The boys from the blackstuff are still here. And they’re still being left out
I realised yesterday that Clive from Tip Toe is a modern day Yosser Hughes. I haven’t finished the series yet so no spoilers please, and I’ve tried to write this without spoilers if you haven’t watched the show on Channel 4 yet.
When Clive stood on the building site roof, what went through my head was: “Gizza job!”
It’s a while since I watched The Boys from The Blackstuff but Yosser Hughes is a character who stays with you. You could think a play from 1982 is a historical piece but the conversations between the characters, tarmac workers on the dole, are very familiar.
For example, these are lines from the trailer (the first one is Yosser, the rest are spoken by others):
“Here I am, a man. A man. A man with no job, looking for one. It’s like trying to find a Scarlett Pimpernel.”
“Take a look around you girl, we form the majority round here, only some fellas are lucky enough to have wives who recognise that fact.”
“I can take it because I know my beliefs are right. I’ve been brought up by my dad to support what’s worth supporting.” “Yeah? I didn’t know your dad followed everything.”
The trouble with Clive is, we know Clive. There are Clives everywhere. Clives who struggled at school and dreamed of something better. Saw pop stars on TV and wanted to be one. Clives who got a trade, got married, had children, worked hard for their family, put food on the table, and enjoy the football with their mates.
Clives struggling to make ends meet.
Clives wanting to be loved and respected.
Clives wondering why their life didn’t turn out the way they expected.
Clive on the face of it, is a good man. He does all the things a man ‘should’ do in a traditional cultural sense.
I read a brilliant book a couple of months ago called The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class and suddenly, after 10 years of wondering how we got here, the Brexit vote made sense to me.
When The Boys from the Blackstuff came out, it was easy to identify people by class. It’s trickier these days.
The authors of this book found people from working class backgrounds have very different social and economic values to other class groups. They are economically left-wing (for example, workers’ rights) and socially right-wing.
They wrote: “As levels of education and the numbers of people with middle class jobs have increased, the average voter’s views have become more economically right-wing and more socially liberal. The working class and less educated are now further away from the average voter.”
The world has moved away from their reality and this puts them at odds with the political elite. Politicians from the main parties are not talking to them.
Clive runs his own business so on the face of it, he’s a success in Thatcherite terms. His conversation with his son suggests he didn’t do A-levels and he clearly feels awkward about that. Yet he has valuable skills and enjoys putting them to use.
People are always shocked when I say that the average reading age in the UK is 9-years-old. There’s a misconception that everyone can read and write, and do maths. That’s not true and the idea that people who can’t do these things, or who did not stay in education, for whatever reason, are somehow less is deeply insulting. Yet that’s what people hear.
They hear that their lives do not matter. And they hear that their beliefs, the ones passed down to them by their dad or their mum, or a grandparent, or someone else who stepped in to take care of them, are wrong.
Humans are pack animals. We follow the tribe. You don’t want to fall outside of it and be othered.
Leo has been othered his whole life. And you can see he is not immune to the hurt of it.
But Clive has slowly become othered, like a boiling frog.
He made choices based on his beliefs. He followed people who made him promises. What’s his reward? A life of quiet desperation where he feels got at all the time.
There are many moments from Tip Toe that will stay with me and I haven’t reached the end yet.
Everyone needs to hear Leo and Melba’s conversation in episode one. I think it’s really smart that that was put up front. This is what I, and many other queer people, are thinking and have been worried about for some time. It applies to other minorities too.
But we also need to pay attention to Clive because Clive is hurting and someone who suddenly finds themselves excluded is looking for someone to blame and can become very dangerous.
