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The Reith Lectures 2022: The Four Freedoms

Lecture 3: Freedom from Want

City of Glasgow College

ANITA ANAND: Welcome to Glasgow for the third of the BBC

Reith Lectures, in a series inspired by Franklin D Roosevelt’s Four
Freedoms speech of 1941. So far, we’ve heard from the author,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on freedom of speech, the former
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams on freedom of worship.

But now, we turn to Freedom from Want. Now, for many people
this is a desperately urgent issue. This year, the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation estimates that seven million households in the UK are
currently going without absolute basics, things like heating or food.

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 To think about this a bit more deeply, we’ve come to the City of
Glasgow College in Scotland. It is the largest technical and
professional skills college here, providing nearly half of the UK’s
merchant Navy officers. It offers vocational training for up to 40,000
young people, some of whom are here today.

Now, we’re all here to listen to a local writer whose books,

Poverty Safari and The Social Distance Between Us have led to
comparisons with George Orwell. And whose social commentary
reaches a whole different audience via his alter ego, the hip hop
artist, Loki.

Let’s meet him. Will you please give a very warm welcome to
our third BBC Reith Lecturer for 2022, Mr Darren McGarvey.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

ANITA ANAND: Darren, thank you very much. You’ve got these
many different personas, all of which are done very, very well, but I
wonder, this activism gene, when was that actually activated in
Darren McGarvey?

DARREN McGARVEY: Well, I was raised during a period of

extended militancy in Glasgow. In the 90’s, we had groups taking over
local communities in ours, there was always a protest or some public
meeting that my Granny would be dragging me along to. And so, it
was kind of part of our culture really. But my first proper act of
campaigning, I would say, was when a local paper called The Greater
Pollock Post published and in one of its issues a cartoon which I felt
negatively portrayed people in the area.

And so, having been volunteering in the community and

speaking to various youth workers and facilitators who all shared my
view that this was inappropriate, I thought, well, if I do something to
draw attention to this, they’ll all support me. So, I made up a fake
front page article, formatted like a newspaper and watched the Editor

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gets sacked for the portrayal. And then, I did about 400 copies of it
and I dropped them all over the local community centres, our own
Pollock where I grew up. And that’s when I learned that actually,
when you do speak out, sometimes you just get left to your own
devices, because all the people that had encouraged me suddenly
backed away once it got around the community that this guy’s job
was under threat.

ANITA ANAND: Right. I’m really interested in this idea of

speaking out because you’ve said in different places you have
different voices, a different voice for Loki, a different – you call it the
Glasgow media voice and another one where you go about your
business where you grew up. How do you switch gear into each one of
those voices and which one are we hearing tonight?

DARREN McGARVEY: Well, Loki is a shape-shifter, and so my

interpretation of that character is very literal. But no, it’s really just
the different spheres that I’ve moved around in throughout my life of
letting me develop a communication skillset. I think it’s effective
when you’re trying to convey a message to different demographics in
society. So, the way that I would talk about something in a song is a
bit different from how I would speak like we are talking right now.
Even there might be some people in the audience who think I sound
quite odd the way that I’m speaking right now because of the way I’m
annunciating certain things, which is something that I wouldn’t do if I
was working in a prison. So, really it just means that I can turn to what
I believe the most appropriate skillset is for a current moment and
hopefully, convey what I want to, as effectively as possible.

ANITA ANAND: Well, we cannot wait to hear your voice as the

2022 Reith Lecturer. Please, Darren McGarvey, take to the stage.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

DARREN McGARVEY: Thank you.

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 Freedom from Want is a powerful idea. It’s the notion that the
basic needs of all people should be met and that by meeting those
needs, individuals born into less favourable circumstances, stand a
greater chance of fulfilling their potential and realising some of their
dreams, in the precious little time they have on this Earth. But while
you’d struggle to find anyone who disagrees with this basic principle,
it’s a principle which is nonetheless open to interpretation. Who is
ultimately responsible for making society fairer for the lower classes?
Political leaders who arguably lack proximity to the experiences of
ordinary people? Markets which prioritise profits over their security
and wellbeing? Or are the interests of the lower orders best served
by the lower classes themselves?

I hope to convince you that in an age defined by economic

uncertainty, political upheaval, and in my view, leadership that lacks
any meaningful social, economic, and cultural proximity to the
common man and woman, the rights, and responsibilities of the
individual, as defined historically by the right and left, are no longer
sufficient. I’ll outline why both the left and right’s definitions of the
individual and by extension, the corresponding notion of personal
responsibility have become increasingly self-serving. They persist
only to preserve the illusion of ideological continuity, rather than
being of any benefit to individuals themselves.

And I’ll argue that the true freedom from want, as envisioned by
Roosevelt, will only ever become a possibility when the citizen, who
wishes to improve both their personal circumstances and wider
society, acts with intention in both the personal and political realms.
For as anyone who has ever had to fight for a freedom will assure you
- it cannot be given, only taken.

In January 2013, at the end of a 7-day drinking spree, about to

open another bottle that would hopefully tide me over until the off-
license opened, a woman whom I have never met, sent me a message
on social media. It was a link to an article that would snap me out of
my drunken daydream. 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better
Person. I figured it would pass some time and began reading. By the

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time I got to number one on the list, Everything Inside You Will Fight
Improvement, the urge to continue drinking quite simply left me.

What had occurred was the profound psychic shift only a high,
targeted dose of the truth can bring about. For years, I had dined out
on my trauma, my losses, my grief, and my anger, using them as
excuses of varying plausibility to justify my descent into alcoholism.
It’s true that I faced significant adversities in my youth. They had a
lasting impact on my character and emotional nature for better and
for worse. But at some point, I lost touch with the idea that a better
life was even available to me.

I became resigned to the misery of depression, the painful

solitude of self-isolation and the invigorating if toxic effects of my
righteous anger. I was sick because the world was sick. And I couldn’t
get better until the world improved. My solution was to try and make
the world a better place from within the confines of my sick mind, but
oddly, nothing ever seemed to work. The article read like having a
mug of cold water thrown in your face. My blunted faculties
sharpened. A self-awareness pierced the thick fog of denial.

And after I finished the piece, I poured what remained of my

alcohol down the kitchen sink and told my long-suffering flat mate I
was done with the drinking. From that day my recovery began in
earnest, and I wouldn’t lift a drink for a further two years. And save
for a few slips along the way, I have been alcohol and drug free for
most of the last ten years.

How was this achieved? Where did the power to stop drinking
come from? A power which had eluded me almost every day of my
twenties. Did it come from the state? Was it supplied by the market? I
got sober in run-down community centres and churches, where no
experts or professionals were present. Indeed, my many interactions
with public services throughout the years played some part in my
adopting the false belief that I would never get free of addiction.

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 Instead, I got well in rooms where the advice dispensed came
from other sufferers of the problem and not from medical men and
women, or well-meaning theorists. Mutual-aid groups where there
are no hierarchies, no professional titles, and no state or private
funding. I learned how to traverse the greatest challenge I have ever
faced as an individual – the illness of addiction – merely by following
the suggestions of those who had gone before me. I did this in a
community where it is understood that we could only ever hope to be
of any meaningful or lasting use to that community by first making
ourselves accountable. Accountable for whatever part we play in our
adverse circumstances, accountable for the harms we have caused,
for our dishonesties, our attitudes and our behaviours, and
committing to living by certain principles in all of our affairs.

In those rooms, we achieve freedom from the want for easy

solutions. Freedom from the want for something to numb the pain
and confusion of life. And we achieve this freedom by learning to
reconcile our individual needs with the world as it is around us. We
claim our right to liberty from addiction by taking that freedom
ourselves. I am well aware that there are those whose challenges are
too profound to eschew medical expertise. Whose economic adversity
is too acute to simply think your way out of.

But in my experience, there are lessons as to how anyone, within

reason, might still better orient themselves in the face a personal
problem rooted in systemic inequality, so as to lighten the individual
burden and make themselves more useful in the wider struggle for
freedom from want.

Any right to any freedom, whether from or to worship, may be

granted, but can never be perpetually guaranteed, when extended to
the individual by an external force. In his book, Freedom from Want,
The Human Right to Adequate Food, George Kent explores the
complicated business of human rights in exhaustive depth through
the lens of sustenance. Kent first defines two specific groups: rights
holders – those to whom the right to adequate food is extended, and
duty bearers – those charged with seeing that this right is fulfilled.

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 Kent argues that while we may rhetorically extend the right to
adequate food to all people, as Roosevelt did in his Four Freedoms
address, or even legally, as the United Nations and numerous
national and international bodies have done since, such a seemingly
basic right can be wickedly difficult to implement in practice. It
requires allocating resources, determining logistics and following
complex chains of accountability. And then, there are also the various
potential interpretations of the right itself.

Is freedom from want achieved by simply providing for those in

need? Or is true and complete freedom achieved when citizens
possess the means by which to provide for themselves? And who is
ultimately responsible for creating the conditions for this
empowerment to occur?

In the interwar period of the 20th century, a new social

democratic consensus emerged from the rubble of global conflict. By
the 1940s, social citizenship, defined by enhanced freedoms and
protections granted by the state, would become the dominant
ideology on both sides of the Atlantic. The New Deal and the welfare
state, were imperfect but genuine attempts to manifest the basic
principle of freedom from want, broadening citizenship through
social and labour market -

I want to take that again, right? Because it’s being recorded.

The New Deal and the welfare state, were imperfect but genuine
attempts to manifest the basic principle of freedom from want,
broadening citizenship through social and labour market legislation.

The notion that a society’s prosperity should be shared, that its

economic growth should be equitable and that the basic needs of all
citizens can and should be met remains a powerful one. Imagine how
it must have felt to be a working-class person in the first half of the
twentieth century when such high-minded, previously pie-in-the-sky
ideas began making their fateful incursion into mainstream political

7
discourse. “The object of government in peace and war”, William
Beveridge stated in 1942, “is not the glory of rulers or of races, but
the happiness of the common man.”

While we may take a rather rose-tinted view of the creation of

the welfare state – a policy which commanded over 80 percent public
support at the time – there is no denying that the most radical raft of
social reforms in Britain’s history placed the working classes on a
fairer, surer footing.

Record levels of employment, a reduction in health and

educational inequalities and better working conditions and living
standards, generated levels of social mobility unseen until then.
Secured in part by an increasingly organised, and confident working
class that understood its true value, whose collective bargaining
became a primary mechanism of social mobility. Aside from the
impact of these reforms on living standards and social mobility, what
they also achieved was the setting of a precedent. Intellectuals and
politicians could act on behalf of the poorest. They could find
economic solutions to poverty if they sought them earnestly.

But within 40 years of that historic set of reforms coming into

effect, the seemingly irrefutable notion the state had an active role to
play in lifting the lower classes, and protecting them from the
excesses of markets, would come crashing down. An uncompromising
neoliberal critique, which regarded state interference as dangerous,
would come of age, with serious implications for individuals,
communities and arguably, for democracy itself.

Reagan and Thatcher stood at the dawn of a new epoch of free-

market economics, liberating the individual from the cumbersome
interference of the state. Key industries were privatised, regulation of
business was loosened, and a new view of personal responsibility
supplanted the once dominant notion of social solidarity engendered
by the post-war consensus, a view in which individuals were culpable
for being richer or poorer. It's in the space between these two
competing visions of society that the battle to define the roles,

8
responsibilities, and the rights of the individual, has occurred ever
since.

Throughout the eighties, the right ignored how unfavourable

circumstances such as poverty, social exclusion, addiction, and crime
were demonstrably linked to the structural inequalities of rapid de-
industrialisation. The right ignored subsequent attainment gaps in
education between social classes and the even wider gulf between
state and private schools. The right ignored widening health
inequalities and the inverse relationship between need and provision
documented in the government’s own findings; the myopic sale of
vital social housing stock at discount with no plan to replenish it,
creating a two-tier housing-market which transferred wealth from
insecure renters to affluent property owners.

But the right approved of labour market reforms which limited

the worker’s ability to bargain for better pay and conditions as the
industries around which countless communities were situated were
closed, with no strategy in place to deal with rising unemployment.
Failure to succeed in these structurally unjust conditions of economic
humiliation was increasingly, and wrongly, chalked up to the bad
choices, poverty of aspiration, weak character, and lack of resilience
of the lazy working classes and the feckless poor. Too much month at
the end of your money? Work harder. Already have two jobs but can’t
make enough to live a decent life? Budget better. Struggling to cover
the costs of raising children? Should have thought of that before you
had them.

Meanwhile, a shrinking group of winners began accumulating

opportunities, assets, and wealth at a rapid rate, in part due to
decisive, targeted state interventions in the housing market, the
education system and, of course, the tax code. These winners were
then furnished with an intoxicating myth of meritocracy to account
for their unparalleled personal, professional, and corporate success.
In this vision, the individual, who ascends by acting in their own
rational self-interest becomes the bulwark of liberty. They miss how

9
the individual who cannot succeed faces the withdrawal of the means
by which they might lift themselves out of the quicksand.

How they become prey to the bedevilments of a poorly

regulated free-market, precarious work, ill-health, residential
instability, cyclical consumerism, debt, distress and despair. In this
vision of society, where the customer is always right and the worker is
always wrong (even when they are the same person), merit is defined
always to the advantage of the winners, who become blind to the true
extent of their structural privileges. But if it is, in fact, the case that
we do live in a meritocracy, and that all the best people are in all the
top jobs, then why, one might ask, is the country such an unmitigated
bin fire?

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

On the left, these individualist delusions and refrains are

robustly challenged. The ludicrous notion that one person, by sheer
force of will, can offset multiple deprivations merely by changing
their attitude or by working harder invites rebuke. Those of a more
socialist disposition, who believe the plight of the poor is best served
through collective action and the state are, in my view, correct in
their analysis.

But this perspective almost always lacks any analysis of the role
that the individual may still play in producing better circumstances,
even within that unjust context. Furthermore, on the left, it can be
offensive to suggest that not all individual problems are rooted in
failing systems, that some of our problems are of our own making and
therefore our own to solve.

I have been accused of engaging in what is tantamount to

victim-blaming for pointing out the various ways an individual, who
lacks insight, self-awareness, or like me, becomes gripped by the
malady of addiction, can make their experience of a structural
problem like poverty much harder than it has to be. And I have been
criticised for asserting that in many cases, before a person can begin

10
to consider acting meaningfully upon an unjust society, they must
become willing to change themselves, the most radical thing some
people will ever do.

I am always being reminded by my comrades that only a

political revolution and wholesale overhaul of the system will ever be
sufficient in raising the quality of life of those who languish in
precarity and poverty and exclusion. But even in the event of our
hypothetical utopia becoming a reality, where a service rises to greet
every unmet need, and every resource is made available to tend to
every ailment, all the experts and money and time in the world will
not prevent an alcoholic from drinking until they decide to stop. This
is evidence of agency at the level of the individual. Agency which,
when channelled correctly, may have as transformative an effect on a
person’s circumstances as entourages of wrap-around professional
support.

Individual sovereignty is over-stated by the right and

underemphasised by the left. On the left, the sovereignty of the
individual is too often only recognised when that person fits
themselves to a specific left-wing cause – all other forms of individual
expression or political activity are deemed indulgent, worthless,
futile, servile, or superficial. For a certain kind of social justice
advocate, it is simply implied that the non-political individual is a
passive economic victim who possesses no agency.

Meanwhile on the right, while much lip service is paid to

individual liberty, this agency is only recognised and celebrated when
expressed within certain ideological parameters. As long as one’s
personal sovereignty is channelled along the permitted lines of
mindless consumerism, the acquisition of material goods and
property, commercial conquest, and the celebration of an arguably
airbrushed and white-washed history, then you are free to be whoever
you want to be. Should, however, an individual dare to express their
agency by joining a protest, or by organising with a trade union for a
wage they can live on, then they can expect their sovereignty to be
constrained, usually – ironically - by state intervention.

11
 Neither the left nor the right’s definition of the individual’s role
contacts the reality of what the individual may face in a time of
profound social, economic, and political emergency. A nightmare
scenario where they are told only low wages will keep their poverty at
bay, that only a recession can beat inflation, and where
democratically-elected leaders who once protected the individual
from the excesses of free enterprise, have handed that role to the
markets.

Who is ultimately responsible for creating freedom from want in

this bleak context? Political leaders whose contribution to society can
be measured in how many billion they intend to cut from public
services? An under-resourced apolitical poverty industry where the
problem of inequality is divided into countless, seemingly unrelated
into subgenres with no over-arching analysis or narrative of
inequality’s systemic nature? Or, must a more radical communitarian
approach be adopted in light of the cold hard truth that for some,
help is not coming.

A call to personal responsibility in this context, dispensed from

a dispassionate distance by someone who has never lived it, rings
hollow and smug. But a call-to-action from someone who has been in
your shoes, who understands the colossal effort required to lift
yourself up, far from patronising, can act as the catalyst in rendering
adverse circumstances gradually more favourable.

Taking responsibility is not about accepting blame for our

adverse circumstances; it is simply about recognising the part we can
play in improving them whatever their cause. The belief that we as
individuals can exert gradually greater degrees of authorship over
ourselves and by extension our circumstances. Taking responsibility is
about daring to reject the allure of permanent cynicism, misguided
apathy, and toxic fatalism and instead, embrace the painful process of
change, one step at a time.

12
 The man with substance abuse problems, arriving early at the
local needle exchange is taking responsibility. The asylum seeker,
fleeing a warzone with her children, who has set up camp at a local
library to improve her English, is taking responsibility. The single
mother, who embarks on a higher education despite the challenges of
childcare, is taking responsibility. And I would contend that in the
horrid event that the services on which each of those individuals
depend were to be suddenly and callously withdrawn, that each of
them may still, in the right conditions of social solidarity, confront
and traverse their difficulty by some other means.

Did getting sober solve every problem in my life? No. Did it

offset the vast socioeconomic inequalities I faced at different points?
No, of course not.

I don’t want it to end….

(Laughter )

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

This is what savouring the moment feels like…

But by prioritising the most urgent problem, and becoming

resolved to confronting it, I was, after a time, better placed to bring
myself more fully and consciously to the great many other challenges
beyond my immediate control. And as my personal load lightened
one day at a time, my attention gradually turned to how I might help
others.

Only when the individual, conscious of their circumstances both

personally and within a much greater socioeconomic and political
context, chooses to act at both the personal and social level, will the
conditions for true freedom from want ever become possible. To use
George Kent’s terminology, ‘the rights holders must in effect also
become the duty bearers.’ Those who desire freedom from want, to

13
the extent that is in their mental, physical, and emotional capability,
must now begin to rise and take that freedom, whatever that freedom
looks like for them.

This is not an argument for abandoning people in their

adversities. Far from it. This is a clear-sighted assessment of the
reality many already face or will potentially face in the near future in
a society where the assumption that help is on the way, is no longer a
safe one. It’s an expression of a belief that most people are capable of
more than they or anyone else dares to believe.

Social justice must be about more than advocating on behalf of

the misfortunate but also, about walking alongside them long
enough to understand their challenges more intimately, developing
the rapport necessary to build trust and sometimes, to speak frankly.
It must be about including the powerless in their own empowerment.
And part of that process is recognising not simply what is quite
obviously beyond an individual but also about identifying that which
is within their capability.

Some, understandably, will insist 'that's not fair, the individual

cannot be expected to be capable of offsetting such systemic
injustice', and in a sense, morally, they are right. But the situation we
find ourselves in now is beyond what's fair or right. I make this
argument not because I believe it is model, but because I believe
there is no other choice.

Some victims will have no choice but to become survivors.

Those who feel voiceless will have no alternative but to speak up and
be heard. Those who would advocate on behalf of the powerless must
learn that to challenge power on a mass level, or indeed to assume it,
must begin with cultivating the belief in the individual that power is
available to them.

For if your worldview dictates that a shift in the balance of

power is the only means by which those on the sharp end of
inequality can be lifted up, then surely part of that process of

14
empowerment is about supporting the seemingly powerless to locate
a small part of that power within themselves, where no prior
experience, relevant education, or firm intention is required, only a
willingness to participate. No prior condition but desire. No entry
level but belief.

The status-quo’s days are numbered in low digits. This is your

society. This is your life. This is your time. And so, all I ask is this: what
are you going to do about it?

Thank you very much.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

ANITA ANAND: So, can I turn that last clarion call, which has
had such an electrifying impact on the audience, when you said,
“What are you going to do about it?” what do you want all these
people to leave this auditorium, what do you want them to do about
it?

DARREN McGARVEY: Well, everyone will relate to that

dichotomy at the level of the personal and the political. I mean, some
people say, “The personal is political,” but then, it sort of just stops
there at that kind of easy platitude, where really, what they’re saying
is, “You should just devote all of your personal life to the kind of
politics I’m into.” But actually, most individuals know that there is an
internal struggle going on. And then, there is the contemplation of
what’s happening at the wider social level.

And really, what I’ve tried to do with this is to reconcile these

seemingly competing ideas of collectivism versus the individual.
Because I have seen with my own eyes and experienced that in my
own life and witnessed it in the lives of many people that are around
me, what a profound impact it can have when an individual learns to
assume a certain level of culpability for some aspects of their life or
their behaviour and then, having freed themselves up from those
problems, can turn their attention to the wider community.

15
 ANITA ANAND: You said in the lecture, you gave the
impression that you’ve spent a lifetime thinking about this and doing
this and being buffeted from the left and buffeted from the right.

DARREN McGARVEY: Which is tremendously disorientating.

ANITA ANAND: I can imagine but you’re going to hate this.

While you were speaking, I was thinking, actually, I can see a
circumstance where both the Left and the Rright will claim you as
their own. You know, where the Right will say, “Oh, you’re saying
personal agency. That’s what we think as compassionate
conservatism.” Or the Left will say, “He’s talking about redistribution
of wealth. He’s talking about restructuring society. That’s what we
believe in.”

DARREN McGARVEY: In truth it’s a difficult position to take.

I’m trying to get a message to the public. And I know Radio 4 might
not be the most effective way to do that but –

ANITA ANAND: I don’t know what you mean…

DARREN McGARVEY: But the thing is, this is what I believe in.
I’m more comfortable to inhabit that belief now because if you’ve
lived it, you can’t deny what I’m saying.

ANITA ANAND: You just mentioned the Radio 4 audience and I

felt a sort of a shudder going down the Radio 4 spine when you used –
and you use language very deliberately and you wield it very
beautifully – but you refer to lower classes and the lower class and I
thought, I can’t think of another Radio 4 voice that would say that. I
could hear working class – did you deliberately choose that and why?

DARREN McGARVEY: This is a contentious term but usually,

it’s people who experience a certain level of anxiety about using the
term because they are using it for mainly elevated social position. I
don’t find it a controversial term because I come from that. So I try

16
not to get too tied up now in the terminology of things as long as I’m
saying something that falls within the wheelhouse of my own
experience, then I feel more confident to use the language that’s
appropriate to me and if anyone wants to pull me up for anything, I’ll
be happy to engage with that.

ANITA ANAND: You know what? Let’s open this up to the

audience now because there are so many people who do want to
engage with this…yes, the lady over there at the end.

HELEN MINNIS: I’m Professor Helen Minnis. I’m a child and

adolescent psychiatrist. And I loved what you said it’s about for
better or for worse, because we know that severe adversities like
malnutrition can be really damaging neurologically to children’s
development but we also know that people who’ve lived in situations
of severe adversity like yourself can really thrive and can really
demonstrate exceptional talents? What do you say to services about
the people that they meet and their personal power?

DARREN McGARVEY: First of all, how are you educated about

what it is that you’re dealing with. If you’re working in addictions or
if you’re a GP, I mean, what is the extent of your understanding of
addiction? It’s not something that’s given great consideration, which
is really strange in communities where addiction is a real issue. So,
you’ve got a workforce that’s not adequately informed about the
problem, you’ve got a lack of resources to deal with the problem and
all this means is that we run a skeleton service and health and
education and everything else.

So, really, I always say when I’m out talking to professionals, if I

get the chance to do that, all this talk about cost-of-living crisis and
how we want a better society, the professionals need to get on-board
to become willing to sacrifice something to make that happen.
Usually, the professionals, they get a cringe a little bit at the rallies.
They don’t want to be seen out, involved in things. But then, when it
starts hitting their wages, you see how actually, some new options
come on the table and that’s the only silver lining on this storm cloud,

17
as that increasingly, people of high social classes will be hit by the
cost-of-living crisis and suddenly, they might become – hopefully – a
wee bit radicalised.

ANITA ANAND: Can I just go back to the question and ask her?
What is your lived experience of this?

HELEN MINNIS: I think what I really hear and what you’re

seeing that’s most important is that often, we don’t respect the lived
experience of the people that we work with. We don’t realise that if
you haven’t lived in poverty yourself, well, you better learn from
people who have. And that can actually help to shape what other
skills you’ve got. So, for me, there needs to be much more of a
respect and a dialogue.

ANITA ANAND: Thank you. There’s a question – gentleman in

the black shirt over here.

JOHN: Thank you. My name is John. I’m not a member of any

organisation. I’m a member of the public. It seems to me that you’re
making the case for redistribution of opportunity as opposed to
redistribution of wealth, so that all you need is just the decision from
the individual. And so, within that, I was wondering if you could
articulate what might be three example policies, that would make a
difference in your estimation?

DARREN McGARVEY: Well actually, my lecture is made from a

new assumption that there is no functional state and that there is no
competent political class that can implement a solution. So, it’s
actually the opposite of how you’ve interpreted it, which makes me
now worry about a lack of clarity in the lecture. But actually, I’m
making the point, listen man.. see, when I look over that society and I
see who’s at the top and who’s in charge and what they believe and
the extent of their experience of the real world, then I despair a little
bit.

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 So I’m making an argument, what do you do if no one gives you
an opportunity? What do you do if you’ve broken your leg and you
phone an ambulance and they say, “We’re not sending one out?” You
go from a posture of, I’m waiting for an ambulance, to, I need to
figure out how to move. And so, I realised that that’s sometimes an
indelicate thing to say because there’s going to be someone out there
who’s circumstances are so severe that I haven’t taken sufficient
account of, who thinks that I’m telling them individually, “You better
get up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just take over
society.”

That is not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is those of us who
are ready to hear that message, we need to be prepared to act now to
help the people who can’t help themselves.

ANITA ANAND: Thank you.

PETER KELLY: My name is Peter Kelly and I work for the

Poverty Alliance.

There was a couple of key messages that I’d take away, or key
lessons maybe, from the lecture. The first is that freedom from want
isn’t simply about resources. It’s about power. And if we don’t have an
analysis of power when we’re talking about poverty, we will fail from
the outset.

The other is that individual agency is absolutely vital for social

change. I guess my question is how do we, if we were to refocus or
advance an approach that’s going to recentre or rehabilitate, if you
like, personal responsibility, how do we do that in a way that doesn’t
reinforce that negative stigmatised narrative that damages people,
ultimately?

DARREN McGARVEY: Terminology is always appropriated,

definitely dependent on what people’s politics are. Some people, they
prefer to say, “personal agency.” Some people even say, “That’s self-
responsibility,” which is just, oh my god, are you so ideologically

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fixated that you can’t just say the word most people understand the
meaning of, you know? Every working-class person in this country
knows what personal responsibility means because every day they
have to assume it and the latest reason they kept turning up for the
work, being involved at the community level, whatever that looks like,
it’s not controversial when you’re not mired in all the tangle of
ideological continuity and you’re just trying to live your life. So, I
wouldn’t even give it a second thought. Use the language that feels
appropriate to you.

GREGOR FORBES, Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. You

talked about your own recovery. Instead, there was no expert or
professionals present. Being in the Scottish VRU, I class myself as a
committed professional but I’m-----

ANITA ANAND: So, just, what is the – just tell me that acronym,
what does it stand for?

GREGOR FORBES Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

ANITA ANAND: Thank you.

GREGOR FORBES Being self-reflective, I realised despite my

early years being in a deprived community in Fife, I’ve been one of the
lucky ones. I did okay at school, was the first of my family to get to
university. I’ve had a rewarding career and I’m conscious, and in terms
of being an expert, I’m not one. How do we in the Scottish Violence
Reduction Unit, make more use of the lived experience in tackling the
systemic problems that society faces, poverty, addictions and
violence being the three that jump out at me?

DARREN McGARVEY: The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit

has modelled a way of looking at violence as a public health issue all
across, and I would say, a central cornerstone of that is a lot of the
individuals who have become the first responders. So, when you’re
sending people out to hospital, the casualty wards to be the first

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point of contact for someone who’s been a victim of knife crime, that
is an understanding not only of the key pivotal intersection where you
can actually make a really appropriate intervention, but also, making
sure you’re sending someone out who knows what it’s like to lie in
that bed.

Because their whole deportment in terms of how they would

confront someone in a situation like that, it’s all in what they don’t
say, it’s all in how they don’t appear, because communication can be
that subtle. It just takes a knowing look from someone with lived
experience for that other person who feels vulnerable, sceptical of
institutions, to go, “Oh no, okay, you’re my people,” and then the
change can begin

ANITA ANAND: Do you ever worry, or has it ever happened to

you where somebody will say, “You know, Darren, you used to be one
of my people but now, you’ve got book publishing deals, you’re on
the telly, you’re on the radio, you live in a nice house,” you stop being
one of our tribe?

DARREN McGARVEY: Yeah. I mean, my relationship to the

means of production has changed. That has to be said. But I pride
myself on the fact that every single opportunity that I explore, it’s
understood that whoever I’m collaborating with, there is always going
to be a continuity of what I have to say anytime I have a platform.
I might get a nicer suit. I might live in a nicer house. And I have
the right to enjoy those things, as anyone would if they had been as
lucky as me to get the breaks that I have had, so I’m not going to walk
around anymore as I have done in the past with this deep pang of
survivor’s guilt, apologising for my own existence.

Because the truth is, most working-class people are happy to

see you succeed and they feel represented by you and it’s very, very
clear, no matter how I try to hate it sometimes, where I come and
what my moral view is.

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 ANITA ANAND: You and I have got similarly-aged
children..when it comes to the next generation, there are two ways of
doing this and I’ve heard this with the immigrant experience as well,
which is, number one, I want to give my children everything that I
never had, I want them to be safe from all of this. And the other is, I
want to remind them where exactly they came from and how hard it’s
been. How do you navigate that?

DARREN McGARVEY: It’s tricky. It’s tricky to navigate that

because ultimately, what you hope and what has been the trend until
very recently is that generationally, there is some material
improvement in the conditions of the lives of our family. And it’s only
very recently now that that’s kind of starting to regress slightly. I’m
one of the lucky ones who got a foot up the ladder but I’m not ready
for pulling the ladder up behind me.

When your material circumstances change, you earn more

money, your children are raised essentially, materially, a middle-class
life, even though they still live in a housing scheme. They still live
next to bookies and they still live around the corner from a Greggs.

So, really what I have to do is I have to accept that they’re not

going to become more insightful if I just tell them war stories all the
time. So actually, what I do is, I kind of notice things like how my son
expects his uniform to be all on the radiator in the morning when he
gets up, or how my daughter’s first question in the morning when she
gets up is, “Where am I going today?”

And I think about that and I think, what a gift to be able to set
those expectations, because these are expectations that we didn’t
have, that you were going somewhere every day, that your clothes
would be warm when you got up. And so, I experience gratitude for
that and that, for me, is quite grounding and sometimes, a kind of
weird twilight zone, enter class twilight zone that I exist in
sometimes.

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 At the end of the day, nothing will lessen a conservative impulse
like having children, so you need to watch that. You need to watch
that because sometimes, people have kids and then, that becomes
the airtight justification they need to just completely abandon their
own integrity and just go, go for whatever suits them. And while it’s
still true that I would eat your kid to save my kid, I’m not quite ready
to swing away the other direction just yet.

ANITA ANAND: Okay, good to know. Let’s take the question

from here.

FIONA DUNCAN: Thank you, Darren. I feel I’m arriving at this

conversation at a strange time. My name’s Fiona Duncan, I chaired
Scotland’s independent care review and I’m now responsible for
supporting its implementation. Over 5500 people who took part in
the independent care review and over 3000 were children and young
people who had experienced Scotland’s care system but also
experienced poverty, they understood addiction, they understood
homelessness, they understood prison. And they used their agency
to bridge that proximity gap to try and make sure that the people
who have the responsibility for them in Scotland know what to do and
they imagined a better future for the children coming after them. You
were a boy campaigner who’s just said that you’re a cannibal Dad and
I’m wondering what would you say to the 3000 children who took
part in the care review that they should be hopeful for?

DARREN McGARVEY: When it comes to young people who

come from disadvantaged backgrounds – I was that kid. And then, I
went on to work with those kids very closely including in residential
settings and criminal justice settings and on street corners. I mean,
Friday night we would go out on to the street just to make contact
with them. Sometimes other people will place limitations on them
based on their understanding of what these young people are capable
of and that’s why I come out swinging with this kind of message
because I know how it resonates with people who know that they’ve
got something about them to offer but no one has confirmed that

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inkling. And it wasn’t until someone said to me, “You should write a
book.” I was like, “Okay.”

No one had suggested that to me before and I sure as hell didn’t

think of it. And so, there are all kinds of interactions that we can have
with our young people where they just need to be validated for what
they already do well. It can be life-changing if you’re in a class, young
people who don’t see themselves as literate and you compliment
someone on their handwriting, right?

And they reject the compliment out of hand. They say, “No, it’s a
mess. I cannae write. I cannae read.” I can’t write, can’t read for a
global audience. And then, if you look back at them, you’ll see them
kind of looking at it, checking their writing again, kind of look at you
and they’ve got this little bashful look and badass look on their face.
Because what you’ve done is you’ve acknowledged something they
already can do, that they’re already good at. So, suddenly, it’s like, oh
well, I’ll bank that. And so, if any of them are listening, I think they’re
on the right track by participating. And I say, go for it.

EVAN: Hi. My name is Evan. I’m a trade unions steward. How do

you counsel and reassure and encourage people to turn anger into
action and agency where various forms of collective action such as
protest industrial action and increasingly personal risk could be
criminalised?

DARREN McGARVEY: It’s a big, big dilemma. Big dilemma. Are

we’re going to take a couple of questions or will we just talk?

ANITA ANAND: No, we’ll just go one at a time..

DARREN McGARVEY: Go for that?

ANITA ANAND: Yeah, yep.

DARREN McGARVEY: How do you get people to move past

their fear that there’s going to be some sort of repercussion for

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fighting for their own freedom... As long as enough people, as long as
enough people do, and I think that this is a time where, thanks to
Sharon Graham, people like Matt Lynch, Eddie Dempsey. They’re
kind of wise to how the media used to play with prominent trade
union leaders so they’re not modelling a kind of angry sort of
behaviour.

They’re very concerted, they’re very personable, they’re very

sincere, and these are qualities which are quite transfixing for working
class people at home who are used to witnessing politics discussed in
a very sterile, ideologically narrow way. And so, and this is a difficult
thing to say, when things get bad enough, people forget what they’re
afraid of. And so the only silver lining of this kind of cloud that we’re
under, is that more and more people realising that help’s not coming,
we’re going to have to do this ourselves.

Thanks for your question.

ANITA ANAND: Yeah. But just on that, because on the one

hand, you’re saying, “It’s the individual. It’s up to the individual to
change their lives,” but you’re also praising people. You mentioned
Matt Lynch among others. What is the place for leadership? Who
makes a good leader?

DARREN McGARVEY: Obviously, we all need leaders. I mean,

we all look to different people in our lives for leadership in different
areas. And one of the things that gets lost in the discussion around
“trade union barons” is that these are some of most democratic
robust institutions in our society. So, no one’s at the top of that
pyramid for being elected to be put there. And that gets kind of lost
in the. So, actually one of the most democratically effective things
you can do, I think, for workers who are dealing with a cost-of-living
crisis would be to look into that, and maybe, not just join a trade
union but to help out – and that’s something that people in trade
unions will always say, “It’s more effective when people actually get
involved.”

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 ANITA ANAND: You talked about media barons and press
barons, so things like social media, is that a democratising force?

DARREN McGARVEY: In a sense, yes, it is. It democratizes

discourse where you actually get to hear what is being discussed in
the public square. Now obviously, it’s still heavily mediated and a lot
of the opinions and viewpoints are still, in a sense, manufactured by
other media forces. But I much prefer, as difficult and messy as it can
be, being held accountable almost like, within three seconds of saying
something, and I think that we’re in a very kind of difficult time just
now. I believe that we are undergoing a profound transition and that
what emerges at the other end of that will be something quite
different in character to what we have now but it’s going to be a
bumpy ride.

ANITA ANAND: And the hashtag is #reith, by the way. Okay, I

think we’ve got time for maybe two or three more questions. Ok..first
of all let’s take it..

SIMON O’HAGAN: My name is Simon O’Hagan and I write

about radio for Radio Times Magazine and elsewhere. I’m thinking
back to the beginning of your lecture and the moment you described
when you did not open the next bottle. And I’m just wondering what
you think was within you that enabled you to succeed in escaping
your situation and how that might be applicable to other people?

DARREN McGARVEY: Yeah. I’m happy to talk about that. I

didn’t know what happened at the time but it was a feeling of waking
up almost, which may sound a bit kind of woolly and esoteric, right?
But anyone who has experienced that emerging from a shroud of
denial, they would describe it like that because what it is, is you’re
elevating to another level of consciousness. So, the bottom level of
consciousness is you’re just acting without thought, you’re numbing
the emotions that come in, you are kind of mindless, in a zombie-like
state, whatever the problem is, right?

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 And then, if you experience an elevation in your consciousness,
you sort of get a momentarily a chance to observe that from another
vantage point within you. And so, then you go, oh, hang on, I’m not
into this, I don’t want to live like this. And usually, in an alcoholic’s
journey, that occurs when the supply of alcohol is cut suddenly, which
usually it does happen if you do a night in the cells or a
hospitalisation or some other kind of thing that temporarily stops you
from obtaining the alcohol. But it can also occur when someone just
decides to tell you the truth.

And tell you the truth with love and compassion but because
they want something better for you. And that, how it pierces that
shroud of denial, it’s really one of the only things that will get people
sober. Now, don’t get me wrong, you need to maintain in an elevated
consciousness and you need to keep rising in the different rungs of
consciousness to escape all of the emotional nature that keeps
bringing you back to the drinking. However, that initial catalyst often
won’t come from someone in your midst who has no professional
experience, who has no understanding. They might not even
understand or even accept the definition of addition.

But they might just look you in the eye, and might just say,
“Listen Darren, you are absolutely screwed. You’re ruining your life
and you need to sort yourself out.”

HANNAH: My name’s Hannah. My question is, what gives you

hope and what message do you have for our current leaders?

DARREN McGARVEY: I wouldn’t do the things that I do if I

didn’t have hope. There’s many reasons to be negative and
despairing but you can’t really kind of complete the work that
certainly I do without being driven by some other desire other than
just like your own gratification because 90% of what I do is not
pleasant, let me tell you.

Do I have a message for politicians?

27
 One message is, if you are listening, then you need to pay closer
attention to the information that’s coming from outside of your
information ecosystem because all the advice that you’re getting
about all the problems, it doesn’t seem to be doing a damn sight of
good. And so, there might be something to learn from exposing
yourself to some of the forces out there.

And if they aren’t listening, We’ll see how it pans out but they
may just get out the way because I don’t really see how a society that
has been governed by the same ideology and the same people who
went to the same schools can improve when the crisis is getting even
worse. So, I think we need not just new personnel but a new overlook,
calling on new experiences.

ANITA ANAND: Darren, sadly we’re going to have to leave it

there. Next time, we’re going to be in Washington, DC, to hear Fiona
Hill, former advisor to both President Obama and President Trump.
She’ll talk about Russia; foreign affairs and she will conclude this
series by addressing Freedom from Fear. But for now, from Glasgow,
thank you to our audience here at the City College and a huge thanks
to our Reith Lecturer, Darren McGarvey.

(AUDIENCE APPLAUSE)

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