Rabble-rousing: Writing on the Wall 2014

Literary festival Writing on the Wall has been running in Liverpool since 2000 and takes over the city throughout May each year. More than 30 events are planned, including plays, readings and on-stage interviews, all of which will see hidden histories being unearthed, and radical activists being celebrated. New and local talent will be showcased alongside more established artists, writers and performers.

This year’s run of the festival – subtitled ShellShock – marks the centenary of the First World War, and explores how our perception of it shapes attitudes to modern-day wars abroad and conflict at home, as well as asking how we went from A Land Fit for Heroes to living on Benefits Street. Writers, artists and commentators offering their own unique take on these topics include the likes of Irvine Welsh, Liz Carr, Seumas Milne, Helen Walsh, Phill Jupitus and Luke Harding.

The festival’s signature recurring events are the Rebel Rants, which see a guest speaker presenting on contentious topical issues in the hope of provoking debate. This year, Owen Jones, columnist and author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, will be taking the stand to discuss the enemy within.

“I’m interested in the threat to democracy from above,” says Jones, “in unaccountable power in a kind of self-interested elite, which looks after itself and who look out for each other, who are interested in amassing huge wealth and power at the expense of society. That’s who we’re up against – an establishment that doesn’t put democracy and the wellbeing of the population first.”

---

“I’m interested in the threat to democracy from above” – Owen Jones

---

Jones, however, is not nostalgic for a time when the working classes enjoyed a better treatment or a more positive portrayal in the mainstream media. “Working-class people have always been attacked and demonised,” he says. “There’s never been a golden era. In the 1970s you had ‘militant trade unionists holding the country to ransom,’ that sort of thing.” He explains this marginalisation of trade unions ultimately contributed to an explosion in inequality. “The way of justifying that inequality is to say the people at the top deserve to be there and the people at the bottom deserve to be there too because they’re feckless, they’re work-shy.

“It’s an attack on working-class identity,” he argues. “Once there was a sense of pride attached, but now it’s a case of everyone is expected to aspire to be middle class. It’s more ‘lift yourself up by your bootstraps’ – less of an emphasis on collective identity and solidarity and more on individualism. Also there are less working-class people in politics and media – more barriers have been erected.”

Events such as Writing on the Wall, Jones suggests, can offer a counterpoint to those trends. “It gives a platform to a broader range of writers and is different from the more metropolitan London focus of other literature festivals or events. The important thing is always the discussion and providing a forum for people to engage with issues to try and change things.”

Festival director Madeline Heneghan agrees it is important to encourage active participation. “It’s not just about writers coming and reading their work and people passively absorbing that,” she says. “What were the lessons of the First World War? And what were the lessons that we need to consider as a global society?”

Heneghan says the events that focus on the First World War and the discussions about contemporary politics have common ground. “What we expect all of the events to do is to key in to the debates around the First World War and how it should be remembered. Whether it was a glorious victory for Britain and the Allies or whether it was an abominable waste of life, that it was an imperialist war. I think that is an important debate to be had because how we remember the First World War impacts on how we view conflict today.”

She is also keen to emphasise that the festival will not be too solemn an occasion pondering heavy subject matter. “We’ve got Phill Jupitus and Tim Wells performing poetry. Also we’ve got a very unique event we’ve put together with Liz Carr called Funny Girls, with Rosie Wilby, who’s going to be supporting her.”