As a writer, I’ve often referenced Steinbeck, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and most often Robert Tressell as authors who celebrated working-class experience. Not the Catherine Cookson, nostalgic, horny-handed son-of-the-soil stereotype, or even Dickens’ depiction of Victorian poverty, but as conscious members of a class with the power to change society in the interests of the majority.
I don’t hide that I am a political writer, that the times, locations and characters I choose are to highlight issues from my experience growing up as a son of Irish ancestry, in England during the Troubles, or my experience as a long time factory worker, a shop steward and union convenor. Politics, in the sense of being conscious of and trying to change the world around me are and always have been central to my existence and therefore the things I write.
Does this affect your career as a writer? I would say undoubtedly, yes. Luckily in Northodox Press I found a publisher that recognises I can write a compelling narrative, with authenticity, and the conflict, drama and tension necessary for modern thrillers, but also recognises that my ‘voice’, whether they agree with everything I write or not, is worthy of publication.
Being seen as political in this sense only happens when writers buck the trend, upend society’s narrative, and don’t accept the majoritarian framing. Police detectives are routinely shown to be quirky, oddball, or with all the personality faults and addictions that abound in modern society, even as ‘bad apples’, as long as the service overall is deemed to be protecting and serving communities. Rather than the primary role of the police and security services functioning to protect property and power, in doing so targeting minorities and those posing a challenge to the status quo; arresting Palestine Action supporters while turning a blind eye to the hundreds of masked uniformed fascists that regularly turn up on our streets.
Ignoring such obvious contradictions in modern drama, or presenting them as outliers rather than inherent consequences of the system- deaths in police custody, attacks on campaigners and striking workers, or the actions of institutions and governments complicit in genocide, and the demonisation of immigrants- ignoring these things while writing is a conscious political choice. Think of the countless shows dramatising drug syndicates, whether local, national or international. Producers and writers argue that the most dealers or kingpins end up dead or in prison, which is true; for working-class youth, even a few years of that lifestyle is enough to risk everything.
Even when it is unconscious, the framing of all fiction is political.
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