Anyone would have thought \u2018Ill Manors\u2019 was conceived specifically to generate broadsheet think pieces.<\/p>\n
With \u201crich boy\u201d-baiting lyrics and a catchy Amen break chorus, Plan B\u2019s latest single is as zeitgeisty as they come. The track has been lauded by Guardian columnists and Labour MPs alike (a surefire sign you\u2019re doing something wrong), with some corners of the left-leaning media loudly proclaiming that \u2018Ill Manors\u2019 is the generational anthem for which we\u2019ve all been waiting.<\/p>\n
If Plan B is our spokesperson, we are in significantly worse shape than previously feared.<\/p>\n
The left\u2019s sudden lionisation of Ben Drew is odd, given that his most recent album is dedicated entirely to perpetuating myths about rape. The Defamation of Strickland Banks is a concept record based around a man convicted of raping a woman during a one night stand. Drew\u2019s character, Strickland Banks (apparently not a Bugsy Malone extra, despite the name), protests his innocence, claiming that the woman is in love with him and has falsely accused him after being rejected. In a country in which one in four women is the victim of rape or attempted rape, but in which just six percent of cases result in a conviction (and in which women are going to prison after being forced to retract truthful accusations of rape), there is really no place for art predicated on the notion that women who do come forward are obsessive liars.<\/p>\n
But we should also be questioning Drew\u2019s sudden urge to position himself in the rioters\u2019 camp. The video for \u2018Ill Manors\u2019 shows the rapper ensconced with a group of people hauling away stolen TVs \u2013 a strange choice given his disgust at the looters at the time. On the second of those extraordinary days during which the cities burned, the rapper took to the pages of the Sun to deliver a rambling, confused response to events<\/a>. He seemed to be concerned with a potential terrorist attack while \u201cwe already have all our troops overseas, got a lack of police,\u201d and a generalised economic crisis caused by riot-related insurance claims. Most offensive of all, he wrote: \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re doing this as anger towards the government. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re smart enough to even realise that could be an excuse.\u201d The crux of the piece mirrors the argument made by so many commentators at the time and since: that theft is not a reasonable response to poverty, and that the riots weren\u2019t political because the people on the street weren\u2019t burning government buildings.<\/p>\n This is dangerous, and it is fundamentally incorrect. It assumes that politics is something that just happens in Parliament, between politicians. It assumes that political space is somehow separate from the \u2018real world\u2019, and that actions outside that space can never be political. In fact, politics is everything. The rioters weren\u2019t waving placards outside Westminster, but that doesn\u2019t mean that the riots weren\u2019t influenced by politics. They were poverty riots, born of inequality and endless police harassment, the constant, systemic violence that is inflicted by capitalism on the working class every day.<\/p>\n Drew is keen (and rightly so) to change the way people think and talk about public housing residents, but most of all he seems personally affronted by the riots. \u201cYou\u2019ve got people like me,\u201d he said in the Sun, \u201cwho are trying to change the way middle England look at the underclass, have a bit more compassion for them \u2013 how can I stand up for that any more?\u201d For Drew, a better life is something that is given to you \u2013 not something that you take. In a lecture for TED<\/a> and The Observer last week he encouraged individuals to ignore the government, and find instead one person that they can help. He talked about a friend who runs a hair salon, training \u201cunderprivileged\u201d young people. He pointed to those he had taken out of school to star in his film, as evidence that the solution to poverty is the altruism of the better off. In Drew\u2019s mind, the poor need to keep quiet and stop embarrassing him, and wait for a pop star to turn them into film stars. Then society will be fixed.<\/p>\n Drew is the archetypical liberal. He believes that poverty can be solved through charity, and that the poor must respond to structural violence either by ignoring it or by acting within strict parameters of acceptability. For Drew it\u2019s bad that there are no jobs, that there are mothers skipping meals in order to feed their kids, that people are being forced to work for free in order to keep their benefits \u2013 but if you throw a brick through a window you\u2019re on your own.<\/p>\n Drew has been so effusively welcomed by the faux-left commentariat because he conforms precisely to their prejudices while resolutely failing to challenge their porous theory. He is a working class lad from a \u2018difficult\u2019 area, just rough enough for the Guardian to keep its edge but eloquent enough to safely hold a room at TED. He has \u2018improved\u2019 himself by sticking rigidly to the strictures of the system in which he found himself \u2013 a tactic that has seen him financed by one of the world\u2019s largest record companies. It was inevitable that he would become a figurehead for the Guardian and the rest. For them he is totemic proof of the foundation of liberalism: that the \u2018problem\u2019 of the working class can be \u2018solved\u2019 without structural change.<\/p>\n \u2018Ill Manors\u2019 is yet another reminder that we must look at the riots through the prism of politics. We must recognise them for what they were, and for what they will be again this summer: a tentative insurrection. It is the destruction of capital that will end poverty. Charity and record deals won\u2019t hack it, regardless of how pretty the accompanying video is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n