Thursday 3rd July 2025
Blog Page 593

All Souls professor appointed to Supreme Court

Rachel Cordery
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All Souls professor appointed to Supreme Court

Professor Andrew Burrows, a fellow of All Souls College, has been appointed to the Supreme Court.

A Barrister and Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple, Professor Burrows is Professor of English Law at the University of Oxford. He will join the Supreme Court on 2nd June 2020.

An alumnus of both Brasenose College, Oxford, and Harvard University, his work focuses on private law.

Burrows is the main editor of the compendium English Private Law which produces textbooks on English contract law and the legal treatise A Restatement of the English law of Unjust Enrichment.

Popular amongst judges, Baroness Hale said in her 2017 Hamlyn Lecture at the University of Exeter: “there are few, if any, legal scholars whose writings are more frequently cited in our courts.”

Queen Elizabeth made four new appointments on the advice of outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, including Lord Hamblen, Lord Leggatt, and Lord Reed, a Scottish judge, who will become the next president of the Supreme Court.

Succeeding Baroness Hale, Lord Reed has sat in the Supreme Court since 2012 and served as deputy president for the past year.

While Lord Hamblen and Lord Leggatt already sit in the appeal court, Professor Burrows has sat as a part time Deputy High Court Judge for more than 20 years and he was a Law Commissioner for England and Wales.

Ruskin College accused of ‘victimising’ trade union reps

Ben van der Merwe and Luke Dunne
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Ruskin College accused of ‘victimising’ trade union reps

Ruskin College have been accused of ‘victimising’ trade union representatives after a University and College Union (UCU) branch officer was fired in mysterious circumstances, and four others are due to be made redundant.

Dr Lee Humber was suspended from his position as a lecturer in health and social care in April, just two days after organising a vote of no confidence in the college’s principal, Paul Di Felice. After months in limbo, Humber was fired last week, prompting outrage from the UCU. Ruskin College denies that the dismissal was related to Dr Humber’s trade union activity.

Speaking to Cherwell, Dr Humber praised “the absolutely fantastic amount of support I got from colleagues in the UCU, from the union leadership and from the thousands of other trade unionists who wrote their support and invited me to address their branch and union meetings.”

“It was clear from the very start that trade unionists and many, many others understood that this as an attack on me as a trade union officer, on our UCU branch and on the national union generally.”

Ruskin College did not respond to a request for comment.

The adult learning institution, which is affiliated to Oxford University, has been embroiled in an official dispute with UCU over its treatment of staff. The college, which has traditionally maintained strong links to the trade union movement, has recently moved to scrap trade union courses and to casualise teaching contracts in a bid to stem falling student numbers.

These proposals led to a vote of no confidence in the college’s Principal in April, which was passed “unanimously” by Ruskin College’s UCU branch.

Two days after organizing the vote, Dr Humber was suspended from his post as a lecturer in health and social care. The Ruskin UCU branch said at the time: “We believe that Lee is being victimised in order to intimidate us as a union branch. This is utterly disgraceful behaviour from the management of a college with such deep roots in the trade union and labour movement.”

The campaign to reinstate Dr Humber has attracted the support of ten union leaders and the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. In a statement following Dr Humber’s suspension, Ruskin UCU said: “We believe that Lee is being victimised in order to intimidate us as a union branch. This is utterly disgraceful behaviour from the management of a college with such deep roots in the trade union and labour movement.”

UCU have criticized the college’s restructuring proposals on the grounds that falling student numbers are a result of poor management rather than staffing costs or course content. Ruskin College received a 90% student satisfaction rating for the quality of its teaching in 2018, but just 35% for the quality of its management – the lowest in the country. No data is available for 2019.

In a separate incident, the Ruskin Students’ Union was forced to relocate its May ball to a local pub after what it described as “poor, bureaucratic management” of their budget by the college.

The college’s business development plan has resulted in a pivot away from secure, long-term contracts towards the hiring of temporary and insecure agency staff. In 2018, the college spent 19% of staffing costs on contracted workers, compared to just 5% in 2015. These changes saw Ruskin College placed on UCU’s “list of shame” for academic institutions undermining staff pay and job security through casualisation.

In that time, the number of in-house staff has fallen from 75 to 55. Ruskin UCU allege that more than 80 staff, disproportionately women, have left during that period, including three entire senior administrative and recruitment teams.

The union allege that this high turnover is the result of a “climate of uncertainty, stress and fear” created by the Principal. The text of the no-confidence motion passed by the group states: “A large number of women have stated in exit interviews that they are leaving directly because of the Principal.”

The branch also accused the college of failing to carry out stress risk assessments for staff, in violation of their legal duties.

Last week, Ruskin College’s management outlined a further phase of restructuring to take place before the new academic year, including the discontinuation of four of the college’s six higher education courses in a bid to make the college less reliant on trade union teaching for its income. All five employees due to lose their posts as part of these changes are UCU Branch Committee members, which has led to accusations that union activists are being targeted.

Ruskin UCU says that staff and students were not consulted on the move to shrink the college’s higher education programme. In a statement, the union said: “We firmly believe the college is being wound down for merger. This will see multi million pound assets, prime Oxford real estate and working-class resources built up over 120 years given free to the private sector.”

In a statement, Ruskin College said: “Disciplinary investigations are internal staff disciplinary matters which are entirely unconnected with any trade union activity of those involved. It would be wrong for any institution to seek to discipline or suspend a member of staff as a result of their union activity; the notion that Ruskin College, the home of trade union education for more than 100 years, would do so is absolutely inconceivable. 

“Trade union membership at Ruskin is actively encouraged among the staff and there are currently four unions well-represented in College. Contrary to claims, the vote of no confidence in March was not unanimous, even among UCU members, and was supported by less than 20% of staff. Ruskin College remains the largest provider of trade union training in the UK with up to 3,000 reps trained each year.”

Speaking to Cherwell, Dr Humber said: “Everywhere in the country I went to speak to people and address meetings support was fantastically genuine and warm. Of course, coupled with this positive end of proceedings were – initially at least – feelings of anxiety.

“I worried about how I was going to support my family, whether the stress the dispute bought on me would infect my young kids, about what would happen in the future. Thankfully, due to the great resilience of my family, itself underpinned by the incredible depth and breadth of support we received, we’ve all grown out of it and we’re facing the future with great optimism.”

Asked how he was informed of his dismissal, Dr Humber said: “A simple letter. It was the 43rd letter they’d sent me (in the first 50 days of my suspension) arriving on the Friday as so many of their meant-to-be intimidating communiques had. It was no surprise to any of us.

“They made various allegations all of which we refuted in great detail in a 14-page document we sent to the disciplinary hearing. They’ve dismissed our refutation. We’ve now appealed against this decision and they’ll turn that down too.

“Then, at last, we’ll be out of the Alice in Wonderland world of Ruskin-based disciplinary procedure, where they’ve consistently made up policy and process to suit their own ends, and on into the world of ACAS and Employment Tribunals where there are real rules by which both parties in this dispute must abide.”

“A Kind of Dirty Poetry”

Charlotte Hall
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“A Kind of Dirty Poetry”

It smells of earth. In the expectant gloom and chatter, the smell penetrates everything; muddies thoughts, muffles voices, buries conversations in a layer of murky suspense. It’s soon obvious why; as the lights come on, and the audience settles down, all that is visible is a circle of soil, surrounded by a thick tangle of cables and industrial electronics. Silence falls.
A man steps into the light, through the cabling. He’s dressed simply but in contrast to the rawness of his environment, there’s a magnetizing humanness about him.
“Look around!” he cries. (Like sheep, we look.) “Everything’s rigid, hard, dark. – What lies beneath it all?” – and then he transforms, before our very eyes, into someone completely different.

The play hasn’t happened yet.

But the vivaciousness with which Saul Barrett and Joshua Silverlock, two students taking on the Edinburgh Fringe, describe their reinvention of Woyzeck draws me into another world. That world, originally outlined in Buechner’s unfinished script, has been adapted and re-claimed by Saul and Joshua’s independently founded production company Missing Cat in a project that has taken them almost a year to complete. Despite the dark tone of the play, described by Saul as “humanity laid bare in its dirtiest form searching for sanity and the sanitary,” the two of them are positively beaming. Knee-deep in rehearsals, the “juicy part” of preparations, with the finish line in sight, they can’t help being excited. The energy is infectious – and it’s clear why the two of them have teamed up; they regularly finish each other’s sentences, bouncing off one another in sparkling creativity, even during this brief conversation.

But the road hasn’t always been easy. Joshua, director and producer, describes how he has “only recently felt the other hats come on.” He’s been pre-occupied with financial and organisational decisions, including a crowd-funding campaign and, he says with a hint of self-consciousness, “I guess, creating a brand.” Figuring out how to present themselves on social media, advertise and encourage donations has taken up most of the past year – and only with their first production meeting in the Royal Court last month have creative decisions started to take the foreground. “I actually found the meeting quite emotional,” Saul says, turning to his director “It went from me texting you from a bus one day going ‘should we give this thing a go?’ and you going ‘yeah, let’s do it!’ to suddenly being something that is shared – something that is no longer just yours.”

Now the two are heading a team of around ten people – and they stress the importance of choosing your group wisely. Paying their team professionally isn’t an option, so they depend on their teams’ dedication. “It’s a double-edged thing,” they explain “you rely a lot on goodwill and friendship – which is sometimes tenuous because it doesn’t give you much leverage as an entrepreneurial organizer – but there’s also a really lovely spirit that we’ve brought with us in recruiting people from all over the place.”

The team work together closely, but the idea for the project germinated with Saul and Joshua. Both were fascinated by the “very rich, very bare-bones” nature of the play and language – “not colloquial, not Shakespeare – a kind of dirty poetry” – but realised they had never seen a good production. “It’s quite a simple archetypal plot – it’s kind of Othello: one man trying to provide for his family, she commits an act of infidelity and he takes revenge. It’s not that. It’s not the plot. There’s something almost inarticulable about the atmosphere of it and the world and these beautiful little strangenesses.” Determined to do the text justice, they decided to give it a go.

Their version collapses the play’s 14 characters into 3 actors. Two take the roles of the main characters, while the third transforms into different people through on-stage transitions. In fact, much of what would usually occur ‘behind-the-scenes’ is incorporated into the performance; including an on-stage sound desk operated by characters who aren’t immediately involved in the scene. “Our production is a primal, visceral and incredibly involving experience for the audience, which lays bare the mechanics of theatre while also pulling you into the world of the characters.”

I wonder how this works exactly, since Brecht, for instance, often revealed theses ‘mechanics’ to alienate, rather than involve his audience. Joshua disagrees with “the corollary of alienating the audience being that they don’t believe in the same way.” Historically, he argues, “theatre has tried to reduce the leap of the imagination as much as possible so that what you’re watching is real” i.e. through realistic costumes and sets, but “you’re never going to completely reduce it and just by making it smaller, you actually magnify the cracks. In some ways it’s easier to believe in a punch and judy show.” Instead, keeping true to Buechner’s sketch-like implications of a wider system, a larger world beyond the lines, Missing Cat wants to “give the audience the crumbs with which to feed their own imaginations,” to make the “audiences active in completing the picture – instead of being talked down to.”

When I ask about Fringe, their jaws simultaneously tighten. “By any kind of logical thinking we should just not go to the Fringe,” there’s a glint in Joshua’s eye as he says this, which makes it clear he’s only half-joking “it’s so far away, so pointlessly expensive, so clogged… I started this as if there’s a but – I don’t think there’s a but.”
“But you want people to see it.” Saul breaks in. London venues are even more expensive, and don’t give you the opportunity to put on 15 shows in a row – it’s a learning experience for young performers. “It does feel like a rite of passage,” Joshua concedes “getting that Fringe Ox blood on your face.”

Fringe does mean some limitations, however. Since it consists of one space catering to so many different productions, with little storage space, it’s difficult to create original sets. “What you get is this really great stuff going on, but in this really homogenous environment.” Much of the design for Missing Cat’s production is driven by the urge to change this and push the boundaries as far as they can; bringing their own technical kit and re-inventing the black box, so they can make Woyzeck stand out visually, too.

“The venue basically hate us” Joshua says with a hint of a smile “but they’ll love us when we get there – if everything goes to plan.”

Catch Missing Cat’s premier at New River Studios, London on the 26th, 27th and 28th of this month, or at the Fringe during 2-10th and 12-17th of August!

Photo credits: Max Longmuir

Does Taylor need to calm down?

Jenna Colaco
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Does Taylor need to calm down?

With the current political uncertainty of Brexit, a massive question-mark over the future leadership of the United Kingdom and the US general election coming up next year, it is fair to say that politics takes up time out of our day-to-day lives– whether we want it to or not. However, what is unclear is what the place of influential public figures in the media, such as musician Taylor Swift, is in political advocacy.

During the lead-up to the 2018 US midterm elections, Taylor Swift sparked controversy with a social media post incentivising young people to register to vote. The post expressed her own preferences for candidates Phil Bredesen for the Senate and Jim Cooper for the House of Representatives and gave reasons why she was not supporting Martha Blackburn, a Republican running for the Senate in Swift’s home-state of Tennessee. The post became a controversial issue as it raised a very pertinent question: should musicians keep their political views and music separate?

Swift, as the winner of various prestigious music awards including multiple Grammy, MTV Music and Billboard Music Awards, is clearly an influential public figure. From an essay she wrote for Elle in March, it seems that Swift intends to make better use of this influence to increase voter participation in elections. Swift revealed that her new album, due to be released in 2020, the year of the next US general election, will have ‘political undertones’. This very powerfully demonstrates that Swift is not an artist that believes she has to keep her political views separate from her music. In fact, it shows she is willing to use her music as a political tool. In a 2012 interview for Time, Swift said: ‘…I don’t talk about politics because it might influence other people. And I don’t think that I know enough yet in life to be telling people who to vote for.’ Thus, Swift is revoking her previous stance on making her political views public and using her platform to influence her massive social media following comprised of around 119 million on Instagram alone. 

However, Swift is not the first artist to use her platform to bring attention to political issues through art. The 20th and 21st centuries are full of examples where art was politicised to bring attention to the struggle and suffering of people around them. The 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, Bob Dylan, was commended for his poetic expressions in the American song tradition. However, part of Dylan’s power as a musician came from using his music to spread messages. Dylan was inspired by the changing political environment in the US during the 1960s. It was a time of great political activism with many people campaigning for Civil Rights for all as well as protesting US involvement in Vietnam. His song The Times Are a-Changin’ was intended to capture the rapid change going on in America and encourage people not to get left behind by the change. The opening lines are ‘Come gather ’round, people/ Wherever you roam/ And admit that the waters/ Around you have grown’. The water acts as a metaphor for rising change, threatening to drown the people who don’t ‘start swimmin’. Dylan is not inspiring political protest, he is singing to encourage people to accept the change that is happening whether they like it or not. He appeals to politicians in particular to move with the times, ‘Come senators, congressmen/ Please heed the call/ Don’t stand in the doorway/ Don’t block up the hall’. Whilst Dylan’s political message is very different to Swift’s, his message of the acceptance of change is one that is fundamental even over fifty years later. His song was brought to life again in the 2018 by Jennifer Hudson and the D.C. choir as part of the March for Our Lives rally in Washington D.C. The rally was led by Parkland students affected by a school shooting and it demanded an end to gun violence in America. ‘The Times Are a-Changin’ took a different subject but carried the same meaning it did in the 60s, a plea for people and politicians to accept the issues of a changing world. 

Whilst it is clear that Taylor Swift has done nothing that other artists have not done before her and will probably continue to do after her, it still begs the question whether an artist should lend their artistic works and platforms to politics. I firmly believe that they should, predominantly because they are people with opinions and I think they deserve the right to share what they feel. As a secondary, but also key reason, I believe that young people today have become very disillusioned with politics and incentivising them to have their say in politics is a difficult job. Using the influence of music and other art forms should be a tool to encourage young people to register to vote and research candidates who represent their views. As long as public figures express their opinions and don’t encourage the spread of propaganda and fake-news, I believe there is real merit in figures such as Swift speaking about politics and I look forward to her new album. 

Bodleian celebrates 50th anniversary of Moon landing

Charlotte Moberly
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Bodleian celebrates 50th anniversary of Moon landing

This Saturday, the Bodleian Libraries is holding an event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing.

The Lunar Activity Day, which will be held in Blackwell Hall, is intended to be a family-friendly event involving arts and crafts, object handling and live performances.

There will also be talks from academics on themes such as ‘The Origin of the Moon’,  ‘Art in Outer Space’, ‘Contested Meanings of Lunacy in Nineteenth Century Asylums’ and ‘The Moon is Feminist Art’.

A team of academics from the Rothermere American Institute, the Department of Physics, and the Oxford Internet Institute’s Cabinet team have created a display about the moon landings, which will be in the Proscholium of the Old Bodleian Library until 15 September.

The exhibit explores ‘humanity’s fascination with all things lunar’ through selected items from the Bodleian collections.

Dr Karen Patricia Heath, who organised the event, said: “This is going to be a fantastic interactive event for all the family, as we celebrate 50 years since the Moon landing. From meteorite handling and 3D printing to live music and talks from Oxford University experts, there will be something for everyone.”

What this World Cup will mean for the future of women’s football

Lucy Tansley
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What this World Cup will mean for the future of women’s football

With the World Cup now long behind us, the promise of a new era for female representation in the sport beckons. The USA’s victory over the Netherlands in the final was a well-deserved outcome, and despite England’s chances for a World Cup victory being dashed by the eventual winners in the semi-finals, hope for a new attitude to the women’s game remains.

The viewing figures for the tournament surpassed any previous competition; England’s victory over Norway to progress to the semi-final attracted a peak audience of 7.6 million viewers. By contrast, the men’s Cricket World Cup, which took place at the same time, received an average viewing audience of 550,000; despite the tradition of cricket as a typical summer sport, and the fact that the world cup was held in Britain, the tournament has apparently failed to capture the public’s imagination in the same way which women’s football, usually underrepresented in the media, has.

As part of the BBC’s announcement last year to broadcast 1,000 more hours of sport every year, the increase of coverage of women’s sport is crucial. Where women’s football is concerned, it has truly been a case of out of sight, out of mind, and this tournament has thrown it into the limelight as never before. Having the World Cup on free-to-air television, with key matches playing on BBC1 at peak time-slots, raises the profile of the sport and allows it to reach even the most sceptical viewer. The stands themselves were largely full, with big matches such as the host nation France’s quarter-final against the USA yielding a packed stadium, and thousands of English fans taking the trip across the Channel to support their team.

What this tournament will mean for the future of the sport is an exciting prospect. Back in October of 2018, UEFA pledged to increase funding for women’s football by 50%, and asserted their aim to increase participation to 60 million by 2026; improving the accessibility of football for girls is a crucial step in widening the reach of the sport, and more funding for clubs at grassroots level will be key in dispelling the stigma around the women’s game. Most importantly however, this world cup will have succeeded in giving girls new role models, to have them aspiring to be the next Megan Rapinoe or Lucy Bronze, not merely a female Cristiano Ronaldo.

The matches in the latter stages of the tournament demonstrated the quality on show in women’s football; Ellen White’s elegant tap into the goal to put England 1-1 with the USA in their semi-final match was as thrilling a moment as one could hope for in a closely fought match which was reminiscent of the World Cup-fever from last summer. The USA have traditionally been the dominant force in women’s “soccer” – perhaps unexpectedly, given the somewhat sub-standard status of their men’s side – but this world cup has demonstrated the rise of the European force in the sport, increasing the global appeal of women’s football further still.

Will the publicity of this tournament – the global viewing audience of which is estimated to have been around 1 billion – increase awareness for the campaign for equal pay between genders in football? Hopefully, and England manager Phil Neville has been vocal about the change that needs to happen, revealing that the women’s team have to fly economy class to tournaments, where the men usually take a private plane. A Sporting Intelligence survey discovered last year that the salary of the 1,693 players in the top seven women’s football leagues in the world was roughly equal to the salary of a single male player, Neymar. Such stark figures will hopefully draw attention to the need for change, and if this competition has done anything, it has brought women’s football into mainstream consciousness and given a spectacle to rival last year’s summer in Russia.

Why Read Poetry?

Jenny Scoones
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Why Read Poetry?

It’s easy to be intimidated by poetry. Often it withholds as much as it gives, leaves obscure as much as it reveals. And there is so much of it. So many different kinds. Poetry. Not one definable thing, but rather a way of seeing things. None of which has to be poetry proper. An evening can be poetic. A person. A face and the secrets it holds. A face, much like a poem in what it withholds and what it gives up, when it is vulnerable and when defensive. Difficult, even. – So why read poetry?   

Poetry can be read in the world around us, not just as the words on a page. Poetry is in religion. Poetry is in pop music, in lyrics and in films; the words we keep with us, day after day, because they are the words that see us through. The words, I love you. The words, I love you too. Because poetry is a love offering, and a way of reading the world. Poetry is accepting inconclusion, to know that you cannot know and have faith none the less.

But where to begin? And how? How to read a poem? And poems, the plural, one after the other, like songs on a playlist; or like lovers, one in an evening and another the next? Or the same one, night after night, because you will never know them fully. Can never know anyone fully. A Poem as a lover you return to again and again under the same twilit sky, each night hoping to come closer to them, and each dawn watching them draw ever further away. And it still being worth it. Each night, tracing their shape on your tongue. Printed there, an indelible impression, forgotten come the morning, known only in glimpses until you return, inevitably, to their arms again.

And some versions of their shape not known at all. You can never know another person entirely. Who they are when you are no longer there. Just as there will always be a reading that has escaped you, a possible version of that poem you have failed to bring to life. As with people and what we bring out in them. As with love and who it does or doesn’t make us. Because failure is essential to poetry. The acceptance of what cannot be read. Or what cannot be read today but one day will be. How meaning can come only with time. Words relevant only when you know enough to not need them anymore, or know too much and so needing them hurts. But the hurt is good, makes the other times worth-while, makes the loving and the touching purposeful and pure. Poetry as recognising that love is all there is or ever will be. Larkin wasn’t so sure, but that he wrote as much means I am.

It takes effort, beginning a book. And a book of poetry more so than fiction. Because whereas with fiction the initial displacement of landing in the terrain of another’s mind wears off once things like character, situation, and plot have been established, in a book of poems each page is a new landscape to explore. A new country with a new language to decipher, a new climate to which to adjust. This disjunct can be jarring, confusing and alienating. But whoever learnt a language in a day? Whoever packed for all weather? Each poem is a new face you let in. Let see you as much as you see it. And together you decipher your language. Sometimes it doesn’t speak back. Sometimes you can only run away. But sometimes it meets you on the borderline, between breath and page, a hand stretched out to your own, and your are taken in, embraced.

And it will always be worth that embrace. The embrace that tells you, look! Look upon this world and see! The faces, the bodies, the trees! The memories, the loss, and the longing! How to read the world. How to make each breath count. An embrace you practice each night, with a hundred lovers but the hope is always the same. A hundred lovers but it doesn’t matter when the hope is always the same. Of finding beneath their skin, any skin, the answer. Of finding in a word your God. If only for a moment, finding absolution, and clinging to it as you cling to life itself.

What is Beauty?

Georgia Watkins
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What is Beauty?

“Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio…”

The standards of beauty in the media are goalposts that are constantly being shifted by cultural currents in history. As Lizzo chirps about only shining when everybody else shines and Elle Woods slays Harvard and tackles the dumb blonde stereotype, everything seems to be coming up roses for healthier criteria in the modern day. Beyond this, however, the definition of beauty has had a life of its own over the centuries – and shifts in its classification are certainly not brand new. Let’s take a look at some historical examples and really get to brass tacks with beauty.

From the above dig at Twelfth Night’s peskiest antagonist, we can see that self-confidence, for instance, has a history of being associated with ugliness; leading us to automatically associate traits like pride, ambition and leadership with negative connotations. Even if Malvolio, the right scheming muppet, is not exactly a benevolent example of these traits, the flaming associations between the self-driven or the successful and unattractiveness are all-pervasive – particularly for women who fall under these headings.

If we look at attitudes in French literature of the nineteenth century, for example, women writers were ousted from literary circles as a ‘bas-bleu’ (bluestocking), becoming the subjects of a whole stream of comic strips depicting them as harridans who selfishly chose the pen over motherhood and wifedom. Looking at the illustration on the right in the image below, we see that the qualities of a self-sustaining, passionate writer are translated into unsightliness and maternal incapability when the writer is female. This has to be true, of course – a woman being beautiful, a mother, and a world-class intellectual at the same time? Maybe like a certain novelist living called Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who married, had two successful children, and under the male pseudonym George Sand penned Indiana, one of the most influential texts in the French literary canon? Never. Beauty and intelligence have both been done dirty for centuries by being made to appear mutually exclusive. 

That said, more modern backlash against this opinion is justly rife. Legally Blonde is a quintessential cinematic example of a woman’s gorgeousness existing both physically and mentally. If we look to contemporary examples, the female protagonists Jane and Xiomara Villanueva of satirical telenovela Jane the Virgin are headstrong, astute women with smitten admirers to boot. When Rafael (spoiler alert) feels a surge of inspiration to propose to Jane as he witnesses her waxing lyrical about her writing muse Angelique Harper, we see that show creators Perla Farías and Jennie Snyder Urman strive to display her desire for success as a writer as a key characteristic of her appeal. There are empowering nuances to this appeal as physical characteristics and self-love of the body are lauded in Jane the Virgin.

When the tear-jerking curveball of breast cancer is thrown at Xiomara, she faces a series of tests of her integrity that leave her questioning and redefining her value; one being the decision to have her breasts removed or not. Here, Urman brings out Xo’s beauty not from her physical traits, but from her love of them. Whilst pondering the double mastectomy she delivers powerful lines such as “I decided I love my boobs, and I don’t wanna get rid of them unless I have to!” and trusts greatly in ‘leading with her body’. Xo’s self-love is adored by her husband Rogelio, who responds that sexiness is not in physicality but “a state of mind”. He announces, whilst truly embracing the telenovela and giving a dramatic goodbye speech to Xo’s retiring boob after she decides to have only a single mastectomy, that “I will miss you, and I love you – but I love Xiomara more.” This critical piece of writing emphasises that beauty is born from the person within as Rogelio worships Xo for her perseverance and personality, with physicality being secondary in the relationship. The vivacity of female sexual desire is also a source of attractiveness and strength for Xo as she laments of a lower sex drive following chemo-induced menopause: “I don’t wanna have sex, and I love having sex!”. As Xo scrambles to re-engage with her body and sex life during cancer treatment, another plot-line develops as her journey to ‘get her groove back’ begins. This is not treated nonchalantly; here, we discover how beauty can also exist from a woman chasing her desires, sexual or not, without letting a major obstacle such as cancer obstruct her goal. Therefore, from Jane the Virgin we can observe that beauty stems from happiness, independence, and the overcoming of pain.

Despite the pleasing messages in JtV, other contributions to contemporary pop culture fall short of the overwhelming lean in favour of self-love. While artists such as Beyoncé champion female sexuality with hits such as ‘Partition’ and ‘Why Don’t You Love Me?’, the picture changes if we peek into the hip-hop charts of 2018, namely at ‘I Love It’ by Kanye West and Lil Pump, the sung hook of “You’re such a f*ckin’ ho, I love it” at first suggests an admiration of women who love sex. Yet, as the song progresses, Kanye’s spat verses go on to make derogatory comments on these women (of which, did I mention, there are just as many as men), metamorphosing the epithet ‘ho’ from something liberating to exactly what it was originally intended as – an insult. For instance, “Why you try to act like you was drinkin’ sparklin’ water ‘fore you came out here?” This socioeconomic jeer implies that this woman lacks class – the ‘sparklin’ water’ being used a symbol of this – and that she relies on ‘coming out here’ with Kanye to be able to access any of this. Therefore, Kanye and Lil Pump subtly suggest these women to be unattractively down-market. Kanye then tries to disassociate himself by labelling female sexuality as “that ho shit”, making it seem alien and unspeakable, and yet is still able to enjoy it when he needs a ‘quick f*ck’. So, the beauty standard that this type of music tries to set is modesty being a must; because some men, in the twenty-first century, are still afraid of women who have sex for themselves.

Overall, the idea of beauty, as defined by cultural representations, is being grappled at and torn from all angles, with countless artists trying to have their say and give an objective conclusion. That said, in mine and plenty others’ views, beauty is from within, and traits such as self-love, ambition, and sexuality serve only to enhance it.

Bigmouth Strikes Again: Morrissey’s Provocative Politics

William Atkinson
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Bigmouth Strikes Again: Morrissey’s Provocative Politics

Morrissey has been cancelled. The Guardian asked the Mancunian crooner “what happened” on Twitter after his records were banned from Britain’s oldest record store. The reason? Not his persistent inability to sing, but his support for Anne Marie Walters’ far-right and anti-Islam For Britain party. Billie Bragg has said it is “beyond doubt” that Morrissey is spreading far-right ideas – and that he’s betrayed the anti-establishment legacy of The Smiths. We’re at the stage where a promotional poster for his latest album has been taken down in Merseyside after a public complaint. To many, the republican, anti-Thatcher, “meat is murder” icon of 80’s has descended in recent years into a racist bigot – so heaven knows his old fans have good reason to be  miserable now. 

But what’s really going on with Morrissey? Undoubtedly, For Britain are an awful, disgusting and unconscionable party. They’ve plenty of links to the BNP, and whatever one thinks of Islam, Walters’ clearly conflates the actions and beliefs of a very small minority of Muslims to the overwhelmingly tolerant and peaceful followers of a 1,500 year old faith, who are equally appalled by extremism. Such behaviour creates lasting tension, polarisation and a threatening climate for British Muslims. Their politics are vile, and it reflects terribly on Morrissey to be associated with them. My sneaking suspicion, however, is that being appalled is exactly how Morrissey wants us to be. Frankly (Mr Shankly) he thrives on it. Upsetting establishment pieties is what he’s made a career of. Backing For Britainis just the latest manifestation of this, no matter how disgusting the party is. 

What Morrissey is doing today shocks our sensibilities as earnest young liberals, but it’s the same shock our grandparents’ must have had at his anti-monarchism, hatred of Mrs Thatcher or even his hard-line commitment to vegetarianism. As Morrissey’s got older and younger and more left-wing voices have come to occupy the positions in the mainstream commentariat held by stuffy old Tories in his own day, the nature of his provocations has shifted. If commentators tend to be Remainers, to be critical of Israel, to find boorish English patriotism and opposition to immigration distasteful, professional provocateur Morrissey makes it his business to upset them. He is a staunch Brexiteer, writes pro-Israel songs, wraps himself in a Union Jack on stage and wears the pin of a hard-line anti-immigration party. Morrissey hasn’t changed, but the shibboleths he seeks to upset have.  

That doesn’t mean we can’t vigorously oppose everything that For Britain believes in and worry about the impact of Morrissey’s public support for such an awful party. After all, the man’s iconic. Should we agree with Billie Bragg and be scared he’s spreading far-right ideas? I’d hesitate. Not because I don’t loathe everything For Britain stand for – I do now, and will do until my dying day. It’s also not because, as much as I like “A New England”, I think Billie Bragg is an idiot, an apologist for Communism and a defender of anti-Semitism in the Labour party.  No, it’s because I think most people see Morrissey as a half-decent songwriter who happens to be a loon with a chip on his shoulder. His politics are Sixth Form: most won’t give his beliefs the slightest bit of sympathetic attention.  

Take my Dad, for instance. He loved The Smiths and Morrissey when he was my age. Being anti-establishment was his thing; a veritable Citizen Atkinson, he attended rallies with Jeremy Corbyn before it was cool. Has Morrissey had any lasting affect? Well, the fact he helps organize a street party for Royal Weddings, has a well-thumbed biography of Mrs Thatcher and counts a fry up as his favourite food suggests rather not. To him, Morrissey is an adolescent who never grew up, a teenage poseur who exists solely to get a raise out of anyone in a position of authority. To take him seriously would be a joke. Especially nowadays: a father who raised me to see racial intolerance as the vilest thing imaginable is not going to have his head turned just because his favourite singer from his teens has drifted off to the far-right. 

Interview: Frank Turner

Simone Fraser
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Interview: Frank Turner

Diva is not a word you’d use to describe Frank Turner. With two books, seven albums, and approaching 2500 gigs under his belt (including the Olympic Opening Ceremony and a headline show at Wembley Arena) you could forgive him for being a little detached from reality. But this is simply not the case. When we first meet, I’m perched on a front row pew at St James’ Church, Piccadilly, and after cheerfully greeting all the staff he walks into the building to soundcheck. As he unpacks his guitar from its case and plugs it into the nearest speaker he takes the time to greet me and ask how I am, commenting that he’s a little tired, but enjoying the book tour he’s finishing that night. Indeed, this genuine friendliness extends to all aspects of his life: he’s known for personally writing lyrics for tattoos, frequently going for a pint with fans after shows, and answering every single email he gets – something that many artists much less established than him would never think to do. There’s a reason why he’s so beloved to fans globally, and this is it.

I start the interview by taking him right back to his childhood. To the surprise of a lot of people, the self-proclaimed ‘skinny half-arsed English country singer’ is actually an Etonian. He was sent there on a scholarship as a child, and continued his education right up until he left for London immediately after his last A level exam – he describes getting home, immediately packing a suitcase, and taking the next train (apparently his mother wasn’t pleased). Expensive boarding schools and punk rock do not usually go hand in hand, but Turner, although labelling private education as “fundamentally unjust” does see the divide he felt between himself and his peers as a major source of inspiration. 

“In retrospect wasn’t really fully cognised in what was going on when I got sent there. I remember taking an exam and being congratulated for passing it… and then suddenly I was at boarding school with people who I found socially quite different, shall we say. And then in the midst of that (which of course was combined with being an adolescent and being thirteen years old), was the moment that The Clash and The Black Flag and The Sex Pistols and NO-FX and all that landed in my life and y’know, punk rock definitely gave me a way of answering some questions that I had about the world, and therefore became my primary love in life. It’s kind of a boring counterfactual to say, ‘what would your life be like if you hadn’t been sent to that school?’ Would you love punk as much as you do? I don’t know.”

Yet although Turner professes his devotion to punk throughout our conversation, what genre his music actually fits into is harder to say. Beginning in post-hardcore punk band Million Dead, after their 2005 split he switched suddenly to a solo blend of folk and punk, predominantly on acoustic guitar, releasing classic albums Sleep Is for the Week (2007), Love Ire and Song (2008) and Poetry of The Deed (2009). The albums are beautiful, ranging from a triumphant and frantic celebration of life inspired by the passing of his friend Lex in Long Live the Queen, to a heart-breaking, desperate cry for help in My Kingdom for a Horse. Yet as the years have passed, Turner’s music has changed, becoming more polished and professional. For comparison, his first EP Campfire Punkrock (2006) was primarily recorded in the front room of his friend and band-mate’s house in Oxford, his latest album Be More Kind (2018) was created by award winning producers and recorded in a professional studio in America – complete with a gospel choir. His albums have moved from being labelled ‘folk punk/folk rock’ to ‘indie rock/indie folk’ over the years, leading to backlash from some fans who believe that his music has lost the raw, personal element that they fell in love with. Yet the singer-songwriter is surprisingly casual when asked if this criticism bothers him.

“I think that to be worried about being pigeonholed you have to give more of a fuck about what other people think that I tend to do. That’s the pull quote, soundbite answer. The real answer… well when I started in my solo career I fell between every stool going because I wasn’t part of the punk scene, I wasn’t really part of the folk scene, I wasn’t really part of the indie scene and there have been moments in my career where that’s been quite frustrating, just in the sense that I’ve seen other people kind of accelerate past me by riding on the wave of a scene. But they then tend to crash when the scene crashes as well, and at this point in my career, seven albums in and fourteen years as a solo artist and the rest of it, I can sort of look on the whole thing with a degree of magnality and victory. All those trendy indie bands who got the record deal that I didn’t get are now appearing in ‘where are they now’ articles in the NME y’know. I mean folk-punk was a term that was used around me and my friends for a while, and there’s some mileage in that, but it seems quite limiting to me in the sense that if nothing else, I think country is a much stronger element in my songwriting than folk. But, I like to think that I’ve kind of reached the point in my career where I’m just gonna be.”.

Yet Turner’s versatility does not just apply to the genres of music he can create – he’s also incredibly well-read, particularly when it comes to history, the study of which he sees as intrinsic to life, commenting “it seems like an odd way to go through life, just walking down the street with no curiosity about how it came to be there”. This has led to a recent movement away from the confessional style of songwriting that he’s known for. In fact, by the end of 2019 Turner plans to have released a brand-new album of songs written about, and from the point of view of, historical women: with one exception – a song about his mum. As well as his music, he’s also a skilled author, and has written two books: The Road Beneath My Feet (2015), a kind of autobiography told through past shows, and Try This At Home (2019), which again tells the stories of his life, but through a deeper glimpse into the meanings of his songs. He does have strong feelings towards certain types of media blending however, surprisingly virulent on his view on lyrics and poetry combining:

“I feel very strongly that contrary to popular opinion, poetry and lyrics are not interchangeable art forms. And this spate of people publishing their lyrics as books of poems that’s been going on lately is kind of bogus. Because lyrics are an art form that survives with the music, they’re integrally related – or if they’re not then you should write better songs”.

Yet after fourteen years of bearing his emotions through song Turner seems to be getting a little bored of introspection, admitting that he’s a little worried that writing two books about himself “verges on narcissism”. As well as the forthcoming album, he somewhat wistfully speaks of researching and writing an academic history book, as well as radio shows, and a secret side project that he can’t speak in depth about, but describes as “the single, most unhinged bit of music I’ve ever been part of”. Even his most recent album, Be More Kind is significantly less intimate, and more angrily political than previous creations, most clearly illustrated in his satirical attack on Republican America through the single Make America Great Again. Turner is vocal in is critique of hate in all its forms, and unashamedly labels Donald Trump a “lying con-man”, yet has a degree of reticence about commenting on British politics – with the exception of the “annoying” and “slightly facile” song Thatcher Fucked the Kids (2006), the subject matter of which is, you may be able to guess, not exactly pro-conservative. Indeed, her refused to play the song for over a decade, predominantly because: 

“There is a certain subset of political fans who just want to hear that song and they don’t give a fuck about anything else you have to say and it you try to make a statement that challenges them in any way then you are the devil incarnate and it because apparent to me that the entire conversation had left music a long, long way behind.”

Ultimately, like his hero, Bruce Springsteen, Turner has dipped his toe in the murky waters of political music, but is reluctant to label himself directly as a protest singer and become entangled in the sometimes dangerously hostile community that surrounds it. Yet the usually endearingly blunt musician admits that his reluctance to comment on British politics also stems from the complexity of the situation.

“I find it easier to comment on American politics than British politics because I have the benefit of an arms-length. The outsider’s status on a situation can make it easier to see the broader picture, or at least kid yourself that you can. The Brexit thing I feel is really quite complicated because I have extremely smart and integral and kind friends on both sides of that plate and it’s not quite as easy as just going ‘oh Trump is a lying con-man’ – that seems a little more clear-cut to me, which makes it easier to write songs about. But y’know, maybe I’m just shying away from making substantive statements that I can get shot down for in this country”.

It can be argued that this is not a very ‘punk rock’ response, but in fact this reactions shows how much Turner has matured since his earlier Million Dead days. After years of struggling with alcohol, drugs, and troubled relationships, the musician now appears significantly more settled, with a healthier outlook on life (he’s mentioned using CBT in the past), a fiancé, and a wonderfully instagrammable feline by the name of Boudicat. Yet in some ways he really does stay true to his roots. As well as touring as a solo artist, he’s also part of the hardcore punk band Möngöl Hörde, due to release a new EP soon – although Turner admits that they’re “the slowest, laziest band in the history of the world”, and not entirely serious in their subject matter – one of the first songs they wrote was about Natalie Portman’s tapeworm using her as a puppet to take over the world. In his general attitude though runs a deep devotion the punk ideas of reaction against the state (admittedly, in a fairly middle-class, ‘I’m going to sing about you’ manner as opposed to throwing bricks though the windows of Parliament), and to the general promotion of individual freedom. Lyrics from his most virulent anti-establishment song, Sons of Liberty (2009) protest that “the government will only work for its own benefit”, and bluntly instructs the listener “if ever a man should ask you for your business or your name/ tell him to go and fuck himself, tell his friends to do the same”.

Yet again this attitude seems to have mellowed, if not in intensity of feeling, in expression in the past few years. He speaks of the Clive James poem Leçons de Ténèbres (2013), written when the poet had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, as inspiring not just his most recent album, but his philosophy in general, especially the powerful lines “I should have been more kind. It is my fate / to find this out, but find it out too late”. If we take anything from his music and words then, it’s this message – kindness. From sending personalised birthday and wedding messages to fans, to using his platform to promote charities like Safe Gigs for Women, Turner makes a point of practicing what he preaches, and although nobody is perfect, he is very clearly trying – as the fact he’s happy to spend half an hour being interviewed by a student journalist illustrates pretty clearly. So maybe I should let the man himself finish this all off with the simple but important quote that titles his latest album – “be more kind my friends, try to be more kind”.

Turner’s new album, No Man’s Land, is released on 16th August

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