Beware the petty feuds of artists. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Those London theatre lovers living south of Watford might not have noticed, but Scotland’s small but lively cultural sphere has recently become the latest contested territory in the UK’s unrelenting culture wars. It was revealed last week that a part-time literature officer working for Scotland’s arts body, Creative Scotland, contacted staff at an Edinburgh bookshop to advise them against stocking poet Jenny Lindsay’s forthcoming book, Hounded. Dr Alice Tarbuck did not make her views known in her professional capacity, it is understood, but nonetheless, that a member of staff working for the organisation responsible for supporting Scottish artists went out of her way to try undermining the career of a Scottish artist should ring alarm bells.
The apparently objectionable book promises to detail Linday’s experience of being accused of transphobia by fellow poets a few years back. After she called out a magazine for publishing a transactivist defending their call to harass and intimidate women at Pride, many of Lindsay’s former friends in the poetry scene turned against her.
For those well initiated in the dynamics of this conflict, and the specifics of Lindsay case, this is already pretty cut and dry. If you’re an intersectional trans-ally, fuck Lindsay. If you’re a gender critical feminist, she is basically Nelson Mandela.
That’s not the whole story though. There is another dimension here: the story of the petty and vindictive competing factions in small tight-knit creative scenes, and how their rivalries find expression as intense culture-war conflicts. There’s plenty to disagree with Jenny Lindsay about, but anyone working in the arts in Scotland already understands how running ideological battles both major and minor can dictate which of us are granted opportunities and which of us aren’t.
This latest stooshie erupted just days after Creative Scotland announced it was cutting the Open Fund — a pot of money ring-fenced for individual practitioners. The announcement has created an atmosphere of anxiety among artists, now less likely to take the morally correct position on Tarbuck’s gentle lobbying of bookshops, which was, at best, deeply unprofessional. This endemic insecurity, engendered by 14-years of austerity, also played a role in many looking the other way when Lindsay tumbled from atop the Scottish poetry community four years ago and speaks to the unwritten cultural commandments which must be adhered to if you wish to survive as a creator in the current climate. Thankfully, as an artist and writer who has never depended on Creative Scotland for much, I am not afflicted by this anxiety.
Since my twenties, I’ve been publicly criticising Creative Scotland for one reason: being tone-deaf to working-class creators. It’s a criticism common among artists from deprived backgrounds, rooted in our experience that the arts as well as the bureaucracies that oversee them favour artists, works and processes generally that reflect their own middle-class sensibilities. There’s a safeness, for example, in much of the work that gets supported, as well as a tendency among many in-vogue artists across the various disciplines to expressively dance around the real causes and conditions of the issues being tackled.
Granted, not everything has to be challenging or radical, and countless creatives from middle-class backgrounds are world-class practitioners who also deserve to be supported. But let’s face it: public funding is a game. A game that selects for those with the confidence, time and sense of entitlement to play it, and who possess an intuitive grasp of what will fly with the funders. A game that makes all those repeated references to the tenets of equality, diversity, inclusion and sustainability found on every Creative Scotland funding application somewhat ironic.
Today, pointed criticism of a public organisation like Creative Scotland, or certain factions situated around it, is now likely to be interpreted ungenerously by some as evidence of other unbecoming beliefs — that’s life in the culture war. It’s this palpable sense that by expressing an opinion on one issue — the unwarranted harassment of Jenny Lindsay — then you may be drawn unwittingly into the cultural tornado of fire that is the gender war and subsequently suffer damage to your fragile career.
Lindsay’s treatment has been made all the more odious by the highly personal, often intimate nature of the hounding. In comedy, rival acts take the piss out of each other on stage or down the pub. In hip hop, we have rap battles. In the poetry scene (once the faux-leather-clad notebooks are placed gently in the biodegradable vegan tote-bags), pathological resentments nursed over years are acted out remotely from behind veils of social justice concern. And Lindsay’s assailants have justified this to themselves as necessary because she is, in their ideological hivemind, an extremely dangerous woman whose beliefs represent a direct threat to the lives of vulnerable trans people.
Like Lindsay and her gender-critical feminism, trans people, advocating for their rights, also have the right to choose how best to do this. That said, when activists (like anyone else) veer so clearly into violent incitements against women they believe transphobic — which does happen — then no matter the justification, it must be called-out in the strongest possible terms. I didn’t understand why that was such a controversial thing for Lindsay to do back in 2020 and to be honest, I still don’t, but that’s what set this whole sorry poetry in motion.
Poetry is supported in a number of ways, whether through grants made available to individual artists, or to other organisations that employ, showcase, mentor or make some other use of poets. Those who remain close to the bosom of the arts body and its satellites are not exactly living it large, but they quickly develop an intuition for the sensibility it demands. One risk few artists will ever take is being seen to either criticise Creative Scotland or pass comment on any arts related controversy which could be construed as a lack of adherence to that sensibility.
As a result, many seem happy to tune-out this fiasco around Alice Tarbuck because it involves Jenny, who is bad, and has been brought to wider note through Right-wing publications such as the Mail and Spectator, which are also bad. This highly motivated reasoning means valid criticisms are often dismissed by artists based not on their lack of merit, but on who makes them and where they are published. In the case of Tarbuck, the hoo-ha is all just a bit of Tory unionist hokum and everything in the arts is fine, case closed. Well, it’s not fine and it’s time more of us said as much.
Jenny’s views are controversial and upsetting for some, yes, but they do not warrant a wholesale attack on her ability to make a living. While freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences, the main judges, juries and executioners in the kangaroo court appear to be her former contemporaries; artists whose work is underwritten in one way or another by Creative Scotland and has been for the best part of a decade.
They won’t picket outside your home or workplace; they don’t write to you seeking resolution, clarification or comment; they use their minor but prominent positions as cultural nodes within the Creative Scotland funded networks that comprise our arts and literary scenes, to drop their hints, comments and the occasional proverbial hand grenade on your ability to make an honest living.
Drawing a wage from a public body should place some constraints upon your conduct in public life, part-time or not. If people want to be activists, then go be activists. Stay away from influential roles in the civic sphere if you lack the self-control to behave professionally. Personal politics may, of course, inform your approach in the workplace, but there’s a line most public servants understand and try to observe. Granted, the behaviour of one staff member should not be overblown, but Tarbuck’s conduct speaks to a deeper cultural problem taking hold in parts of the arts which Creative Scotland must now confront if it has any hopes of surviving.
We need a new code of conduct for everyone working over there. Staff should be expected to keep their personal politics out of the process or risk being escorted off the premises. Funding judges should be obliged to declare any associations or prior history with applicants that may impair their objectivity. Similarly, a parallel code of conduct must outline new expectations of artists receiving funding. All recipients must be guided by an explicit directive that they will refrain from interfering with the work of other artists and their ability to earn a living while in receipt of public support, themselves. Such interference, wherever found, should result in the instant withdrawal of support, an order to repay all grants, and a lifetime ban from ever applying in future. One suspects such action may produce its own cooling effect in some overheated ideological conclaves where extremist behaviour appears relative to the level of state subsidy received.
Artists remain free, of course, to express their dislike of one another’s politics, but a signal must be sent to those who apply for financial support that public money is not a supplement to tide them over while they work to deny another artist’s right to earn a living. If hounding people out of the arts is your creative bag, do it on your own dime thank you very much.
Darren McGarvey is a Scottish hip hop artist and social commentator. In 2018, his book Poverty Safari won the Orwell Prize and his new book The Social Distance Between Us (Ebury Press) is out on 16th June.
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SubscribeThe author claims that “wars are never ended or resolved on the battlefield”.
Actually, they are, if allowed to continue long enough.
I would refer the author to episodes such as Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the career of Genghis Khan.
I would also suggest that without any outside intervention, or ‘international pressure’, Israel could end the war with Hamas on the battlefield too.
For better or worse, the West, which is typically the source of interventions designed to get all sides round a table, has no longer got the stomach to see wars settled on the battlefield, which is (a major reason IMO) why Africa in particular remains chronically unstable.
Had Europe’s various warring sides in centuries past been prevented by well-meaning Africans from redrawing their borders through war, and thus deciding their own histories and futures perhaps these brushfire wars and internecine blood-letting that Africa now suffers from would plague Europe.
I have no idea which of the current conflicts in Africa can be managed by well-meaning foreigners offering inducements to make peace, and which need to be allowed to burn themselves out naturally, but blanket statements that wars are never ended on the battlefield need to be called out as just plain wrong.
Your examples are fundamentally different from African violence since the conflict is tribal and triggered by battles over dwindling resources.
This is the face of climate change.
What follows will be countries in crisis with famines and starvation prompting mass migrations.
Get used to it, it’s here to stay.
Absurd. Africa is a resource-rich continent long mismanaged by people who have been given trillions in foreign aid and technology for decades. Climate has absolutely nothing to do with it. Human greed and stupidity is to blame.
Corruption is the word you are looking for, which is undoubtedly always part of the picture since it is embedded in African culture.
Resources come in many forms and are almost always at the root of tribal conflict, many of which span different boundaries to the colonial map.
If organisations truly wish to help they need to understand these aspects much better.
Africa is rapidly greening. The Sahara is shrinking. Turns out CO2 is really good for plants (shocker). Africa’s problem is corrupt, ineffective governance.
Good God, such barefaced lies are unbelievable. The Sahel is growing.
This nonsense it what stops real discussion of the problem.
It is likely that the biggest contributor to the spread of the Sahel is bad land management, over grazing and over population. Obviously corrupt politicians see global warming as an excuse to get handouts for themselves or to impose extra taxes on their people, like a carbon tax on fuel.
The spread of the mini-sahel in southern Africa has been well documented and studied since the 1930s. There is little mystery about the causes lying in the way people, local people, care for their land.
Ethiopia has make great strides in protecting water catchments by banning goats from higher lying areas. Kenya’s NGOs have led the way in using trees to regreen.
Please abandon the nonsense, the issues are too important.
This is also the face of overpopulation, as adequate resources — supply — lag demand. Africa could do its people — and countries accepting its surplus as immigrants — a great favor by addressing over-procreation.
If Africa truly wants to take the lead in solving African problems, as the article’s author says, great: Let it do so. If it does not, action, and inaction, have consequences.
Addendum: After letting this percolate for a few hours, I realize my comment may seem harsh and simplistic; perhaps it is. Issues facing this continent — those that are home grown, those arising from foreign involvements and those reflecting an unhappy merger — are many and complicated. Population reduction would no doubt help considerably along the lines of supply and demand, but I appreciate that solutions — and I truly hope Africans do lead — will be multifaceted.
“If it does not, action, and inaction, have consequences.”
Like mass migration and / or Rwanda style genocide.
I am putting my money on the former – both intra and intercontinental.
Since climate change is affecting everyone, but it’s only Africa, and to some extent the Islamic parts of the Middle East where there’s chronic armed conflict, it seems fair to infer that some cultures are dealing with it rather better than others.
Personally, and I’m not a fan of ascribing all of Africa’s ills to being the fault of increasingly historically-distant colonial powers, I do very much wonder whether the drawing of borders by those powers without respect for tribal boundaries is at least one reason for the chronic instability.
If that were the case, then the borders need to be redrawn, and that really only happens through one side driving the other side out. The kind of war, in other words, that is literally genocidal.I’m not advocating for this or against it. It’s acute pain now, or chronic pain forever. Just saying that there are types of conflict that can really only end on the battlefield, and for policy-makers and policy advocates to be claiming that wars are never won on a battlefield means blinding oneself to reality in certain situations, and consequent misguided and counter-productive policies and interventions.
The idea that tribally oriented warfare in Africa is predominantly caused by climate change is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard. I expect even you know that. It’s been going on for decades since when people were warning that a new Ice Age was upon us. Battle of resources possibly, but there are not “dwindling resources” in Africa, accepting the ultimate geological sense than the Earth is finite: however we have only scratched a tiny percentage of available resources. This absurd 1960s Club of Rome stuff has been utterly discredited since the 1960s, that we will “run out” of this or that material in the short term, which completely dismisses human ingenuity and technological progress.
Also your comment is a classic example of progressive liberalism: a cynical dismissal of the opportunities for human beings to actually do anything about their many problems (as has always been the case), dressed up as a faux piety and concern, with naturally a site swipe at your “white supremacist” enemies or whoever you think they may be, saying that they must suck it all up and we must import even more of Africa’s problems into the West! What a brilliant solution that is already proving to be.
Western pacifism of the past fifty years has bottled up many conflicts with only sporadic flareups of violence showing as signs of the built up pressure. Those conflicts will have to eventually come to their conclusions. It’s going to shock a whole lot of people who believed in the End of History fantasy
Africa may need the wests help, but has constantly claimed to not want it and denounced any western interference as being akin to modern day colonialism. They thought the grass was greener by getting into bed with the Chinese and Russians, I think they’re probably about to find out the hard way that it isn’t
Africans constantly say how evil racist and colonial we are – let them sort things out themselves. The best we can do to help them is don’t give them any technology they couldn’t develop produce and understand themselves. No more western medicines, computers, aircraft parts, cars – nothing. Let Africa go back to being Africa and the population will fall to its sustainable level.
Yeah, and while you’re at it the West could stop bleeding Africa of its natural resources like oil, copper, coltan, gold, diamonds, nickel, molybdenum, helium, etc.
How are we doing that exactly?
Africa isn’t a single entity. By definition, its hundreds of conflicts tell us there are hundreds of competing visions by hundreds of different peoples across hundreds of different territories.
When authors write “Africa needs the West’s help” they always fail to identify which political factions the West is supposed to help over others. Is the West meant to help existing corrupt incumbents transgressing human rights? Or is the West supposed to mediate between murderous insurgents transgressing human rights?
If the West is only slightly perceived by some Africans to favour one side, it would add anti-Western anti-colonial fuel to the fire we’re trying to extinguish. If the West mediates a mutually agreeable gain share between existing combatents, another insurgency group will be born to fight for its own mediation and gain share. And let’s not forget the queue of Western activists ready to take to the streets and the courts to protest any decision whatsoever.
There will always be agrieved peoples both in the West and in Africa. What determines the peace is the likelihood of fighting yielding concessions. In Western Europe, North America, and Japan, after centuries of internal and external wars, powerful states have emerged with a near monopoly of force. Western Europe and Japan were literally bombed into peace. There is no prospect in these regions of military force gaining any benefits for would be aggressors.
The hard truth is wars end by the imposition of a settlement by force, internally and externally. Any other peace is just a rest between fighting, a time for new opportunists to mobilise to fight for what they think is theirs. Western Europe and Japan were forced into peace when they ended up prized possessions of the American empire. Just this week the USA spent $60bn to defend its hegemony in Europe, and indirectly that keeps the peace in Western and Central Europe. Pax America.
Africa’s violence arises precisely because there is no greater power willing or able to impose peace at any cost. Like every other continent, it will suffer continuous civil and regional wars until some sort of hegemony is established. Sadly, for a continent so large, populous, diverse, and geographically contiguous, convergence on hegemony might never come.
Very thoughtful post.
Although I agree with a lot of your comments, I think the comparison of Africa with the situation of Western Europe and Japan after the Second World War is frankly ludicrous. I do realise that the concept of an American empire is ever so fashionable among many on the Right, and some are absolutely determined that almost every question should be dragged into some intra US culture war. But with the exception of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a few others (and even Puerto Rico is largely self-governing) the key feature of American geopolitical hegemony is precisely that it did NOT impose a formal Empire, for example on Iraq or Afghanistan.
But a formal Empire is exactly what is needed IF a hegemon wants to transmit its values and dominate the societies in the way that the British Empire sometimes managed to. But this will be 100 or 200 year project, not one for a single presidential administration. (The world is complex: governments can behave both idealistically and cynically at the same time).
Despite the hiatus of the Second World War, Western Europe and Japan both had the institutions, experience and expertise to continue being self-governing prosperous societies and achieve largely achieved this, albeit with American security guarantees and a (rather benign) military presence. Africa is in an entirely different situation for deep historical reasons.
“Africans will take care of their own problems”.
So, how’s that going?
And always with somebody else’s money and weapons / expertise.
And this at a time when we apparently can’t defend our own borders or keep Jews safe on the streets of London.
Grow up.
Glad to see some much needed writing on Africa. The conclusion it reaches is utterly wrong however. The white man needs to stay as far away from the affairs of the continent as possible. Any suggestion to the contrary is neocolonialist madness.
We gave up any right to try and drag these benighted peoples into modernity decades ago when we gave up the Burden at the instigation of our American masters. We must leave Africans to resolve their own issues if they are to become effective, self-actualised nation states instead of corrupt tribal entities. Many countries have come far in recent years, and don’t get enough credit. It isn’t 2003.
“More anarchy awaits ….”
Change one letter and this could almost start a poem by Yeats, who is seeming more and more prophetic by the day. And it’s not just in Africa.
Very insightful.
Armed conflicts are on the rise everywhere not just in Africa, although it is understandable why non-Africans like to be concerned given the troubled history of the continent.
Africans have always solved their own problems when not interfered with from outside. It is no secret that peace in the DRC is elusive because of the meddling by foreign interests over minerals that are powering the digital (and AI) revolution.
Sorry, but Africans are incapable of solving Africa’s problems. How much more time and proof do you need to see this?
Wars are ended when your enemy is defeated, the ‘negotiations’ merely tie up the loose ends.
Witness WW2 .
The West just lectures about “democracy”, it’s cynical and useless. Law and order must come first, and must be organic. Wish them the best.
You can read the same old tired stuff about white guilt from colonialism, slavery, racism, or their counterpoints, mentioned here in some of the posts, about “Africans unable to solve their own problems”, “Africans remain violent unless a greater power is willing to impose peace” (a particularly ugly sentiment, IMO), or you can listen to people like Magratte Wade, here is a link where she is being interviewed by the shockingly casually dressed Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH63RABGK6w
Currently its a win – win for China and a not too shabby set up for the Russians too. If the countries are stable China gets the raw materials and if not sells them arms, Russia likewise but on a much smaller level. Russia also gets the bonus that war drives Africans to Benelux, Germany and Britain as refugees who are coming over on the basis they can behave as if they were still in Africa. Ironically the Chinese could do with this labour as their future demographics are dire – old and mostly male. They could also make things better for the migrants as in China you do as the Chinese do – or else. Those coming to Britain etc face a life of low wages, benefits and crime. Not values we associate with China over its long history.
Only silence on the way men like Daniel Gertler, Mark Thatcher, Beny Steinmetz and others like France, USA, UK along with their local warlords and dictators have been, and continue to, underwrite genocide in Africa while bleeding the country dry of natural resources for centuries. So now Russia and China are the culprits. At least they built infrastructure, and Russia hosts millions of refugees fleeing the predation and bombs of the United States. Economic capture by the IMF and WB haven’t helped out much either. Leaving out 80% of the history in Africa to endorse B.S. Gimme a break.
Africa could be great – but Africans choose for it not to be anything other than a malange of failed States.
It’s very interesting that the west is not doing what it normally does which is help regardless whether it’s asked to or not
The white western saviour is strong with this author. The predictable are then triggered in these comments to spout their trolling.
Africa really does need to sort itself out. Corruption is what western and eastern handouts facilitate. Just stop.
Take roads. EU aid involves handouts that are supposed to create road making skills, of course it goes to the politicians. No road. China brings in all its own people so at least a road gets built. But that is it, no maintenance.
This unrest is very worrying. Mozambique is next door to South Africa and the SA army cannot feed its own troops. Everything is stolen. Think a more incompetent version of the inept Nigerian forces. They at least hone their skills against civilians in the odd coup.
This article does a good service by identifying specific actors and their roles. It is tempting to generalize about Africa’s problems but the solutions will probably have to be narrowly targeted. Some governments seem hopelessly corrupt, but it would be good to know which ones are not.
It seems a little delusional to imagine that countries like the UK are in any way well placed to ‘help’ Africa. The reality is that the UK is looking more and more like Africa every year: a corrupt, self serving political elite (schooled in the very same institutions as many African leaders); crumbling infrastructure (schools falling down…); environmental degradation (rivers awash with sewage) and, above all, exploding inequality of wealth and opportunity (food banks, landlordism, inherited wealth as the only guarantee of a decent standard of living). Labour and the Tories being little more than two cheeks on the same bottom make our democracy look somewhat redundant. If this continues the UK will soon be on the same level as Nigeria.
Klive, well stated. One only has to look at our institutions eg “House of Lords”, an un-elected body, filled with party crony’s. They sit their for LIFE. Very Feudal in essence. Landlordism – Total. No reform on that will happen as most of the politicians are renting property out. No chance of them changing any laws. Great impartiality. Just Shamless and a absolute shameful cabal
Correction – it crossed the brink decades ago. Its own fault lines deepened both by outsider meddling and neglect led to wars then and now – coupled with loss of western influence. Enter China and Russia. Time for catch-up TV?
“Change and leadership must come from within Africa”, “Africa will take care of its own problems”. Beyond the cliches there are too many countries that coukd, or haven’t, for reasons that are as much endogenous, and often wholly inexcusable, as exogenous. Pointless and unjustified coups, delayed reforms and elections, pacts to stay in power by force backed by mercenaries and new autocracies. Many of the lessons have been rolled over from earlier decades. But The West is no longer soley culpable and Gulf States/China/Russia are quite prepared to back and sustain a new generation of corrupt and military leaders. “Africa” will not sort itself out until Agrican leaders stop messing around and immerating Afeicans as well.
This article is almost the quintessence of well-meaning but ineffectual liberalism, rimming with contradiction. “Africa must solve its own own problems” – but the West must also, natch, help no doubt by wasting yet more resources on this ill fortuned continent. Africa was certainly cynically carved up without any regard to the inhabitants and their customs in the 1890s, but it was just as cynically abandoned with no effective capability of ruling itself – as modern (artificial) states – in the 1960s, because of the demands of tiny group of self-interested political elites, and of course Western bien pensant liberals. The results have, mostly, been cataclysmic.
As we see from country after country democracy simply is not going to become rooted in Africa, in what are still overwhelmingly tribally-oriented societies. Even the smallest countries have dozens of languages.
It’s clearly a terrible situation for them but the fact is that the west is in crisis and hardly in a position to assist anyone.