twenty four seven (w&d shane meadows, w. paul fraser)

Has anyone ever laughed as much as I did in an Uruguayan cinema upon hearing the words ‘Edwina Currie’? I doubt it. This reference to the erstwhile politician and lover of the former prime minister actually taps into the wider themes of Meadows’ engaging early work. The central character, Darcy, played by Bob Hoskins with an irascible glee, keeps a diary, which one of the lads who make up his boxing team later discovers. In it, he writes, and narrates, that he was one of those left behind in the Thatcherite boom of the eighties. Which is why he finds himself down on his luck, identifying with the gang of kids who hang around and get into trouble. His mission to set up the boxing club and give the kids a focus in life is a communitarian reaction to the warped individualism of Thatcherite Britain.

The film rides on the back of Hoskins’ charm, the director’s verve and the humour of the kids. Meadows’ future as a spinner of stories for TV can be noted here, as there are more than enough sub-stories and narrative strands to fill out another three movies at least. The closing credits come over the scenes of Darcy’s funeral, a few years after the film’s events, picking out the lads and their new families. The film is carried by Hoskins, whose commitment to the boxing club presumably reflected his commitment to the film itself, an actor with a notable track record mucking in with a rookie director and an even more rookie cast.

The film’s depiction of a depressed Midlands town, where multi-racial youths feel as though there is nothing to do except look for trouble, feels acute and authentic. It is also a telling prefiguration of a country which, no matter how wealthy it has appeared, has been in many ways running on empty for forty years.

the old is dying and the new cannot be born (nancy fraser)

This is a short but insightful treatise on the vacuum that is opening up in political culture with the waning of neo-liberalism and the failure of either the right or the left to find a new “hegemony” which can replace it. Hegemony being, as the author explains, a Gramscian term which suggests a political/ philosophical worldview which can shape the way political society both acts and sees itself. Nancy Fraser highlights the way in which much of the liberalism in neo-liberalism has been, if you like, window dressing which has covered up the failures of a Capital/ Finance system which supposedly keeps the wheels running (and disproportionately rewards those who oil these wheels) to address key issues of inequality in society. Liberal gains are all well and good but they shouldn’t hide the fact that the working class is getting proportionately poorer, and society is becoming increasingly unjust, even if certain freedoms have been secured. She is great on how Trump manipulated this situation to stoke a culture war which was all about getting him elected and nothing to do with addressing wealth divisions and inequality. This is a short book with an appended interview with Bhaskar Sunkara, but it’s full of really valuable insights, including the complex and dangerous process of trying to find a new hegemony (or vaccine). Referring to what might emerge which will succeed in helping to create the kind of plausible society which the New Deal offered before its hegemony was eroded she says: “What we don’t know yet is whether some new, yet-to-be invented form of capitalism could satisfy those imperatives—or whether the only possible solution is a postcapitalist society, whether we want to call it socialist or something else. Maybe more important than knowing that for sure right now is knowing what the new rules of the road should be for a political economy that is both pro-working-class and globalized. Ours is a world that cannot and must not go back to distinct national economies. That way lies competing protectionisms, militarization, and world war.”