Billy Bragg - The Frontman

Whether on stage or on the campaign trail, musician and activist Billy Bragg is accustomed to taking the lead. Caitlin Mackesy Davies caught up with him.

Musician, activist and voluntary sector worker, Billy Bragg is quick to set a simple ground rule when we speak by phone at the end of May: ‘Don’t let me ramble.’

Despite this caution, it is clear immediately that Bragg will never be offered a spot on the panel of Radio 4’s Just a Minute. If the aim is to speak on a given subject for one minute, with no repetition, deviation or hesitation, he’d offer few openings for ridicule by host Nicholas Parsons or fellow panellists.

No matter the subject we cover – from political ideology to personal identity, from the BNP to the Big Society, what follows each question is an inclusive, considered, sometimes academic but always heartfelt reply, with not an iota of ramble.

There is a bit of plain speaking, for instance when we discuss the role of the state and the potential for public services to be increasingly handed off to the voluntary sector.

Though each individual and the sector as a whole, he says, must play a part: ‘The sector can’t, 24/7, deal with all those problems that society throws up. We have to pool our resources in the form of taxes and employ proxies to do those things that have to be done.’

His list of what has to be done includes collecting rubbish, dealing with people whose lives have fallen apart because of drug addiction, and also providing care for those people not able to care for themselves (including ‘wiping people’s asses’, as he puts it with characteristic frankness).

‘Unless you want to do that day after day, with no support, thanklessly, we need the state to pick that up.’

Bragg, who has written a blog to justify his support of the Liberal Democrats, rather than Labour, in the recent election, admits to being cheered by the fact that the British people denied the Conservatives a triumphant entry to No. 10. But he does agree with the party on one thing.

‘I think the individual is the most important component of society. I agree with the Tories on that. But my belief is that unless that individual is the recipient of the collective provision of things like free healthcare, free education and decent, affordable housing – those things that the state has come to provide because we’ve realised that the market can’t solve all our problems – then only the rich and the powerful will get to express their individuality and the rest of us will get exploited by them.’

While he’s been a constant presence on TV and radio over the past few months – fighting (successfully) to oust the BNP from Barking and Dagenham, ‘putting down a marker’ on fiscal accountability by refusing to pay his taxes, and pushing the agenda for electoral reform – he says the thing he’d most like to change is the rage for putting markets before people.

‘That’s the thing that needs rebalancing if we are going to get a society in which everybody is able to find his potential.

‘The free market constantly fails,’ he continues, ‘so it’s wrong to suggest that it is the way to deal with society’s problems.

It is purely a means of exchange.

Ultimately, we have a responsibility to each other and that’s what it’s all about – whether we have a little society or a Big Society.’

Voice of the marginalised

Bragg is acutely aware of the need to act on this responsibility, not just to take on popular causes, but to speak up for those who are most marginalised in our communities.

As he explains: ‘There are loads of people who would go out and raise money to save the whales. I would do that. There are loads of people who are willing to go out and raise money for starving children.

I would do that.

There aren’t many people who want to go into prisons and look inmates in the eye and say: “I want you to come back and be part of society”.’

Bragg is doing just that through Jail Guitar Doors, which supplies guitars to prisons as a way of helping inmates to engage with themselves and their situation in a therapeutic way.

He emphasises that he doesn’t sit down and teach people to play guitars, but rather provides the means for people who are routinely in prisons to work directly with inmates.

These could be alcohol or drug support workers, or chapel staff. But the best case, he says, is when the ‘peaked caps’ (prison officers) get involved: ‘When they do the work, you know it’s going to fly.’

One-man band

As for the logistical side, ‘it’s a bit of a one-man operation,’ Bragg says, which means that things really progress only when he’s not on the road or busy with other projects.

He’s currently sitting on a box of guitars that he wants to get into Dorchester Prison, which he says is a key objective since it will reach prisoners on remand.

He’s working with a supplier to try and set up direct delivery to prisons, and also looking for others to help with the work, but for the present the guitars ‘will sit here for a bit unless I get a better offer’.

It’s a slow process, even at those prisons that welcome the project. He was thrilled recently to get a batch of smaller guitars, for women to play, into Holloway Prison after a three-year effort.

But he admits: ‘Some prisons just blank me, and it’s really painful, because I know that someone in there needs a guitar.’

Some governors don’t want to know, he says, because they are nervous that it’s going to look like inmates are having a good time: ‘Heaven forbid that!’ Bragg is also aware that there are some crucial needs he just can’t meet.

He recalls a conversation with a London prison officer who remarked that what Bragg was doing was brilliant, ‘but if we could just teach these people to read and write before we let them out, we’d be making a really significant contribution to public safety.’

‘That’s absolutely right, absolutely right,’ Bragg says now.

‘We have those people in our custody for a certain amount of time and we’ve got to intervene in their lives. But we are not – we are just keeping a lid on a problem instead of dealing with a problem. That ain’t gonna work.’

Yet he’s ‘filling a gap the state can’t reach’ and also one that he knows isn’t so appealing to many people. (He was appalled by a recent poll showing that 38 per cent of the public would back public sector cuts that affect prisons.)

‘There are people who argue that the state shouldn’t be paying for guitars in prisons, and that’s fair enough. I can’t argue with that.’

But, he continues: ‘The state should be providing the space for people to make that connection with an instrument and take the first steps on the hard, hard ladder of rehabilitation.’

The sad fact is, he sighs, that ‘prison is the last place that can’t say no. The other places have closed or don’t have the capacity to deal with such a big problem. And it’s where our sector is really, really important. As the state gets thinner, we are doing our best to hold things together. But, ultimately, this can’t be a matter of charity; it has to be a matter of responsibility.’

Personal journey

As important as social responsibility is to Bragg, what set him down this course was a much more personal journey.

He describes how, when his father was ill with cancer in the 1970s, ‘the hospital said the best way to deal with it was not to talk about it. And I really regret that.’

His father died after two years of illness, when Bragg was 18, and left him understanding that while people in prison may be routinely put out of sight and out of mind, ‘we really don’t want to see people who are going to die – shamefully. Nobody wants to tangle with that stuff.’

Bragg did, however, by working with terminally ill women at a hospice in Weymouth, through charity Rosetta Life. He helped them to write songs to ‘say what they couldn’t say at the dinner table, namely: “I love you but I’m not always going to be here”.’

It was the output from this project that led to a request for Bragg to get involved in prisons, and the project has also left a personal legacy with him.

‘Of all the things I’ve ever done, that’s the thing I’m most proud of, working with those women,’ Bragg tells me. ‘People still come up to me and tell me about what those songs meant to them, and to those women who are sadly no longer with us. And every time somebody tells me how it helped them deal with the loss of their mother or daughter, I think of those girls and say: “See I told ya. I told you songs will make you immortal.”

‘Those ideas are still there, still touching people. They gave me a little bit of themselves and together we made something really powerful.

‘That aspect of what goes on in the voluntary sector could be used a bit more, the creative side of it. Wiping people’s asses is really, really important. Where would we be without it? But helping people to speak and sing, and create something beautiful, is also very important.’