 Welcome to The Fix. We have an absolutely jam-packed show for you tonight to talk through the Me Too campaign and the Tories You Turn on Housing. I'm delighted to have in the building Maya Goodfellow. Thank you for joining us. And Dawn Foster, a friend of the show. You're both friends of the show. Always around. Friends of everyone. Except who? Ulysses Haters. Ulysses Haters. Later in the show we've got Richard Powers-Ayid talking about his new book 1997 The Future That Never Happened. And we've also got an interview from Barcelona with Carlos del Clos about Rajoy's announcement of home rule. To begin, the Me Too campaign is having actually far-reaching consequences it seems. This obviously started in the wake of the outing of Harvey Weinstein as a sexual abuser. And now literally millions of tweets and Facebook posts talking about people's experience of sexual harassment or sexual abuse have been shared on Facebook and Twitter, social media. Maya, you're going to tell us about the latest developments in this and what consequences this may have for gender politics. Yes, I mean, I think we want to start off by saying obviously full solidarity with all the women who've come forward, who may have experienced sexual abuse, harassment. And I think maybe we want to see this in a positive way firstly. So we've had statistics for quite a long time showing the scale of this problem. But I think this really has humanised the issue. So a lot of people I think have kind of been woken up to how many women have experienced this. But I do think there's some potential problems with the whole campaign. Quite a few people have pointed out that while a significant number of women have come forward, there's barely any men recognising that they're part of the problem. So I think in this moment it feels like we can see this issue of everyday gendered violence is really visible on the one hand. But at the same time, it almost seems invisible because we have a lot of victims, but a dearth of perpetrators. And I think we should really be talking about why that is. And part of the reason I think that this has come about is because people like Weinstein are treated as if they're aberrations. So what we saw in the past couple of weeks is we've seen a son front page and a daily mirror front page call him a beast. I've seen a lot of people kind of denounce him as a monster. And I think that that discourse, what it implicitly tells us is that his actions are separate from the rest of society. So it's totally disconnected or that he's a really, really bad apple amongst people who are not so bad. And I've also seen something that I think is really problematic, which is a lot of people saying that it is an issue more on the left or amongst liberals because he was someone that donated a lot to the Clintons, to the Democrats. And so I think it's been weaponized in that really unhelpful way that's really bad for victims as well. So I think that this, in a way, it does feel like a moment of change. And I think there is space for change. I don't think this should just be seen as the negative kind of points that I've brought up. There is a moment in which we can see that this normalized harassment and violence that women experience on an everyday basis has been deemed to be unacceptable. But I think there's a problem with how we then make change come about. There's an issue with assuming that this is a handful of men, or with assuming that if you fire some of these men, that then the problem is solved, it kind of holds them up as the perpetrators and then kind of lets other men off the hook. So I think it's not just about firing people. I think it has to go much, much deeper than that. And we have to have a much bigger conversation about how deeply ingrained this is in workplaces, on the street, in people's everyday lives. And I don't think there is a quick fix to this. And I worry with a lot of the discourse around this that there's an assumption that there is. Dawn, have you been uplifted by, well, it's a strange word to use, but have you, do you think the Me Too campaign has been a positive development in gender relations? I think so. I mean, obviously the Harvey Weinstein stuff came out and it was awful, and it was interesting that something that had been bubbling under for what felt like decades, certainly as long as I've worked in kind of any industry, was coming to the fore and people were talking out about it. And I think it was interesting that when I first saw the New York Times reporting, I assumed that his lawyers would have become involved and it would all quieten down. But I was absolutely floored by the fact that so many more women came forward, which I thought was brilliant. And then all of a sudden I looked on Facebook and almost everyone I know was sharing that she'd also been the victim of sexual assault and sexual harassment. And it took me a few days to come out and do it myself. And one of those reasons was that I was annoyed about the fact that I had to. So I had been sexually harassed at work by a number of people. I mean, obviously there were individual accounts where men had just gone a bit too far. I told them to stop and they carried on and then, but I had a few that had gone on for months on end. And when I had spent the human resources department in the place I worked, nothing happened. Either I was told that they were too senior and therefore I was expendable or I was told to stop going for work drinks. So we had one boss who would hire women, would try and get into sleep with him. If they said no, then they would be demoted. If they said yes and they'd be promoted. I went to HR, so this wasn't good enough. And after that I was told by HR to stop going to use drinks and was never promoted again and left the company as a result. And I felt annoyed that I had to come out and say this. I felt annoyed that I had to come out and talk about something that was very personal to me in order to be believed. And I had a few male friends who say they hadn't realised it was certainly a problem before, but equally, I don't understand how men couldn't because women talk about this constantly. They talk about it amongst themselves, but they also talk about it quite openly. And I felt quite annoyed by how self-cannibalising it felt. And I think that women were forced to reveal their trauma publicly and nothing much was really done as a result. I think what I would like to see is people coming forward and as a result institutions actually deciding to take sexual harassment more seriously. I'd like to be in a workplace where if somebody did sexual harassment, as has happened a lot, for very, very quickly that person to be either ostracised or taken aside and stopped from doing it again. Whereas all I ever see now, and I looked at Twitter before we came on air, and the two men who spent at least a year each sexually harassing me have both spoken out and said how heartening they find in the Me Too campaign. And I know at least five women who've been harassed by one man. And I know 10 women who've been harassed by another man. And there's nothing I can do still to stop that. And there's nothing that I can do to do anything about their reputation. Was that damaging my own reputation? I mean, I think in the long run, to look at it optimistically, I think that in especially public facing organisations such as the media or politics or I think even a trade union had someone outed last week in the United States, it will make men think twice and feel like they can act with less impunity than they once were able to. But what if you're working in Tesla on a zero hours contract? And I'm in the media on a potentially zero hours contract. What if you're working in a low paid job and you realise that anything you say to the person who controls your rotor means that you won't get hired again. I mean, luckily we've had a change in the law in the last few months, thanks to union pressure. That means women can now take sexual harassment cases to court without having to pay for them themselves. But even so, a lot of women will be very, very worried about this. If you do take the case to court, you have to leave your job before you do it. And there's no guarantee you'll win. Like there's a high chance you will, if it gets that far, but there's still no guarantee you will win. And it still will cost you in the long run because you'll need to leave your job. This situation has shown that social media can provide an avenue for women to make complaints where other avenues failed, be that the HR department or whatever. Do you think there's any dangers inherent in these sorts of calls for justice happening in forums like Twitter and Facebook? I mean, I think there's two things. I think that on one level it's good that women are able to use social media in this way. But I think there's a danger with it. Because what happens if you do come forward and you can't name the person? Or even if you do come forward and nothing happens? And I just wonder, you know, for those cases where it's not people who are relatively well known, what then happens to the women who come forward? And as you say, they're all, and then there is kind of no action taken. I think there's a danger there. And I also think that we should reflect on the way this has been used by certain people. I think it's perfectly reasonable and good for women to come forward if they feel like they want to on social media in this way. But I do worry about the way that certain people are using this. Certain men are then jumping on the back of this to attack other men. And as Dawn says, not even necessarily, I've seen men do this, not even necessarily who've harassed women or been sexually abusive, but who've just not treated women very well, who've perpetuated sexism in the workplace. I've seen that. And I've seen them calling out on social media. And that is incredibly frustrating. And not to make a comparison between, you know, sexist behavior and abuse, I think there is difference. But I think it's really performative. And I think that it's frustrating to see men almost creating an image that they profit from. There is professors to care about gender equality and feminism. But who you know are perpetuating some of these very behaviors on a micro level. So I do think there's a positive to it. But I think that there's this other negative side about how this is being used by men for their own gain. Well, I'm sure we'll keep talking about this story or not just this story, this whole issue on Navarra. And as this particular story develops, I'm going to move us on to housing, another big story of the week and one of your specialist topics, Dawn. So it's in the news this week, because Sajid Javed made a sort of announcement the way that they happen. I'm Drew Maher. It's an interview, but they've obviously been briefed to sort of say something that's supposed to make the headline the next day. This time the headline was that the Tories are finally willing to borrow to invest in housing. This comes after Theresa May's fairly pathetic announcement for £2 billion towards housebuilding. We're going to show that clip in a sec first. I want to get up some facts about the extent of the housing crisis. It's talked about a lot, but the numbers are quite astonishing. So they might be up now. So these are from a variety of sources, shelter, the Department for Communities and what's the what's the whole of that? The Department for Communities and Local Government. Great. Cool. I'll go through the stats now. So 72,240 households are homeless and living in temporary accommodation. That's a massive 60% increase on 2010. Most of these are families with children. Can I butt in? Yep. Can I butt in and say that of those 77,240 households, there are 110,000 children contained in them. So there are 110,000 children that don't have a home at the moment. Wow, that is shocking. In 2017, the average house price was worth eight times the average salary. That's compared to four times in 1997. In London, it's 13 times the average salary. The average private renter spends a massive 41% of their salary on rent. In London, that's 62%. So you have 38% left for the things you need in life. By comparison, the average homeowner only spends 19% of their salary on their mortgage. We are currently building the lowest number of social rented homes on record. Among people aged 25 to 34, the number of homeowners has nearly halved in the last 10 years and the number of private renters has doubled. And between 2012 to 2015, developer profits went up 388% to a total of 3.3 billion a year. We're now going to see what Sujid Javed has to say about this crisis and the Tory response. This is Andrew Marr. We need a big increase in all types of home, including regular, unsubsidised homes. In simple terms, we can agree. We have to have many, many more homes built and quite quickly. Now, there has been a suggestion in today's papers, for instance, of some big new housing fund to build these houses. Would you support that kind of big measure? We are looking at new investments and there will be announcements. I'm sure the budget will be covering housing. But what I want to do is make sure they were using everything we have available to deal with this housing crisis. And where that means, for example, that we can sensibly, you borrow more to invest in the infrastructure that leads to more housing, take advantage of some of the record low interest rates that we have, I think we should absolutely be considering that. Well, that's really interesting because that is a change in turn. Not long ago, we were told we couldn't borrow any more for anything. But you are saying that housing is such a big infrastructure crisis in this country, we should be borrowing more money to solve it. Well, I'd make a distinction between the deficit which needs to keep coming down and that's vitally important for our economic credibility. And we've seen excellent progress and very good news on that just this week. But investing for the future, taking advantage of record low interest rates, can be the right thing if done sensibly. And that can help not just with the housing itself, but one of the big issues is infrastructure investment that is needed alongside the housing. So the distinction he made there between capital spending and current spending will be familiar to you from the Labour Party over the last, in fact, seven years. It wasn't even Corbyn introduced the idea that it's fine to borrow if you're spending on big infrastructure projects which are going to make you back money in the long term. Sajeed's team later told the Sun that he is lobbying for £50 billion in the next budget to build 300K homes a year, or not the government to promote the building of 300K homes a year. Dawn, does this U-turn on policy show that the Tories are finally ready to tackle the housing crisis? No. What it does show is that they're terrified. So I went to some Conservative Party conference recently which you must never do because you will hate your life. And every single panel I sat on, everybody was terrified of two things. One, Corbyn and the youth vote and none of them understood why so many young people loved Corbyn. And the second one was housing. So they realised it was quite interesting that at Labour Party conference, if you were under 28, you were class as young. At the Tory party, you were a class as young if you were under 45 because they completely lost the under 45s vote. And that's because not only are under 45s either renting, but a lot of under 45s realise that if they have had kids, those kids aren't going to own their own homes. And we've basically focused so much on home ownership that the Tories realise that the only people who vote for them are home owners. And that number is dwindling and home owners are slowly dying. That is a fact. And renters are increasing and increasing and increasing and spending more money on rent and don't understand what capitalism has for them because the harder they work, the more money they spend on rent, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. So I think the Tories are running scared and every single time they try and make some movement on housing, what they fail to understand is that the only way to get out the housing crisis is one, you have to build a lot of council housing because then you spend less on housing benefit and it goes back into the council and it funds it very, very well. And two, you have to actually correct house prices. And they realise that when you do that, it means that you lose a lot of Tory voters because people like making money. So I mean, I think he, so did Jarvid in that interview made a reference to Harold McMillan. So I think that the plan that the Tories are going for is they don't really want to create a new generation of people renting council housing because that's not their natural voting base. They'd love to create a new generation of home owners. Is there any way in policy terms that they can make that work? The only way they can do that is to build enough private homes and it has to be family homes that house prices come down. But when they do that, they realise that their traditional voters who've made a lot of money and a lot of assets suddenly lose those assets. So they're really, really worried. And that's why Theresa May has made noises about bringing in house builders into number 10 and saying we need to build more. But if you say the house builders need to build more, they understand because they're not stupid that the more you build, the lower their profits will be. So unless you get a load of cash from government, which they have been with help to buy, they're still not going to build very much. I mean, the thing is that housing is, should be a fundamental right. It is in most other European countries. It's not in Britain because Britain is stupid and overly capitalistic. And as a result, the government benefit bill is way, way, way higher than it needs to be. What you should be doing is instead of paying private rent and housing benefit to a huge number of private landlords, I should say, I say a huge number of private landlords. Only 2% of Britons are landlords and a huge amount of our housing benefit is going to those people and it's staying in their pockets. Whereas if we just put a lot of council housing, then A, housing benefit will be lower because social rent is lower and all that money will come back into the council and be reinvested into council services. So it's a really, really economically brilliant way of using money. So you lower the benefit bill, the houses are better and actually council services are better. So it, you know, it works brilliantly. And the only reason the toys don't want to do it is because, you know, so in Nicolai's biography, he talks about the fact that when he mentioned in cabinet that maybe they should build more council housing, George Osborne came out and said, no, if you make council housing, all you do is breed labour voters. Wow. I love that word breed as well. It's gross, isn't it? There's a good moral to the story, which is that if you, if your political success relies on ever increasing house prices, you are eventually going to be justifiably screwed. No sympathy for you. We are now going to go to an interview with Carlos Delclos from Barcelona. This is in the context of Rajoy, the president of Spain, announcing that home rule is going to be introduced in Catalonia. Their government will be deposed because of the illegal actions of calling a referendum and holding it. This is Carlos Delclos from Barcelona. What does the imposition of home rule mean? Well, the popular party have laid out what they're going to do as part of their imposition of home rule. Basically, that means that Mariano Rajoy is going to dissolve the the Catalan government and replace them with, you know, what he's calling a technical administration. What that actually means is, is still to be determined. But presumably what it means is that basically Mariano Rajoy, the head of the popular party and the president of Spain, a party that has 11 seats out of 135 in Catalonia right now will make itself the government of Catalonia. And what capacity does the government of Catalonia, the current one, have to resist this process? Well, right now what they have is a possibility of what could declare independence on one hand unilaterally and in the minds of many people. This would basically put them in a negotiation with Spain because it would situate them as equal states, right? Although, you know, if he doesn't declare, if he does declare independence, or the Catalan government does declare independence, that's going to be an even bigger grounds for a more severe type of intervention by Spain, such as Article 116, which is a state of exception basically, where we would see and all likely put some kind of military takeover. In addition to, I should add, but in addition to taking over the Catalan government, the central government will also be taking over control of the Catalan police through Article 155 and Home Rule, and taking over Catalan public media. It was for a long time speculated that they would take over education, but instead of doing that, they've gone with the media. So what do we expect to see in resistance? We'll see resistance by the workers in all likelihood. They've already announced that they'll be in resistance. Of the public media station, we'll likely see resistance from public functionaries, state administrative, or sorry, public administrative workers, and yeah, we'll most likely see a lot of mobilization in the streets. What's the end game here? Presumably it's not going to be, the plan of Rahoy isn't to forever have Home Rule in Catalonia. What's the end game for Madrid? The end game for the Madrid is to basically find a way to not have a pro-independence majority in Spain. So what Rahoy has promised to do is to dissolve the government and call for elections within a period of six months. Again, what this is going to entail is unclear. On his right, he has the supposedly moderate Ciudadanos party calling on him to make the pro-independence parties illegal in Catalonia, which would make it a lot easier to have a non-pro-independence majority in the parliament. But it should be said that Ciudadanos in Madrid, calling for this in the region in Catalonia itself, they are not in favor of this, and neither is the popular party at the moment. Rather, the popular party in Catalonia is talking about the possibility of illegalizing. So basically, the right is playing this cup and ball game where they're trading different far-right stances between both of the right-wing parties. What's the end game for Rahoy is basically to squash an independence movement that he's only been fanning the flames of for the last five years? And if an election were held in Catalonia under free conditions, as in the nationalist parties not having been banned, what would you see as the likely outcome there? What's the atmosphere on the street? Are people now tired of this conflict or are people still feeling pretty well stronger than they once did about independence in Catalonia? Well, it's interesting. Some polls came out yesterday, both for Spanish general elections and for Catalan general elections. Now in Catalonia, the story is that the situation doesn't change very much at all. We still have a majority, slim majority, of seats for pro-independence parties. They still have less than the majority of the popular vote. We have this sort of middle ground occupied by Podemos as affiliates in Comú. And then we have... I personally had expected to see a rise in support for Ciudadanos in Catalonia. That hasn't happened in the polls. There is a bit more support for the Spanish Socialist Party. They're cataloging than we expected before. That's perfect. Thanks so much for your time, Carlos. We'll talk to you soon. I'm sure as this situation develops. Always a pleasure. Carlos Delclos speaking to us from Barcelona. I've now got one of these mics because we only had three radio mics to go around. We have a new guest on the sofa. It's Richard Paosaid, proud author of the new 1997, The Future That Never Happened. It's a great book. Very readable social history. That's a lovely mix of anecdotes and analysis. That is what I'm definitely going for. Ricky, I'm not asking you any questions today. Right. Yeah, I brought you all to hear no questions. Oh, shit. Instead, we're going to show you some videos and you've got to tell us what the fuck is going on for anyone in the Snapchat generation. This is what 1997 looked like. It was weird. There are seven people in this room tonight who are giving a little bit of vote to young people in this country. That is me, our kid, Boned, Wigsey, Alan White, Alan McGee and Tony Blair. And if you've all got anything about it, you get up there and you shake Tony Blair's hand, man. He's a man. Power to the people. I mean, it was like hung out for about two hours, get shown around the police. We knew we were being used. We knew what the deal was. It can also be a triumph. Witness Blair's head tennis with Kevin Keegan. The symbolism was clear. Back in 1995, new labour just like Keegan's new castle seemed to be a breath of fresh air set to topple the Astab. Richard Powersade, what the fuck was going on? Shit. Things were bad back then, weren't they? I don't know. They're kind of hopeful. Definitely hopeful. Definitely hopeful. I mean, that is absolutely what the book is about. But no, I'm telling you. I'm telling you about these videos. So the first one, the first one is Noel Gallagher and the whole of Oasis standing on stage at the 1996 Sprit Awards. And it's this moment when everyone suddenly becomes aware that Noel Gallagher is a massive Blair right, which comes as something of a shock to quite a lot of people. No, really? Okay, well, Dawn was nine, so she doesn't remember these things. But yeah, Noel Gallagher goes up on stage. I think this is the same Brit Awards where Liam has just flicked fag-ash on Mick Jagger's massive bouffant hair. And Noel gets on stage and he says there's six, five, seven guys in this country who are giving young people hope. And he lists the members of the band. He's Alan McGee, who's their manager, and Tony Blair. And he points at Tony Blair, who's sitting at one of these kind of circular tables at the Brit Awards, drinking his dry white wine. And we have an anecdote of what happened when they met at the party once Tony Blair was prime minister. Yeah, so that's what you saw next. It's them in the state rooms of Downing Street. Noel Gallagher turns up to the party in July 1997 at Downing Street. And bear in mind that this is the time when Noel Gallagher's on matter's amount of coke. He's basically made out of Colombian white wine. I was on matter's amount of coke when I was nine. Yeah, well. You don't know any better Dawn. No. I explained so much. Yeah. And Noel Gallagher says to Tony Blair, you know, on election night, how did you possibly stay up all night? You made a speech seven in the morning. And Tony Blair leans in and he goes, well, I bet it wasn't the same way that you stayed up all night. And Noel Gallagher says, and at that moment I knew he was a geezer. And then we had Kevin Keegan playing header up. Yeah. What was it called? His kick-ups were your head? I think just header it. Header ring. Yeah. Kevin Keegan. He was actually surprisingly talented. I've said your book has a lot of these wonderful anecdotes and it also has analysis. What do these videos tell us about Britpop? What do they tell us about New Labour? What do they tell us about British culture in 1997? I think that those that moment with with Britpop and then also with Kevin Keegan, you know what? It's not funny just to say his name. You know, what's happening there is the Labour have so completely abandoned their social democratic platform. They've so completely abandoned their relationship with the kind of the like stereotypical image of what the Labour movement is, which is white working class men. Yeah, sure. Exactly. And and that like being friends or being this kind of like weird sort of a quite friendly acquaintanceship with Noel Gallagher for Blair is a way it's like a symbolic substitute, a PR substitute for having a left policy platform. Can I ask a question? Yeah. So I've heard about Cool Britannia. I don't remember it because all I remember right now is seven is my hero Diana Diane. How long did Cool Britannia last before it became uncool? Well, I think there's a that's a big argument. I mean, Cool Britannia itself actually starts off as a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavour available only in the UK, which gives you a sense of just how Britain wasn't really considered a very cool outside Corbinism begun. Yeah, as a Ben and Jerry flame. Yeah, it was here first, right? It's a Mars bar, I think. But it's available for the many, not the few with nuts. We are going to have to move to the next video. This one's a bit more serious. So this is another video from 1997. Boy, they would have surrounded the black community. They would have arrested as many black boys as they could. And they would not stop until they get the killing. The pandemonium outside the Stephen Lawrence enquiries. The five suspects are escorted out of the building. They were attacked with hot coffee being thrown over at least one of them. Others were punched by the huge crowd of demonstrators waiting around the elephant and cast. I want this report to serve as a watershed in our attitudes to racism. Ricky, what is going on in these videos? So, actually, none of these videos from 1997. But they're all very relevant to a key moment in 1997. So Stephen Lawrence was murdered. For those who don't know, he was a black teenage boy. He was murdered in Southeast London in 1993 by five white men who were very obviously racist. And his family, particularly his mother, Doreen, fought an incredibly hard four-year campaign, very much informed by radical anti-racist ideas, very much supported by anti-racist groups. And it took four years for the mainstream media, for the vast majority of white people in this country to pay attention to what was going on. And the really, really weird thing that happens in 1997 is that the person who brings attention to this is Paul Daker, the editor of The Daily Mail. We might potentially have that headline coming up, but keep talking while it arrives. So what happens is the, yeah, so The Daily Mail accuses these five men who've not been found guilty and in some cases like they have been found not guilty, they directly accuses them of murder. And it causes this massive, massive media storm. But it's a media storm about white people. It's about what a white newspaper said about white racist murderers and how they blamed the fact that the white police had not ever come anywhere near getting these guys in jail. They were not ever building a proper case against them. Blames that on the white judiciary and white lawyers. And it's all part of The Daily Mail's very, very carefully orchestrated campaign to support Michael Howard, who at the time was home secretary, attacking the judiciary, the so-called liberal judiciary, who he was blaming for lots of the country's problems. This is the run-up to the general election where it looks like Tony Blair's going to win. And so this is like a very, very careful calibrated bit of politicking on the part of The Daily Mail. I mean, I think we should say also, like, Paul Daker doesn't approve of racist murders. You know, he like probably had some belief in supporting the Lawrence family. But, you know, they were not happy about the fact that they were building this kind of very uneasy cooperation with this very racist newspaper. Yeah. So in your book, you describe how the McPherson report was the product of almost a strange alliance of Doreen Lawrence, an incredibly brave mother of a murder victim. And Paul Daker, who decided to do what was a very brave newspaper headline at the time, because they could get sued, it said in the headline, Sue was. And that was partly because he saw it as an opportunity to attack the non-deserving white working class and the judiciary. All that did lead up to, and actually that's why all that led up to the first review happening, which is when you see the five suspects coming down there. Right. Okay. Yeah. So that's the second part of what you've got there. It's the McPherson inquiry, which is a judicial inquiry into how the police's investigation could have been so completely inept. And the kind of what you might have seen out there, which looked a bit like a riot or something, is this extraordinary moment when these five guys come out of the elephant and castle shopping centre, or actually from the block of offices, which is above it, and they just, everyone who's outside just start screaming at them. They get bundled into a police fan or an unmarked fan, actually it was. And you just hear in the archive, if you listen to the rest of it, from this crowd of hundreds of people, they are shouting, murderers, murderers, murderers. And it's an extraordinary moment, because up until this time, for the last couple of years of this campaign, you might have thought this is basically a campaign, which is on the one hand, this kind of like tight-knit group of the Lawrence family and their supporters in the anti-racist campaigning community. And then on the other hand, this very, very awkward thing where they're sort of getting help, but not really, by the Daily Mail and by Jack Straw and New Labour, who agree to put on this judicial inquiry. And the long-term consequences of the McPherson report, what did it find out and what is the legacy that we have now? So it officially described the metropolitan police as institutionally racist, which at the time was this kind of extraordinary moment and people were really shocked by such an aggressive accusation. But the point is that although I think you can say there seems to have been a really significant diminishing of personal prejudice in Britain since then, what you absolutely have not seen is a diminishing of institutional racism. And that's obviously very clear and kind of racialized imbalances in police violence, for instance, as well as a massive class gap between ethnic minority communities and white communities. And I mean, how do you think we can use this to situate New Labour's broader approach in terms of race relations? Because I think at the time, people like Stuart Hall, not long after the McPherson report, were talking about how this was a big step forward with a critique, right? Not just about the term institutional racism being used and how we actually deal with institutional racism. But more broadly, there was a kind of, from what I know, there was almost a recognition amongst people who were on the left of the Labour Party or outside of the Labour Party, who saw New Labour as potentially being a change, a break with the past, but then who were monumentally disappointed or let down by what actually did happen even if we look at the language around say asylum. And even the idea of race relations, right, being incredibly problematic and the idea of multiculturalism. So I wonder how you situate this moment in this broader picture of New Labour's relationship with a racialised nation. And that kind of signalling that they still believed in this kind of white nationalism. Do you remember Tony Blair standing in front of Dover, the white list of Dover, giving the immigration speech? I think what he was trying to do a lot of the time is to give, you know, he made one message to one group of people and he gave one message to another. And, you know, it's only a few months after the, no, it's maybe just two months after Jack Straw says, yes, we're going to have this inquiry into how the police failed so appallingly to build a case against these racist murderers. And a few months after Jack Straw has done that, you have what you might call sort of, it's New Labour's first migrant crisis in massive, massive scare quotes. So it's a moment when several hundred, actually a few thousand Roma from Slovakia and from the Czech Republic seek political asylum in Britain in a very short space of time where obviously they're being incredibly badly treated in these post-Soviet states and not that they were well treated in the Soviet ones. And Jack Straw, like, and Tony Blair, absolutely play the anti-migrant card there. So So the asylum seekers was a big concept that was always in the headlines? Absolutely. And that's, I mean, this is the moment when bogus asylum seekers becomes like a new labor tool, as it were. And even then in 1997, you're seeing, I think, exactly the kind of, you know, discursive terms that we see, we've seen in the last few years in Britain in terms of, I know that they're economic migrants, not refugees. When, of course, you know, with a group like this, who are being economically punished and oppressed and exploited back home, because of the ethnic group they come from, there is no clear difference between an economic migrant and refugee. We're changing the tone with the final video. This is our last video from 1997. Ricky, what the fuck was going on? I think at this moment, it might be slightly inappropriate for like the man on the sofa to start like critiquing feminism, given that Dawn here wrote an absolutely extraordinary book about how feminism gets co-opted by liberalism. Do you want to keep showing off about how she was barely conscious in 1997? No, no, no. I think, I mean, I think both of you and Maya were old enough to go to sleepovers where spice girls were mentioned a lot. So we, so spice girls will come into our consciousness, whereas, you know, Tony Blair's economic policy might not have done at the same time. I mean, I do actually remember going to sleepovers and having arguments over whether, you know, I actually didn't like the spice girls and got ostracised from like several sleepovers as a result. Yeah, I was like, I know, I was, I was a total bell and like pulp when I was nine. It was, it was terrible. But I do remember reading Smash Hits and I remember reading Melody Maker a lot. And I remember thinking a lot about, I remember at one point I got really angry because Jerry Halliwell or one of the spice girls had said that she thought satchel was the original kind of instigator of girl power. Is it a spectator? Yeah. No, but I'm sure it was mentioned in Smash Hits as well in like a weird post thing. Oh yeah, no, no, I'm sure it was. I didn't read the spectator at all when I was nine. You could not buy it in South Wales or Belfast. It was like, surprisingly enough. I listened to pulp but I didn't quite. No, exactly, exactly. And I just remember knowing that like, I didn't understand what satchel did, but I did know that if I mentioned that Jerry Halliwell liked that satchel, I would get a slap around the head from a member of my family. Yeah, I remember that happening quite a bit. And I remember them being quite controversial and also breaking up quite quickly. What about you, Maya? I mean, it was, yeah, the Union Jack dress. I mean, I didn't understand at the time. And I was reading to the spice girls and Jerry was my favourite. I think my mum was just like, no. I realised now that my family being like, I fucking hate Jerry Halliwell was probably more to do with the Union Jack dress than the Nickers, even though they were a very great Catholic. It's probably more the Irishness and everything else. And you know, 1907, yet again. Well, when she wore this Union Jack dress, nobody really commented on the kind of like nationalist implications of it. Until a few months later, a girl, a very young girl, went to a community dance in Belfast, wearing her Jerry Halliwell dress. It's not really funny, is it? It's quite awful. Obviously, she had no idea what was going on, but her parents presumably did. And she got kicked out of the dance, like an 11 year old girl for wearing this. And that was actually the first moment when people were like... She got to be Arlene Foster. I'm just snickering at that. You know, the point was that I think that what that reflects is the fact that like the symbols of potentially very militarized nationalism were completely like, the fact that they were ideological was completely invisible for the vast majority of people in the Union. And it was only people in very specific parts of very specific communities who experienced these symbols to have like incredibly like painful political or indeed celebratory and joyful political meanings. I think that's very very common amongst the kind of Blair era. The idea that we could all be the same and every town could be the same if we got enough in. So the idea that people would, you know, have different kind of experiences based on the town they lived in, just became quite conflated in the idea that, you know, every town would have the same sort of shops, every town would have the same sort of industries, became a big part of Blair. Is that right? Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, the thing that I'm kind of really interested in with the Spice Girls is that it's yet another one of these moments of... You're not supposed to laugh when I say interested in the Spice Girls. No, I'm just laughing at their makeup. Their makeup is terrible! Well, you know, don't be too mean to them. That's terrible! What the fuck is happening? Sorry. I think the point is that they were part of this same pattern that you're seeing with Britpop, with New Labour, with the way that the Lawrence campaign gets kind of co-opted by conservatives and reactionaries. And that is that radical ideas and radical people like feminism, which have been on the margins to a very significant extent, get brought into the centre and they get exploited by people in power. And the big question, I suppose, is to what extent do they still manage to make some kind of impact? And this is a very big political question of how much compromise is too much. That's a bit I really like in the book, is about how the origin of the Spice Girls is very much about certain men wanting to make quite a lot of money, Simon Fuller being the person in point. But their impact was actually to make many young girls feel more empowered and to have more solidarity with women in their lives. And so even though there was a sort of cynical basis to it, there were some positive outcomes we're running out of time. So the final question is for all of you, favourite Britpop band? Favourite, most memorable New Labour politician, because I'm not going to say favourite, and favourite Spice Girl, Tune. And Girl Power, how does it, how much does it mean to you? That's four questions. You've got to do them all in 60 seconds. What was the first one? Britpop band? Pulp. Why? Because they're fucking brilliant. And they're actually very, very working class. New Labour politician. Robin Cook. Oh yeah. Legend, legend. And Spice Girls song. Can you sing the chorus line? It's got to be stopped right now. Thank you very, very much, because like 60s girl bands are incredible and this is just like... Needs so much to see. One of the, because I've been in the hotel where they had that whole thing and like every time I've been to Lou, I remember myself and we were like, that's where one of you was filmed and I'm like, okay, fine, whatever. St Pancras. Britpop band. Oh, I'll also say Pulp. New Labour politician. My least, one of my least favourites, David Pocke. All right. And what was the final question, Spice Girls song? I can't think of any other, but two become one. It was about save sex. It was like a public service announcement. It's really weird to have pop songs for kids about cotton domes. That's weird. Teach them young. Yeah, well, I don't know, maybe. Nice. Put it on, put it on. Put it on, put it on. It's good. He was in on it. Oh my god. We're very into save sex in Navarra. Okay, wait. Ricky. New Labour. Oh dear. That's a bad segue. So, Zeke. New Labour politician. I think it's got to be Mo Mo then. She was genuinely a hero and I think that people respect her so much, both for what she did in Northern Ireland and for the kind of person that she was. I think she was an inspiration to many, many people in the Labour Party. And, you know, she stood up along with their short, she stood up to Tony Blair in a way that basically no one else in the cabinet except for Gordon Brown did. And he did it in a different way. Spice custom. Well, I've already said stop right now, but maybe we could go with, since it is so Blade Runner inflected, Spice Up Your Life. It's basically a Blade Runner video. I mean, it's a rubbish song actually, but the video is good. And wait, what was the other one? Brick Pop Band. Well, I would definitely have gone with Pop, but I would also say that Swade's first album is... I hate Swade. Oh, they are quite potential. We don't have time for disagreement. Pulp Win. Swade Come Second. I think all the new Labour politicians got equal. This was the fix. We'll see you next week. We'll have all the news, all the analysis. All the babes. All the babes. More Ulysses. Lots more Ulysses. Thank you so much for joining me, everyone. Thank you. Do have a look at Ricky's book. It is my favourite introduction to 1997. And read Ulysses. And read Ulysses. All right, we're going. This was the fix. See you next week. Goodbye. Bye for a quid.