Murnaghan Interview with Billy Bragg, musician and activist, 4.10.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now the Conservatives are not the only ones heading to Manchester today for their conference, thousands of anti-austerity protestors are expected to march through the city as the party’s conference begins there.  The musician Billy Bragg is amongst them and he joins me now and a very good morning to you Billy.  I suppose what’s very significant about these protests is that I think for the first time the opposition leader, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, is going to be part of those protests, coming up tomorrow I believe and is this the evolution of the new politics that Mr Corbyn talks about, it’s as much about the street as it is about the House of Commons.  

BILLY BRAGG: I think it is as much about ordinary working people as it is about the Westminster circle.  Over the past 20 years the way the Labour party has made policy has been very much top down, the word has come from the Prime Minister, from the leader of the party and I think Jeremy is looking at doing it a different way, taking ideas from the grassroots and today is a massive, a massive manifestation of grassroots.  I think we now live in a time, I think New Labour has passed and we now live in a time of grassroots Labour and that’s what it’s all about.  

DM: But given our systems, Billy, how does it feed through if policy is being made on the streets, it still pertains that if you want to change the law you have to get something passed through parliament, how do the two join together?

BILLY BRAGG: Well it is very simple.  Take me for example, I’ve joined the local Labour party where I live, we are already starting to put our ideas together and we are going to pass them up to the constituency level, to the region and feed it in to a policy making process that Jeremy Corbyn and his team are going to oversee and that’s why I have rejoined.  I left a long time ago in the 1990s because I felt it was becoming too top down but now people have a real opportunity to be part of the process but in order to get that process going we need to show the strength of our feeling and the demonstration today is one way of doing that.  

DM: But that top down party you left won three general elections and it hasn’t won one since, it’s lost two.  

BILLY BRAGG: Well I think we are in a situation where people are tired of politics.  The fact that we had a coalition government under first past the post, you’ve got to ask yourself is that a problem of the electorate or is it a problem of what the parties are offering and I happen to think that the recent election result was rather anomalous.  The Tories won their incredibly slim majority because the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed in a load of Liberal Democrat/Tory marginal, 15 of them in the south-west where I come from.  If the Liberal Democrat vote had held up there we would still have a coalition and we would still recognise that the British people have not really decided how they want to respond to the financial crash of 2008.  

DM: Given what we have just been discussing there, not another general election for just under five years so do you think the real way to put pressure on the government is to have much more of this, much more street protest, general strikes, things like that?  

BILLY BRAGG: Well I think the right to strike is a very, very important part of our basic fundamental human rights and the policies that the Conservative government are talking about bringing in to restrict that right are frankly ridiculous.  They are going to ask trade unions to tell the government, the authorities two weeks before they post anything on Facebook what they are going to post.  I don't know if you do Facebook, Dermot, but the idea of knowing what you are going to say two weeks from now is ridiculous.  Suppose a Labour government was in and said to our newspaper owners, we want to know what your headlines are going to be two weeks in advance, anyone would see that was ridiculous.  The right to strike is a basic fundamental right, it’s the way we ended up with the eight hour day, it’s the way we ended up with the weekend, it’s ultimately the way we ended up with the National Health Service because unions got organised, got into parliament and got those policies through so the idea that we are going to restrict people’s right to strike is not going to help ordinary working people at all.  

DM: Okay, great talking to you Billy, thank you very much indeed. Billy Bragg there, thanks very much.  

BILLY BRAGG: I hope you’re enjoying the weather.

DM: It’s fantastic weather there.