Two weeks before Josh Simons stepped down as the Makerfield MP, Andy Burnham attended a gathering at Salts Mill in Shipley to celebrate the life and work of poet Tony Harrison. The event was intimate, with actors, directors, writers, and family members paying homage. Burnham was not the only politician to speak; Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, also addressed the crowd. In 2020, Burgon had put down an early day motion in parliament recognising that Harrison had “always written, and spoken, for the people.” However, Burnham’s speech offered the most incisive illustration of how literature, particularly poetry, can change lives.
Burnham’s Introduction to Harrison’s Poetry
Burnham was first introduced to Harrison’s poetry as a sixth-former. An English teacher at his school recommended V, Harrison’s long poem set in a Leeds graveyard. The poem became infamous after Richard Eyre dramatised it for Channel 4, prompting Conservative MP Gerald Howarth to attempt to ban the broadcast for its use of four-letter words, which the Daily Mail described as a “torrent of filth.” V recounts the poet’s confrontation with a skinhead who has sprayed graffiti on headstones, a young man with whom he discovers he shares much in common.
To the teenage Burnham, the poem’s existence proved that a working-class background, which he and Harrison shared, need not silence or disadvantage you. The poem features an epigraph from Arthur Scargill: “My father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to master words.” Burnham quoted this to his father, who was sceptical about his son studying English at university, questioning the value of such a degree. The quote convinced his father, and Burnham went on to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
The Rarity of English Literature Degrees in Politics
Politicians with English literature degrees are rare. Among those who won seats in the 2019 election, only 4% held such degrees. Steve Witherden, a Labour MP in Wales, did not learn to read until he was 11, making his study of English at Lampeter all the more remarkable. Others argue that an English degree fosters broad-mindedness and empathy. Burnham is more robust: he believes that knowledge of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Orwell, and Harrison has served him well on people’s doorsteps. In 2015, he even confessed to wondering whether he might write poems himself one day “when politics has run its course for me.”
If Burnham does produce something more literary than a political manifesto, he would join a distinguished line of MPs and prime ministers, from Benjamin Disraeli (“When I want to read a novel, I write one”) to Winston Churchill (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953), Alan Johnson, and Rory Stewart, not forgetting the fiction of Jeffrey Archer, Edwina Currie, and Ann Widdecombe. More importantly, Burnham’s career demonstrates that a humanities degree need not be a disqualification in life. The number of young people studying English, history, or languages at university has declined catastrophically in recent years, leading many institutions to shed staff and close degree courses. But is a background in science, maths, or PPE essential to become prime minister? Perhaps not.
Burnham’s Task: Uniting a Divided Country
Andy Burnham will be judged not on his ability to quote poems or write his own, but on what he does for the UK over the next two years and beyond. However, it is hoped he will keep Harrison’s V firmly in mind. When the bereaved poet is “going to clear the weeds and rubbish / thrown on the family plot by football fans,” he finds the word “UNITED” graffitied on his parents’ headstone. A message about ending division is not what the skinhead intended; he is a Leeds United supporter. But Harrison takes heart, knowing “what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean” and imagining an end to “all the versuses of life”—the class, economic, and ethnic differences that split the nation, “the unending violence of US and THEM.”
The versuses have worsened since Harrison published his poem 41 years ago. Even at the time, he admitted that the prospects for ending them were not good. But that is Burnham’s task: to unite this horribly divided country. With what he has learned from poetry, he may have a chance.
