Advertisement
Books

The Social Distance Between Us review: Darren McGarvey exposes faultline between haves and have-nots

McGarvey’s affinity with those on the breadline never wavers; his anger at the indignities inflicted on them never flags, writes Dani Garavelli.

The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain is out now (Ebury Press)

All of author and documentary-maker Darren McGarvey’s work is a provocation, and I am easily provoked. So I consume it in a state halfway between admiration and irritation. Admirritation, if you like. But here’s the thing: I always do consume it. Often, the parts that irritate me most are the ones that keep me consuming, just as the points I take greatest issue with are the ones I find myself thinking about long after I am done.

This is McGarvey’s USP: the ability to shake his audience out of its complacency. It is a skill he first displayed in his Orwell Prize-winning debut, 2017’s Poverty Safari, but has sharpened since. His latest book, The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain, is an analysis of class and the role it plays in creating and sustaining inequality. In successive chapters, McGarvey looks at education, employment, prisons, addiction and much more, charting in rigorous and rage-inducing detail the way the system operates to further disadvantage those who already have the least. 

McGarvey was born into hardship. His analysis and credibility are rooted in his own experiences and his “proximity” to the people he interviews. His affinity with those on the breadline never wavers; his anger at the indignities inflicted on them never flags. It is the gratuitous humiliations that stand out. One woman called to a meeting with the DWP is asked: “Who pays for your children?” Confused, she answers: “I do, and my partner contributes.” “No,” the staff member says. “The government does.”

McGarvey shows how the pandemic exposed the faultline between the haves and have-nots; how people with gardens stood in judgement over those venturing out to public parks. He is blistering, too, on the way furlough payments laid bare the contempt at the heart of the benefits system. For years, the “feckless” poor have been forced to jump through hoops to prove their worthiness for state
handouts. The trusted middle classes, on the other hand, were given theirs, no questions asked.

It is in his castigation of middle-class people that McGarvey is most challenging. His dismissal of their woolly liberalism, and their distance from the grinding reality of poverty, is full of sweeping generalisations. But maybe that’s the point. Working-class people face sweeping generalisations all the time. Maybe he is holding a mirror up to middle-class prejudices, and we just don’t like our own reflection.

What makes McGarvey’s snideness tolerable is that it is mostly theoretical. When he encounters members of those groups he affects to despise – people like landowner Dee Ward – he finds them likeable, without relinquishing his distaste for their privilege. And he is aware of his own contradictions.

Advertisement
Advertisement

Towards the end, he worries success will blunt his firebrand tendencies. But then he provides a manifesto for transforming Britain that includes the abolition of fee-paying schools and the strengthening of trade unions, and it’s clear his enduring radicalism is a given.

Dani Garavelli is a journalist and broadcaster

You can buy The Social Distance Between Us from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

This article is taken from The Big Issue magazine. If you cannot reach your local vendor, you can still click HERE to subscribe to The Big Issue today or give a gift subscription to a friend or family member.You can also purchase one-off issues from The Big Issue Shop or The Big Issue app, available now from the App Store or Google Play.

Advertisement

Sign our petition to keep people in their homes

Urgent action is needed to prevent even more people being pushed into homelessness.  A secure home is the first step in addressing the cruel cycle of poverty to ensure people can fulfil their potential. Join us to keep people in their homes.

Recommended for you

Read All
Why we all need to fall back in love with rail travel
Rail journeys

Why we all need to fall back in love with rail travel

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang review – the politics of food
Books

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang review – the politics of food

Pioneering supermodel with Down's syndrome Ellie Goldstein shares her most empowering life lessons
Interview

Pioneering supermodel with Down's syndrome Ellie Goldstein shares her most empowering life lessons

Globe making is a dying skill, but I'm keeping the tradition going
Craftspeople

Globe making is a dying skill, but I'm keeping the tradition going

Most Popular

Read All
Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
1.

Renters pay their landlords' buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are 'set up to fail' by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Here's when people will get the second cost of living payment in 2023
3.

Here's when people will get the second cost of living payment in 2023

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue
4.

Citroën Ami: the tiny electric vehicle driving change with The Big Issue