what they think once they're going through the motions of it. I think that kind of gets broken away. You sort of delearn that sort of stuff. But like, how do we rebuild? Like we sort of, we're starting from so far back now, and you kind of have this thing where, yeah, like the people who work for the unions are not necessarily always, like the workers they're working with. Once you've already got this kind of self selecting group of, you know, being that into trade unions just makes you an oddball now, like, just statistically and, you know, personality wise, from starting where we are, like, how do we start to rebuild these things? Like, is it starting a union football team or union, cycling club or whatever, like we used to have, is that the way?
Taj Ali
I think we're in a very difficult moment, at the moment when you think about social media, Tiktok, what happened during COVID, and this has impacted all of us in terms of social interaction. I've had friends saying, you know, it is on Tiktok for young people. You know, that is where you have your debates. That is your Speaker's Corner now. And we should do, like, a progressive version of what Andrew Tate does and things like that. People say, oh, you know, it's dominated… social media is dominated by the right all over YouTube, and it is. And we need to consider, like what especially young men, what are they watching? What content are they seeing? Because I went to my former high school recently. It was an all boys state comprehensive, by the way, and when I was growing up, it was like people like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. They were your role models. They were people who did amazing things, and they were quite cool. It was cool. And, you know, there were other people. People liked rappers, people liked footballers. It was all about and if we're being honest, a lot of it was things like money. They've got a nice car, they've got money. And when you're poor, no one wants to be poor. It's, it's, there's a shame attached to it. When we had non uniform day, if you weren't wearing certain clothes, you know you feel embarrassed, or if you can't go on the trip. And I think when you grow up in a poor area, or you grow up with poverty, you want to escape it. And what do these people see on YouTube? How to Get rich quick, if you type in hard work or motivation, or how to change your life very easily, you're going to access right wing videos, which will merge messages of self help, which some people will find appealing. But then there'll be the casual misogyny and the racism and the individualism, which says we're all competing against each other. It's not about collectivism, it's not about organising together. We're all on our own at the same time, you've. Well, you know, the social contract has been completely broken. People have no faith in the state. When people say they don't want to pay tax, they don't trust the government with their tax money. They don't believe that the government's going to spend their money in the right places. And so it's the distrust of authorities and institutions and organisations, coupled with the rise of these alt right influencers telling people that you've just got to do it for yourself…
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
On the on the alt right influencers. So you've got Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson, who are both from Luton, like, you know, I'm from South Wales. We've got our own racists, but, like, What? What? Maybe Luton seems to produce more charismatic racists! But what is it about there that has created these people who kind of are able to kind of capture that… is, is there something specific about the community, about the history, about the demographics or so like that kind of seems to be the perfect breeding ground for, like, the far right influencer types?
Taj Ali
I do genuinely believe that Luton isn't very different from many places. And I've and I've and I've really kind of understood this when I've traveled like, I went to areas impacted by the riots last year, predominantly white working class areas. I went to Middlesbrough and I saw the same thing. I saw like, there was there was anti social behaviour, there was crime. There are a lot of white kids in the North east of England carrying knives, and yet knife crime is seen as a black thing the way the media talks about it. Oh, it's all London. London's unsafe, I swear to you. Like, I think the way we kind of exceptionalise places, and I think there is a racial aspect of it attached, like when people say, Oh, Luton's a shit hole, or Birmingham's crap or Bradford's crap, this almost like the migrants came here and destroyed these towns and cities. But when you talk about a predominantly white working class area like Sunderland or Hartlepool, it's almost like we've abandoned those people. And I find that quite interesting, that one place is seen as, oh, this is a place producing horrible people and horror, horrible characters, and other places like we've left behind the red wall and the white working class as if there's no black working class or Asian working class, even though they're disproportionately working class. And that's what it's about. It is about deprivation and inequality. Tommy Robinson. I know Tommy Robinson like I've seen him, and the man is full of contradictions. He's got Asian friends. I've seen him eat halal meat in front of me like I've seen him in a restaurant. I'm not going to say too much, but he had very dodgy business links, let's say, with certain people who he claims to hate, and so he's made a grift out of it. There's a lot of money to be made. He bought a mansion on the outskirts of Luton. Some of the things that Tommy Robinson talks about in Luton do exist. There are problems. When you have a community with a lack of resources, a lack of funding, the problems do emerge, and I have seen tensions at times. We did have al muhaun, which was an Islamist extremist organisation. They were a tiny minority. The EDL guys were a tiny minority. And the thing that people don't tell you is that some of the people on the front line against the EDL were white, working class people who've grown up around Black and Asian people, and they've lived with us their whole lives. But nobody wants to give those voices, those white working class people, a platform. And what frustrates me is the way the media depicts Luton they love. I think this is the way media works. Is sensationalism. It's about let's get the most extremist voice that we can think of, and let's give them a platform, I guarantee you, if we if you spoke to the average Lutonian, whether they were black, white or Asian, actually, you would just find sound working class people who want to pay their bills and make sure that the kids have food on the table. But that's not a story that sells. That's not and that's what it's about. There are characters like Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson in towns and cities across the country, all of those problems that I've talked about in Luton. It makes me understand white working class communities a bit better. And I think we need a bit more nuance in how we talk about communities. And, you know, there's a lot of discourse around, you know, privilege, right? The worst performing schools in Luton were in the white working class areas. And when I went to Sixth Form College, which kind of it was a big Sixth Form College, and it had people from from all the different schools. The school that Tommy Robinson went to, I remember my friend Phoebe went to that school, and she said to me that most of the white guys from this school, they don't even get to a level stage. They'll have to find an apprenticeship. They don't make it. And then I went to uni, and I'm surrounded by privately educated, privileged, Black and Asian people, and they're talking about, you know, white people are like this, or whiteness and and I'm just thinking like some of the guys in my area, like, are broke. They've got nothing. Going for them, and if you went to them and said that, they'd be like, What are you talking about? And I just think we need to be able to talk about how inequalities manifest in multiple ways, and try and talk about the things that we the common struggles, right? The common struggles of a lack of funding in your community. We know, for instance, like, I know what it's like to go to an airport and to be stopped. I know what that feels like, and I think my white friends in Newton understand that as well. They understand that's racism. They're still broke, they still have problems. And I think when we abandoned the terrain of class and coalition building and talking about common struggles amongst different communities, the far right jumped on it, and they made it a very kind of exclusionary focus on the white working class, that you're deprived, you're poor because you're white, not because you're working class.
Priyanka Raval
But there's this contradiction that you talk about in the piece, and we've talked about it a lot of there are so many people who, if you ask them about their political beliefs, they often want things like nationalisation or public services or state run facilities, but they would not say that they were left wing, even though they are left wing ideas, and in fact, might vote or align themselves with more right wing ideology. So how does that contradiction come about?
Taj Ali
It's really funny. I remember when I was at Warwick, my second year, I was living in Coventry, and there was three white skinheads that I saw, and my instinct kicked in, and I thought these guys are going to cause me trouble. And they were calling me. I had my headphones in and took them off and they started chatting to me, what are you studying? And I was telling him, I'm studying history and politics, I'm looking at migration and just my module. And so then one of them turned around and said, for a working class idiot like me, mate, what does any of that mean? And I said, You're not an idiot, because you're working class, and actually you probably have a better understanding of the world compared to a lot of people that I study with who have very sheltered existences. And we bonded over this kind of shared sense of class. And at the end of that conversation, one of them turned around and said, your sound mate, don't let the Marxist professors brainwash you and and you know, who knows how those three voted reform Brexit. But here he was talking about class. And I think that's very, very common. There's so many people, I think, with the decline of the trade union movement, they're self employed, your barbers, your builders. The amount of conversations I've had with people in those positions, who they work hard and whatever, and it's constantly like comparisons are being made. It's like I had a guy doing some work on the flat, and lovely guys from East London, Millwall supporter. We were bonding. Luton and Millwall had a rivalry, so we're just having banter on that. And we were talking, he was talking about how his he moved he lived in southeast London, and his mom got priced out of South East London and moved to Manchester, and now he's having to pay 400 pounds a week rent in London. And he was saying, you know, I'm not being funny, mate, but we've got all these Somalis in social housing there, and I've paid into the system my whole life. How is that fair? And I just had to stop myself and just think this through. And I asked him, I said, Do you think those Somalis in those social housing estates have it easy? And he was like, No, it's a shit hole. And I was like, would you live there? He said, No, because it's gone. It's worse now. It's so run down. But it was, I understood, he had a grievance around the housing crisis. He's getting ripped off by his landlord. He's really angry about that. He feels like he can't live in London anymore, and he's seeing other people. He's not bothered to talk to Somalis in social housing. And that social housing can be awful. And I've spent time writing about, you know, poor social housing and the impact that has, but nobody's willing to kind of connect the dots and say, well, they're also being screwed over. And I think for me, one of the ways to kind of counter this problem of, you know, I'm going to vote Reform because I'm being shafted, is to be able. I know it sounds a bit cliche, but it really is about saying, redirect your anger at the right place. We're all pissed off around dodgy landlords, we're all pissed off around exploitative bosses. We're all pissed off about the energy bills, the water bills, the council tax. So why aren't we taking on these people? Because on a material level, if you said to a person, I am going to introduce policies that will lower your water bills, lower your energy bills, make sure you can afford your rent, and it's not going to be anything to do with immigration. Would you back it? Would you support it? And they say yes. And I think you've got to kind of move the debate onto that terrain, because that's where we're strongest, if you keep going on the cultural stuff and make it about identity politics and and kind of retreating into silos. You know, I'm just a Muslim and I'm only interested in Muslim issues. I'm not interested in white working class. Him to Sunderland. You don't know what it's like. I think we're going to lose we have to be able to build a broad coalition, and that's not easy, and I don't think we're going to agree on everything, but if we can try and focus on the bread and butter issues that unite us, I think it is possible to forge an alternative coalition.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
It is that simple answer that Reform offer right? Like they are right the two major parties don't give a fuck about you. Your life is getting worse. Like, all of those things are accurate. Like people are not wrong to perceive that their life is getting worse. It is harder to make ends meet. You're not getting paid as much. And like, Reform offer. Then they go and immigration is going up. And like, yeah, sure, there has been more immigration. And they go and ta, da. And like, they offer this simple answer to that. And like, that is sometimes what the left doesn't offer. We lecture people. We go, oh, well, you don't really care because you said this one thing. And actually, that doesn't mean you don't care about anything. So fuck you. You're the enemy now. And like, there's definitely a tendency with, like, how do we win? Win back Reform supporters, when a significant chunk of the left say, if you ever supported Reform, you are written off. I found it from South Wales, and they were definitely the type of South Wales people who wouldn't vote Tories. Because we were Welsh, we didn't vote Tories. But then UKIP came. They're like, Oh finally, thank God, they're not the Tories. But they said all the racist things, great and like, but it's difficult because they they were racist, sure, but I do think they were good people, and they did care, and they were loving, and I care about them, and I don't think they're evil. I think they had bad ideas. And like, you have to, like, really kind of spend a lot of time on the left being like, well, if they ever thought that evil, and you're like, Well, no, they were more nuanced than that. They did all these things. And like, we do need to kind of give people space to be wrong and give them space to change.
Priyanka Raval
I suppose maybe now is good time to talk about the riots, the riots that happened last year. Because I think that is, in a sense, an applied example of a lot of people who I think had bad views. I mean, even today in the cable I was sitting with Adam Quarshie, one of our reporters, and we were writing about one year on, it will soon be one year on since those riots happened, and we did not know the word to use for the people who turned up like rioters, no extremists, no the far right. Well, not all of them were that actually ideologically cohesive, to be honest. And like, I remember going down on the day in Castle Park where it happened here with the Cable crew. We were like, Okay, let's, let's stick together. And I was like, yeah, no, I'm gonna go chat to these guys. And then had that reverse racial profiling thing. I think, when I was coming over to the other side, and someone came up towards me, and I was like, here we go. And then he was like, Sister, take care. And you know, we were there till like, late into the night, having chats with people who were like, far right, but who had, like, a really vast range of opinions, which were kind of varied along the spectrum of pissed off, like varying degrees of pissed off. And yes, their anger was misdirected, and yes, there were definitely people who were outright extremists with awful views. But the fact that both of these sides was kind of so polarised, it made it very difficult to to have conversations across that divide. Because, in a way, if you go to the other side and talk to them, you're aligning potentially, with extremists, racist views. Like, yes, all of those social grievances you have make sense. But we're standing outside the hotel that some people in this crowd had literally tried to enter, and like brave people put their bodies on the line to prevent them from entering. And you know when they were listing all the things that were wrong with society, we were like, yep, yep, yep, yep, agree up until the point where they aim that anger towards migrants. What was also really interesting is that a couple of days after I was in the city centre near the Bristol Cable office, and I remember one of the things that people had said outside the hotel, one of these guys was like, you know, we're not even housing our own homeland. Us, and we're housing these migrants, and we're not even housing our own homeless. And I was in the city centre, and a homeless woman came up to me, and we were chatting for a beer, bought sandwich, whatever, and she was like, Oh, I've had to move out of Castle Park. Actually, horrible racists. Are there? Horrible views? So telling like, you know, I know people who are out there claiming to be fighting on your behalf, I've lost the question…
Taj Ali
I mean, I've got so much to say on this, like, it would probably take hours to get through, like, what's in my mind, just to kind of, kind of summarise and make sense of, I mean, the first thing to say is that violence didn't emerge in a vacuum. It was building for a long time, and politicians and journalists in the media had a massive role to play. Just think back to so. I mean, I think there were two moral panics. There was one which was Islamophobia, and there was one which was anti migrant sentiment, the Islamophobia stuff, I think when people are marching for a cease fire in Gaza, we had the former home secretary Suella Braverman talking about hate marchers and an Islamist takeover. Then you have Lee Anderson talking about how Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Mayor of London, is controlled by Islamists. Then you have Nigel Farage goes on telly and says British Muslims don't share British values. And if you're a white person who's never really interacted with Muslims, and this is what you're being fed constantly by politicians in the mainstream, by the Home Secretary, that's a very senior position in government, journalists not questioning it. And then at the same time, you've got this stuff around stop the boats, even though 96% of migrants to Britain come by legal means, most of them in the years from 2022 were people from Ukraine and Hong Kong and Afghanistan on certain settlement schemes. But the stuff around small boats was constantly in your face. It was constantly everything you saw you've got GB News constantly giving you that information, all it takes is a tragedy and a bit of misinformation for things to kick off. And that's what happened. I think, in a riot, there are always going to people who be people who don't actually know what the riots about, but they join in, and they are often people who have no sense of pride in their community, who have nothing to lose. I mean, when you're smashing out shops in your own community, you clearly have no pride in those shops, right? You've got no sense of like, this is my community, and there were a lot of youngsters. There were a lot of young people in Liverpool and Middlesbrough and Sunderland and Hartlepool who were getting involved in violence, and I don't think a lot of them hate Muslims or migrants, but they're in an area where they've got nothing. And even in Middlesbrough, in some of those white working class estates, you see windows smashed up to this day. You see anti social behaviour. You see loads of knife crime, people like openly shoplifting. And this is happening in Britain. In 2025 and seven in 10 of the most deprived communities in Britain saw racist riots. I mean, that's that's something to kind of get your head around at the same time, in terms of what was going through my mind at the time, I was furious. It means a lot to me personally, like I saw a video of an Asian gentleman in Hartlepool being punched in the face and being called the P word. And I was just thinking, this is what my dad used to tell me about, and it was I, my blood was boiling. I was angry, and there were a lot of Muslims and minorities in Asia were absolutely furious. Who said, you know, how are we tolerating this in 2025 2024 right? There was also a lot of fear and panic. And I think one thing that people often forget, especially people of colour and minorities, is if you're in the big cities like Birmingham and and the big towns with large minority communities, you forget that you're a minority, and actually your experience is different depending on where you are, because I was getting the most terrifying messages from Muslim women in Sunderland and Stockton and parts of Wales, Rotherham bonds, people were terrified. People were having panic attacks and were literally in tears. And this was a very real fear, and they have already faced so much Islamophobic hate crime, it very rarely gets reported. They don't report it, but also it doesn't get reported on in the media. And I think people forget that your experience as a minority in this country differs, and we don't talk enough about what it's like to be, for instance, a Muslim woman who is a headscarf living in Belfast, where, I swear to you just go on Google and racist hate crime in Belfast, there's a long list of things that appear. And you know, for me, it was exhausting. I barely slept. I was getting so many messages. I think there's so few Muslim journalists in Britain, but I was just getting so many messages from people reporting racist hate crime to me. But there was also. Of misinformation. There was a lot of people trying to cause further problems. And the BNP used to this back in the day, they'd rile up the Muslim community and and often, like young Muslims would be very angry, take matters into their own hands. And after 2001 many of them faced disproportionate, you know, longer sentencing. And so we were also trying to clarify, you know, misinformation that, oh, the EDL are coming to Birmingham, and then you had young people Muslims out to defend their community, and you've got the GB news journalist waiting to try and clip something. And you can just imagine what happens then, right? And so, yeah, it was exhausting, terrifying. And it was interesting, even during the riots. I mean, I was getting death threats every day, like my my inbox was a mix of like, death threat message about hate crime. Can you clarify this? Are we going to be attacked in Oxford today? All sorts of stuff. Was just constantly, like, in my in my inbox, and you almost felt there's a duty to try and help where you can, or to try and connect groups where you can, if you've got that network. But you know, there were people who said things like, I think immigration is out of control. I think this grooming gang stuff's been covered up, but I don't support like, mosques being attacked or graves being desecrated. And I'd love to chat to you. And I was just thinking, like, I'd love to chat, but right now, like we're just trying to stay safe. But there are people, what you were saying earlier, who have these grievances, have an anger. They're not died in the world fascists. And I think if you're going to label all of these people, you're all fascist. If you vote reform, you're a fascist. I mean, we saw what happened with Brexit, right? And I think very few people learned those lessons that if you just call the side you disagree with a bunch of names, that's not going to change things
Priyanka Raval
Horrifyingly we're on our last 10 minutes. But isn't it a bit of a contradiction also, of saying we need to reach across the divide, maybe our ethical stances are different, but let's all club together to improve our material conditions, and at the same time being like, oh, maybe some of the views held by some of these people are actually so awful that it's quite difficult to broach. Isn't that exactly where the left or community organising has kind of stagnated. How do you push through that?
Taj Ali
You have to connect with people. You know, when I went to Middlesbrough six months after the riots, there are some fantastic community organisers in white working class communities trying to change things. There are fantastic people in these neighbourhoods who have the clout, who have the respect, who've done good community work. They are the people who would be the most effective communicators, the most effective organiser against the far right. And it's a tricky one, because I know a lot of well meaning left wing activists who go into a community they're not really from because they feel a sense of duty to minorities in a place, and they'll say fascist scar more far street Neo Nazis and whatever, and sometimes that might not work. I mean, we had, there was a moral panic around a hotel in Dunstable, which is the town next to Luton, in predominantly white area, because the hotel used to do weddings for people, and they stopped doing it, and there was a big housing crisis there. Patriotic alternative, the far right group started trying to organise in this area, and I'd said to someone, you know, why don't we do an event on the housing crisis with some trade unions, and we kind of embed an anti racist message in there where we're talking about the economic situation, but it's being led by us who aren't on this agenda to make asylum seekers feel unsafe. And then there was some sectarian guy on the left who was like, no, no, this is what our organisation does, and you're taking our space. And I was like, Oh, we're all busy. So if you're going to do something, do it. But it would have been, and I don't mean to be mean about this, but very posh people from like places like St Albans going to a very poor area and saying, You guys are all brainwashed idiots. And it wouldn't make the asylum seekers feel any safe. It wouldn't improve the housing situation in that area. And it's not effective organising. And we have to have an honest conversation about strategic anti racist organising, and I think white working class people have to be at the forefront of that. They have to be.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
It's really interesting. You said, like, like, so much on the left is that we your group's not diverse enough. And actually, the group that seems to do the best at doing it, it's always private, educated white people to tell me this, but the group that does it best is acorn, and acorn don't let you about we need a more diverse group. Acorn come to you, and they go, is your landlord being a dick? Is your community screwed? Yeah, we'll fix that with you. And it turns out, when you offer people that that that you'll make, you know, their housing better, their community better, you know, give them some ownership and some control over how they live, then a more diverse group of people join, because everyone wants their community better. Everyone wants their housing better. Like it, we yeah, there's such easy things that we can share and it doesn't. To be lecturing. It can be, it can be an offer. It can be, if you get involved, your life will be better, and that's why you should be involved. Okay, yeah, it's, it's frustrating in a way, how simple it can be sometimes.
Priyanka Raval
Well, if it is that simple, why isn't it happening?
Taj Ali
I guess I'll share a little story about Marsh Farm, which is a community, council estate in Luton. It's predominantly West Indian and white working class. It's also where Andrew Tate is from, actually. But in 1995 we had riots on the estate. The police had had targeted black people in the area, and they'd beaten up a black kid. There was three days of rioting on the estate. It was It was March farm. Was always seen as one of the worst parts of looting, one of the most deprived, lots of crime, lots of anti social behaviour. And there was a group on the estate called the Exodus collective, who were known for the sound system culture. They used to organise raves. They used to like squat, derelict buildings. A lot of them were like white working class people on this estate who liked, like that kind of music, and they just wanted to have fun, right? And on the third night of the rioting, this was the first time the people had seen a police helicopter on the estate. The Metropolitan Police were drafted in. And when was this? This was in 1995 and the police said they could hear the birds whistling because all the kids on the estate were raving in a warehouse in Dunstable, having a good time. And that group, the Exodus collective, they have done some really effective community organising. They became politicised through sound system culture, like there was a lot of attempts to kind of clamp down on it and squat as rights and things like that. And they've done fantastic work. They eventually became the Marsh Farm outreach. They squatted a derelict, a 17th Century derelict farmhouse in Luton, and they've done it up through a Brazilian model of community organising called the organisational workshop, which is the idea that you give unemployed people the tools and resources to improve the area, you make them feel like they are part of contributing to change, and they feel a sense of empowerment. And that 17th Century derelict farmhouse has become a community hub. It's got a DJ Academy for kids excluded from school. It's got office space upstairs, which I used to use on a discount rent. It's got a restaurant, it's got a cafe. It's a space where we hold political meetings, and that was all done by local people in a community. And as much as they were doing the music brought people in. They weren't political. They didn't care for politics. It was only a few political people who kind of brought people along with them, and those people have a lot of clout in the community. When Tommy Robinson was doing his march and whatever, those guys were on the front line. But you know, the people on that estate, I think, are some of the most incredible, inspiring people I've ever met. One of them used to say to me, Glenn Jenkins, if you're taking your mate to a boring Labour Party, mean you probably don't like them. You know it's true. Like politics can be very dull and boring. Why would young people thank you for coming? But why would young people like if you can go to a party, you can have fun with your mates. Why are you going to go to a boring meeting? And they fused the two, music, food, you know, partying, with a bit of politics. And that works when they wanted to do, when they wanted to go, like public opinion and stuff, a consultation, they would do a bouncy cost in the community centre, because they knew, like a lot of the people there had children and stuff, and keep the kids busy and talk to them. They would door knock on the tower blocks, and it was a very, very effective model of community organising. And I think if we never had that there, who knows how those people would vote or how they would think? But it was because people took the initiative. It started with a few of them. It worked. People liked it. People felt a sense of, I'm part of this community, and it still has problems. Marsh Farm, it's still one of the worst, most deprived areas in Luton, but there is good work being done in these places.
Priyanka Raval
It's a bit trite, this question we ask all of our guests of, what is the thing that people can just do? What is the little handy nugget of community organising. And what I feel that you're saying is not to go in with the like Marxist theorising (Isaac!)
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
In 1917 some great men did some great work…
Priyanka Raval
Not now! But to instead just do the thing, you know, be a trade union organiser and get wins for your members, or establish something like Marsh Farm and that kind of collective which, like, works for the people it's working for, and just just do it instead of talking about doing it. Is that? All right? Fair summation?
Taj Ali
I think a lot of the most effective community organisers don't call themselves community organisers. They don't go under labels. There's a guy. In one of the estates called Jalal, who he'd put on the football and he'd order pizza, and that was his contribution to his community. And no one really knows his name, but he does that service, and the young people love him. And for me, the question is, what is more effective me organising in my community and talking to young people and giving them things to do and helping out, or me preaching to the converted and getting a pat on the shoulder from left wingers. And I've had to kind of come to terms with this, because I've done lots of talks around the country, especially after the riots, and too often it felt like I'm preaching to the converted. These people already agree with me. How are we engaging? And for me, it's like the young people, even in areas impacted by riots, some of the young Muslims were just so disengaged, and we've got to kind of figure out a way to change that. So for me, the priority has got to be changing how we engage with people actively trying to speak to people we've never spoken to before. What you find is you actually have a lot more in common, and that's what I found as a journalist, my views aren't the same as they were five years ago, and it's because I've traveled. It's because I've met firefighters and Posties and railway workers, and I've heard their perspective. I'm like, Oh, wow. Well, in Luton, we had a similar thing going on here, and it's like connecting the dots between these communities. I think that's the most powerful thing we can do, is to try and connect individuals and communities with each other.
Priyanka Raval
Okay, great thoughts. Thank you very much. I think one of the most interesting things that Taj said was about how maybe good strategic political organising comes from not being overtly political. Yeah?
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
The kind of idea of being like, here are the things we can agree on, that you want better housing, you've been sorted out, nationalised water, the healthcare system to work, yeah? And that you don't have to agree with us on everything else, but we can agree on that. We'll get that we'll get that done, and we can argue about the other stuff later. Yeah.
Priyanka Raval
So it's like, people join the union, you fight for their terms and conditions, you get them the wins, and then you can get into the discourse.
Isaac Kneebone-Hopkins
Yeah, hey, I got your pay rise to come to a book club done? Bosh, no, I think that. I think that's, I think that's really key. And I think, like, you know, we've seen that. Instead, where the Labour Party currently is just saying, oh, all these reform are saying this, we're going to do a kind of watered down version of that. It means that the reform is just going to be something even worse, because they'll just, they've raised the bar now, and then you're just pushing that debate into their territory. And instead, you should stand for, like, what you stand for, and you should stand for, and you should stand for these progressive changes, because that's what you're actually going to win on. Yeah, I think, like, there's a, there's a big lesson there, and I think a lesson that was played out in front of us since we did the live show, and I think is going to continue to be played out over the next few years, to be honest. Who have we got next? So the next live show will be on Tuesday the 27th of May, which will be tomorrow. If you listen to this episode on the cheap, we'll be with Annie McGann, who runs safer on nightlife, talking about how we protect the culture of clubs and bars and the things that make the city worth living in, from housing developers, mostly, but also crap the licensing from the council. And then, you know, people should come to all our live shows, which will be on the last Tuesday of every month in theCUBE. You can find tickets on head first, and we will announce them as and when we can. But just keep an eye out, because it can be great. I think it was really good time being there with Taj. It was a good time, and it would be lovely to see you all there and to, you know, build a real crew around chatting shit with interesting people who want to change the world, and
Priyanka Raval
it's going to be so much less lonely than what we currently do, which is just sort of say goodbye and go home. This was People Just Do Something with Isaac Kneebone Hopkins and me, Priyanka Raval, if you like the show, please give us some money to keep it alive. The Bristol cable.org forward slash join