Monique Charles examines the links between grime and progressive politics.

It became clear on June 9 that Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election was ill judged. This election has highlighted the disregard for the “many” that government should serve, and after an election in which the youth turnout was around 72% of those aged 18-24, the impact of the youth in Labour’s surge of popularity is obvious.

Of particular note is the role of a series of influential grime artists, who are not traditionally known for their politics yet came out in full force, working to galvanise the youth to vote and specifically supporting Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In a 2003 radio interview, then MP Kim Howells laid into the grime scene, calling its artists “macho boasting idiots”. In the aftermath of the election, who are the macho boasting idiots now? Those in power should never underestimate the collective power of the masses. This is particularly true of the grimy kind.

The relationship between grime and politics has been an interesting and evolving one. Grime is a genre of music that emerged at the turn of the 21st century in London’s inner boroughs. Early on, its sound was most closely likened to US hip hop and rap. But those in the know appreciate grime’s deep connections to its UK predecessors, which include music from the British underground scene such as garage and jungle, in addition to Jamaican dancehall, electronic/experimental music, and British punk. The grime “sound” developed as it grew, eventually being acknowledged as its own genre at the MOBOs in 2015 and iTunes in 2016. But grime has always been more than music. It is a culture, and this is key to its significance in this last general election.

Generation grime

Although now considered trendy in many strata of society, grime is a working-class scene. It originated from the very people and places government legislation has hit the hardest in its austerity measures over the last ten years: the bedroom tax; underfunded schools; tuition fee rises; zero-hour contracts; dwindling prospects of owning a home; and increased job insecurity. From this perspective, the relentless spread of gentrification and London’s role as a global financial capital can make David Cameron’s profession that “we are all in this together” simply farcical.

Grime originated as a predominantly black British musical form, yet appeals to young people irrespective of race or ethnicity. The common ground in its appeal was the focus on class based oppression and British cultural references. While racism remains pervasive and impacts young people in different ways, we live in a time of diverse multiculturalism, particularly in the inner city home of grime. There is a level of commonality in the British working class experience.

This is all the more powerful given the collective nature of the grime scene. Success achieved by individuals in the scene is viewed as success for all. Individual achievement produces collective pride. This collectivity contributes to the solid sense of identity and culture that grime promotes. The collective experience of hardship and navigating it fosters community.

And middle class youth also see their futures in less certain terms. Grime, as with the appeal of other genres of music, is also a method of identity formation, which helps them to separate themselves from “older” generations, most notably parents.

Quite possibly for the first time, this election provided what I term “generation grime” (those predominantly under 30 who have grown up with it as a soundtrack to their lives) with an opportunity to engage with a political figure whose values align more closely with their lived experience, personal values and aspirations. Corbyn’s understanding of working-class issues, racial oppression and homelessness struck a chord. While the lyrical content in much grime may not be political, lived realities and hardships are a common theme to this work.

Prominent grime artists openly supported Labour and worked hard to encourage their supporters to vote: in response to their lived experience; the government’s disregard of their future; and the disconnection they felt to this government. Stormzy was one of Corbyn’s first grime supporters. In a 2016 interview, he said: “I dig what he says. I saw some sick picture of him from back in the day when he was campaigning about anti-apartheid and I thought: yeah, I like your energy.”

 

 

JME and JC

JME, Akala, and Rag'n'Bone man, all influential artists to generation grime and all of whom admitted to not voting before or having little interest or faith in the political system, also got behind Corbyn. Recent protests about government decisions which affected the future of generation grime led to minimal change and kettling, heightening apathy. This election offered a new approach. For scene members and fans not politically minded or disengaged from political processes, grime artist endorsement was the much needed push to look into Corbyn’s track record and manifesto. Young people suddenly felt they could do something to influence British society and their futures.

What now?

This election provided the opportunity for generation grime to really see the collective power in working together for the society they would like to create and the things they want to preserve. Although Labour did not win the election, a new energy has been injected into politics and political engagement among young people. It has given them the opportunity to realise their political power, and how to use it.

Significantly, this last election has also reignited the music-politics relationship of British punk in a new, 21st-century way. Grime artists made particular use of social media in order to galvanise generation grime into political action through the use of hashtags such as #Grime4Corbyn. And it doesn’t stop here. After the election, artists encouraged each other and scene members to engage with their local MPs. Grime artists tweeted about the success and the importance of staying involved.

This movement could be the start of something huge. The challenge is to maintain the momentum. While grime content is largely apolitical, this shift could open a space for more political lyrical content and imagery for both new and established artists. It may also lead to more systematic civic engagement, as artists can see first-hand the power of their influence on generation grime to push for social change.

For more than a decade, the government undervalued and strategically implemented policies to decimate the life chances of generation grime under the banner “we are all in this together”. We are not. Government must govern #ForTheManyNotTheFew, and now generation grime realise the potential of their political power they can push for it strategically.

Via email interview, Robb Johnson introduces his new album and talks about politics, protest music, and plum pudding.

Q. Can you tell us something about your new album, whether it's a change of style, direction, material or theme?

‘My Best Regards’ consists of 16 tracks, 13 songs recorded with Jenny Carr on piano and organ, John Forrester on bass and double bass, Arvin Johnson on drums and percussion, with some guest contributions from Jim Cannell on cello, Linz Maesterosa on clarinet and saxophone, and Saskia's Tomkins on violin. Kirsty Martin’s singing adds some extra vocal magic, and there are two tracks which are different versions of songs on the album, recorded live with Brighton's Hullabaloo Quire, which Kirsty coordinates. Then there is one track that is an alternative version of the song ‘When the Tide Comes In’ again performed live, with Palestinian singer Reem Kelani.

I think it is more of a development than a change of style, and it's not really a change of material. For a while now, my songs have generally been understood to be a balance of the personal and the political. I am quite happy about that, and that seems to me to be a pretty good description of the songs on this album, though sometimes I think more mainstream reviewers only seem to hear The Political, at which they promptly throw their hands up in horror.

I have released albums that have been determinedly Political – ‘Some Recent Protest Songs’ and ‘Us and Them’ – partly because I had accumulated a lot of overtly political songs, but partly because there was a tendency for mainstream media hacks to spew out articles complaining that no-one writes that sort of song any more. This seemed to me a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and an unhealthy dose of hypocrisy.

Mainstream media hacks have been either sneering contemptuously at politics in music which they term dismissively ‘protest music’ (in a way they never quite do with theatre or film) or ignoring it altogether for so long. Then they felt able to wring their hands, as austerity ravaged communities and cities erupted in riots, and take songwriters to task for not writing about austerity and riots any more. Yet their idea of popular music doesn't seem to be interested in anything that isn't in the media-sanctioned pop mainstream.

But this isn't one of those albums, although I suppose it is structured so as to have a political theme framing it. I like to have albums that give a narrative, that have an emotional or intellectual beginning/middle/end coherence. So this one starts off with the rather bleak ‘September 1939’. Immediately after the last general election I felt that the summery sunny days that followed must have been a little what it was like after war was declared in 1939. The album ends, though, with the post-Corbyn election song ‘The Future Starts Here’.

Originally the album was to be shorter and much more obviously politicised, but we used some of the more personal songs as warm-up numbers in the studio, and enjoyed playing them so much that we kept them. I think they actually work well to balance some of the album's bleaker moments, and help make the album more of a narrative journey.

Q. The JC4PM tour reminded some of us oldies of the Red Wedge tours in the eighties in support of Labour. How did the tour go?

Well, I think it was pretty successful. Certainly the gigs I did were very enjoyable and there was a very effective mix of speeches, stand-ups and songs. There seems a lot more comedy involved in JC4PM, compared with the earnest guitar and song tendencies of what I remember about Red Wedge, but then I suppose that's post- modernist irony for you, comedy being the new rock'n'roll etc.

The other difference is that Red Wedge were working in support of a Labour Party in retreat, a Labour Party under Kinnock beginning the long and dismal process of making itself electable in the eyes of Rupert Murdoch, by making itself into something that was hardly worth electing at all, and losing all sense of principle, integrity, and contact with the very section of society it had traditionally represented.

JC4PM, on the other hand, is working with a Labour Party – leadership and membership anyway – that is on the advance, reclaiming its principles, integrity and commitment to represent its historical constituency.

Q. What are your thoughts about politics at the moment, generally and of course in particular the situation with Jeremy Corbyn, socialism and the Labour Party?

I have rejoined the Labour Party. It was the pusillanimous attitude towards the poll tax, and the collusion over the Gulf War that did for me. I have always voted Labour. I didn’t have illusions about voting Labour, but as a working person and a trade unionist – I worked as a teacher for 35 years and was a fairly active member of the NUT – having a Labour government seemed a better option than having a Tory one.
Indeed, that old inch of difference between Tory and Labour was really significant for early years’ education at the start of the century, where there were some really positive developments for children introduced, while Tony Blair was telling us about how Saddam had all these weapons of mass destruction only 15 minutes away.
So what Jeremy Corbyn represents is a significant shift in the accepted narrative that has dominated politics in the U.K., since the Tories set about deliberately trashing the postwar consensus 30+ years ago. Corbyn's selection has taken the gag off those voices that never accepted that greed was good, that there was no such thing as society, that the poor have to pay for the fuck-ups of the greedy rich.

I know Jeremy Corbyn from being on the same anti-war demos, and he is like you and me, only whereas my day job was teaching, playing guitar and secretly wishing I'd been in the Stooges or The Pink Fairies or whatever, Jeremy Corbyn's day job, and I suspect his version of being in the Stooges, is doing politics properly, with principle and integrity. Doing a version of politics to ensure society and social organisations exist to serve the needs of the people, not the other way round.

Obviously, the consequences of Blairism means we have a parliamentary party of careerist small businesspersons for whom that idea is both strange and threatening, because Corbyn's politics are essentially about inclusion and empowerment, and machine politicians like being machine politicians. They play the game, they prefer to serve the machine that rewards them for their compliance, rather than serve the voters who put them there.

Socialism is simply the tradition of trying to organise society to the benefit of all, so to me it seems simple common sense. Certainly, my experience has confirmed that to be the case. Working with under fives, you see people at their best, before the manifold poisons & disappointments of capitalism and its commodifications screw us up. I know that human beings are absolutely brilliant, every single one of us, and that humans are essentially kind and positive, happiest when they cooperate rather than compete. Happiest also in societies that value their individual members, and are organised along principles of inclusion, empowerment, equality, and fair play.
That is of course why 30 years of government interventions in education have only served to produce generations of unhappy, stupefied consumers. It is significant that it was the dismantling of that bastion of the concept of privilege, of the fatuous and inhuman concept of the deserving being separated from the undeserving – I mean the the grammar school system – that first really energised the Right in their challenge to the postwar consensus. And here it is again, being exhumed by Theresa Mayjor! A sure indication of how politically bankrupt the Tory party is.

Q. What's it like working in the music scene at the moment, as a worker? How has it changed, over your career? What do you think of other bands and musicians, and other music these days?

As with all workers, the introduction of new technology does tend to result in fewer jobs. Growing up in the 70s, I got to see lots of great bands at lots of great venues, and also lots of bandslike Sutherland Brothers and Quiver, who worked conscientiously round the pubs and who gave you a good night out.

By the 70s, the average band size was four people. But bands and musicians still exercised a certain creative control, and up to and including punk I think musicians rather than the music business determined the progress of popular music. This of course is not the case now. The business now determines the culture, the media polices its business decisions. From being the most exciting, innovative, democratic and radical cultural form of the last century, popular music has become a dull, processed puppet of the society of the spectacle.

You could say that there is surely a limit with what you can do with three chords, and that may well have been reached even before the Gallagher brothers made a career out of recycling old John Lennon riffs. This never used to bother folk music however, or indeed blues musicians, because these musicians were working within a tradition of form that facilitated personal expression. The experiences of the worker animated each song into something particular and expressive.

Now, there are bloated spectaculars of television, festivals and stadiums, no middle ground where the likes of Sutherland Brothers and Quiver can earn an honest crust, and pubs that will either play safe with covers bands or pay bugger-all for open mike nights. It is difficult in these circumstances for people to find their own voice, and to give their own lives particular expression.

Nonetheless, people keep on writing great songs and singing their hearts out about what it is like to be like them, to think like them, rather than Ed Sheeran. The media doesn't want you hear about them, because they remain outside the process of cultural recuperation. But they are there. They are people like Joe Solo and his mates, inventing We Shall Overcome, a grass roots weekend of nationwide self-organised gigs and community action as an annual alternative to getting kettled at a demo.
We need more of that, taking back our culture, organising a folk club or whatever you want to call it – Grace Petrie's just started a folk club in Leicester – more gigs like Nick puts on at the Yorkshire House in Lancaster. And less nostalgia!

Q. Can I have your thoughts on politics and music, such as what your favourite political songs are? And how you think music makes a difference, politically?

All music carries political meanings. In our agitprop trio The Ministry of Humour, singing down Thatcher, apartheid and capitalism in the 1980s, when people accused us of Being Political we used to say ‘everything's political.’

I tried translating The Marseillaise and it is awful, but I think the Internationale is beautiful, and the words don't really need updating. Songs may not of course kickstart strikes and seizures of post offices and telephone exchanges, or storm the Winter Palaces of the Ice Queen etc, but as we all know – and this is why the media don't want us listening to politically conscious songs – that magic combination of the perfectly apposite words with a perfectly apposite melody stays with us long after the speech or the editorial or the television interview. We can hum and sing them, and we realise we are not alone in our ideas and our aspirations, and they inspire us as we kickstart our own little part of the revolutionary process.

My favourite political song? ‘Te Recerdo Amanda’ by Victor Jara. My favourite song, which is also set within the landscape and language of working class life, but which carries its politics less consciously, is ‘Les Amants d’un Jour’ by Marguerite Monnot, sung by Edith Piaf.

Q. Culture Matters has recently started a series of articles looking at arts and culture policies, in the light of the austerity driven cutbacks which impact more on working people, and in the light of the research which is showing that working class people are finding it harder to access the arts, as consumers and as performers. And of course the gap between the funding of the arts in London/the South East and the rest of the country is pretty huge. Can we have your thoughts on arts and culture policy please?

Well – first step as above mentioned is to stop consuming and do it yourself. I saw a headline in a London newspaper on a London train which trumpeted – like it was a good thing – that arts funding in London wouldn't be cut! The headline should of course have been ‘Arts Funding to be Cut for Most of the UK’, just like we should recognise that for most of us, the Tory obsession with selection at 11 means a reintroduction of education at secondary moderns, rather than a reintroduction of grammar schools.

Yes, I would like to see funding directed at supporting art and culture initiatives rather than paying for military action in the Middle East, or Armageddon being parked at Faslane. But this financial support needs to be supported in turn by a social culture of empowerment. State education needs to be reconfigured to serve the needs of the child, not the state, which will mean a curriculum that values and encourages imagination and creativity. The media needs to be regulated to ensure cultural as well as journalistic balance, and press freedom should not be confused with the lowest common denominator.

Similarly, community art – like open mike nights or reality TV – should not be used as a cheapskate alternative to paying skilled workers at appropriate skilled worker rates. However, we would also need to reconfigure cultural workers as workers rather than as the extraordinarily differentiated celebrities that is the paradigm we are presented with at the moment. We need to recognise individual aptitude, but also recognise that this needs to be understood within a spectrum of performance, not within a hierarchy of ‘excellence’ that is usually related to the valuations of economics rather than valuations based upon intrinsic qualities of artistic expression.

Art & culture need to be returned more to the reality of their social function. Some of us are pretty gifted when it comes to plumbing, some of us are pretty gifted when it comes to singing, but when your plumbing goes wrong, Bono is no use whatsoever.

This spectrum of performance needs to be supported by a plurality of performance spaces and opportunities – culture should not be something that only takes place on television or as spectacular events set apart from the lives of those people whose existence is only defined by the word ‘audience’ and whose appreciation and experience of art and culture is determined by the economics of production and consumption.

Applying huge amounts of money to something does not necessarily ensure high levels of performance. A couple of seasons ago Brentford drew Chelsea in the Cup, and so there they were, all these fabulously-paid celebrity Chelsea footballers so celebrated in the media, hoofing about Griffin Park, and not actually performing that much better than Brentford’s cheery collection of 19 year-olds still living with their mums. It was a draw at the final whistle. Possibly the most creative aspect of the afternoon was the Brentford fans chanting “You’re just a bus stop in Fulham.”

The same problems of scale exist in the arts. Size of spectacle and budget are no guarantee of artistic achievement. Any investment in arts would be obviously welcome, but it will be largely ineffectual unless it is animated by an understanding of the importance of diminishing the distances between performer and audience, which necessarily involves a more realistic perspective on issues of inclusion and particular aptitudes and skills. We need a culture where everybody can join in, and though some people can join in a bit more than others, this is not a big differentiating deal. Even genius shits like the rest of us.

Another consequence of having spent so long working with children, is that this experience convinces me that each of us is gifted with our own skills of creativity and our own unique artist’s perspective. With our current models of culture as commodity, most of us find our access to & participation in art and culture limited and defined by capitalism’s profit-driven economics, and the mindset of privilege and hierarchy.

But we all have an aesthetic intelligence, we are all artists. Access to and participation in culture should be on the basis of personal choice and predilection, our engagement should be based on the forms of self expression that appeal to our individual consciousness, and our choices should be encouraged and supported by empowering education and inclusive social organisation, whether we feel happiest expressing ourselves through plumbing, plum crumble or plumbing the profoundest depths of the human condition with poetry, or painting, or postpunk acoustic guitar. Or maybe a combination of all three – plumbing, plum crumble and postpunk acoustic guitar.

Robb Johnson’s new album, My Best Regards, is available from http://www.ethicalwares.com and all good record shops.

 How did the last tour go, did you enjoy it? You had to put on extra dates, what were the audiences like? Do you think you're tapping into a new radical mood among young people, the same mood that got Corbyn elected?

The tour's just finished, it was great. I started with a couple of London shows at the Union Chapel, a non-conformist church in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency of Islington North. Built in 1877, it’s a wonderful gig to perform, but backstage isn’t really designed for rock and roll gigs. It’s a more of a Victorian warren. One of my crew asked if I’d seen the mural of Jeremy in one of the rooms? I went to investigate and found that, while it did depict a kindly looking fellow with a beard, this chap was carrying a lamb and his head was suspiciously backlit.

Following the London shows, I headed up to Scotland to do my first gigs there since the independence referendum. I was very encouraged to find that the energy of the Yes campaign had not dissipated, despite their defeat last September. I also found that Corbyn’s election means something different in Scotland. Progressively-minded people are happy that someone who opposes the neo-liberal consensus has been elected leader of the Labour Party, but they do wonder why it’s taken us so long to catch on to the idea that the Westminster system is broken.

It was an interesting time to be on the road up there. The Syria vote fired everyone up – even the doorman at my Glasgow hotel said it was outrageous that parliament had voted in favour of bombing. The Oldham by-election added some edge to things and the new left wing grouping, RISE, were holding their first conference on the coming weekend. As a result, the Scottish gigs were highly politicised.

We finished off with a gig at Butlins Skegness holiday camp. Sounds strange, I know, but it’s the best way to hold a festival in December and Butlins host music events most weekends through the winter. This one was the Great British Folk Festival and although I’m not really part of the tradition, the folk audience has always been very supportive. In a music business where most artists would rather not say anything politically controversial, the folk fans deserve respect as people who have helped keep the topical song alive.

I wasn’t too sure how my songs would go down at Butlins, but I gave them the same politicised set that I’d been doing in London and Scotland and it went down a storm. Every mention of Corbyn was cheered and when I finished with ‘There is Power in A Union’, they stood and sang along.

You're also one of the people that have kept the protest music tradition alive in this country, and helped make sure socialist values are kept alive and celebrated musically. Can you tell us something about your background, how you got into the protest music tradition, and why you've stuck with it when others have fallen away? Can musicians influence politics, do you think?

I got into politics through music. My earliest heroes were the singer-songwriters of the 1960s – Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Jackson Browne all wrote topical songs. My other love was American soul music. Listening to the likes of Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding and the Impressions I heard the songs of struggle that were inspired by the civil rights movement.

Although people believed that music could change the world in the 60s, that has not been my experience. Ultimately, the responsibility for changing the world rests not with the artist but with the audience. To pretend otherwise is to fail to understand history. Having said that, I do believe that music has a role to play in inspiring the audience to take up that challenge.

Attending the Rock Against Racism Carnival in May 1978 was my first political activism. That event made me realise that I was not the only person who was troubled by the casual racism, sexism and homophobia I saw everyday at the office where I worked. However, it wasn’t the bands that gave me the courage of my convictions, it was being in that audience – 100,000 kids just like me. That day I realised that my generation were going to define themselves in opposition to discrimination of all kinds, just as the previous generation had been defined by their opposition to the Vietnam War.

The bands that played that day did a great service to me by creating an atmosphere in which my perceptions were challenged, which in turn led me to take a different view of things. That is the role that music can play in the struggle. I know, because it happened to me and so I try to challenge perceptions every time I do a gig.

Can you tell us more about the phenomenon that was Red Wedge, in the eighties, which you fronted? And the obvious next question, any chance of something similar happening in the next few years?

Taking its name from a poster by Russian constructivist El Lizzitsky, Red Wedge was an artist-led initiative that sought to encourage young people to support the Labour party at the 1987 election. When the miners' strike ended in defeat, those of us who had done gigs in support of the strikers and their families didn’t just want to go back to normal. Red Wedge was our way of continuing the struggle, taking the fight to the Tories at the next possible opportunity – the 1987 election.

We chose to work with (not for) the Labour Party because we felt they represented the best vehicle for getting rid of the Tories. The miners' strike had been a genuinely revolutionary moment, but it had failed. Now we had to take the next best option. We didn’t see the fight against the Tories as an either/or choice: our message to revolutionary colleagues was that we would come on to the street with them when it was time, if they would come into the ballot box with us.

The core artists involved were myself, the Style Council, Junior Giscombe, Jerry Dammers and the Communards. In the lead up to the election, we were joined by Madness, the Smiths, Prefab Sprout, the Kane Gang, The The, Gary Kemp, The Beat, Tom Robinson and many others. What defined us was our opposition to Margaret Thatcher, rather than an avid support for the Labour Party.

Could Red Wedge happen again? I think that’s a question for someone under 30.

How has the music industry changed over the years? Could someone with your background and your openly political approach still make it, do you think?

The music industry has changed massively in the 33 years since my first record. When I started out, there were three weekly music papers that sold big – NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, as well as many smaller publications. There were only two pop radio stations, BBC Radio One and it’s regional commercial equivalent – Capital in London. And there was a weekly pop show on national tv that broadcast all the latest music and styles into your living room – Top of the Pops. All of that has either disappeared or had its voice drowned out by digital competition.

More significantly for someone who wants to make political pop, music has lost its vanguard role as the primary identifying medium of youth culture. When I was 19 years old, the only avenue of expression open to me was pop music. If I wanted to broadcast my thoughts about the world, I had to learn to play an instrument, write songs and do gigs. Now any 19-year-old can express their views by blogging or making a film on their phone or using the ready-made platforms of the social media.

Although we didn’t realise it at the time, back in the latter years of the 20th century, music was our social medium – we used it to speak to one another and to our parent’s generation. Now if 19-year-olds want to know what their peers are thinking, they don’t buy an album or look at the charts or in the NME, they simply check their Instagram account.

I also wonder if I’d have been able to overcome the amount of scorn and abuse directed at anyone who expresses a progressive opinion on social media these days. If I’d had to endure the slings and arrows of Twitter and Facebook while forming my political opinions, would I have thought better of it and just stuck to writing love songs?

Your latest book of lyrics, A Lover Sings, is published by Faber and Faber, the august publishing house for top class poetry. That's quite an achievement in itself, isn't it? What do you think about the difference between poems and songs?

The main difference is that you generally experience poetry in solitude, reading quietly somewhere. Songs tend to be more of a communal experience. To hear a favourite song sung by the artists who wrote it and to sing along with them and hundreds, maybe thousands of others, has the effect of validating whatever emotions you’ve invested in the song. It’s a kind of solidarity. The left know the powerful unity that can come from singing together but it doesn’t have to be a political song to make you feel that you’re not alone. You can’t get that sense of communion on the internet, which is why I think gigs are becoming more popular, particularly festivals where you can feel part of something bigger.

What's your thinking about current political issues, the new Labour leadership, and the sudden and unexpected resurgence of the political left?

Unexpected is the word! I think Jeremy Corbyn himself may have been the most surprised by his elevation. It’s clearly not just about him. There is something bigger at work. My hunch is that he has become a lightning rod for a different way of doing politics. His sudden popularity is less to do with his own position and more to do with an urge on the left to be part of a genuinely transformative movement.

That’s the feeling that I got in Scotland last year, when doing gigs with supporters of the Yes campaign during the referendum. People were energised not by nationalism but by a sense that another world was possible. That’s why the turn out was unprecedented – people knew that their vote would really mean something. I think the same urge is behind Corbyn’s landslide. At a time when globalisation has allowed corporations to set the agenda, our democracy has become less about change and more about rewarding the status quo. Corbyn challenges that cosy arrangement.

Whether he can survive until the general election is anybody's guess, but, again, I take heart from what happened in Scotland: the Yessers lost the referendum, but they didn’t go home and give up. They maintained the connections they’d made and kept the momentum going. My hope is that, now we Corbynites have been engaged in the process of changing our politics for the better, we won’t simply melt away if the Great Helmsman is brought down by Blairite revanchists within the PLP. They can oust him, but they will still have us to deal with in the ensuing leadership contest.

Finally, Billy, what do you mean by your phrase 'socialism of the heart'?

It’s a term I came up with after the fall of the Berlin Wall, at a time when ideology was being swiftly abandoned and the language that we’d used to debate our politics no longer meant anything to the public we hoped to engage. I’ve always believed that if socialism is not, at heart, a form of organised compassion, then it is not really worthy of the name. So I began trying to find ways of expressing the compassionate politics that I felt had to form the bedrock of our attempts to forge a new ideology that connected with people’s everyday experiences and ‘socialism of the heart’ was the first term I came up with.

Billy Bragg has just finished an intensive year's tour round Britain. A Lover Sings, The Selected Lyrics of Billy Bragg, is published by Faber and Faber.