Conversations with Joe

I have an hour long conversation with Joe, one of Swinging the Lead shanty band. It’s wonderful and rich and challenging. We agree on a lot politically, and he’s an amazing font of knowledge – he follows up our chat with lots of email links and connections which is so generous. I’ve fallen a bit behind with writing up what I’m doing and I’m struggling to keep pace. I thought about condensing the writing but I find the process of writing and reflecting helps me to rediscover things and make connections between all the conversations I’m having. (so yup, that means more long blog posts!)

We begin our chat talking about shanties and folk music – my mum has always sung a lot of folk music, she used to go to folk clubs as a young woman and in the last few years has enjoyed going back. Gravesend used to have a folk club in the Kent and Essex pub, it burned down under mysterious circumstances and the club never got restarted. Joe notices that a number of Gravesend pubs met a similar mysterious fate.

Joe’s recommendations of who I should speak to include

• Lester, the publican at the Three Daws
• Christoph Bull, a local historian
• Port of London Authority
• The Tug Company
• The RNLI
• House of Mercy, that support people experiencing homelessness

I feel really anxious as I can’t do everything but I feel like this place is only just unfolding and I want to discover more, and I feel time slipping away.

Joe loves that Gravesend is a borderland, a place of deep sea and tides. He notices that there is a dark side to the place. Gravesend has always been a place of varied social classes, from spectacular architecture with real elegance to the tougher places to live. Joe references the Italian community that I caught a glimpse of with the walk that went past Tivoli gardens. He also talks about his huge respect for the Sikh community and all that they do for the wider community.

Joe would love to create a Franklin Festival in Gravesend. He’d like to collaborate with Trinity Laban, Northfleet Brass, Gravesham Choral Society and others to fill the town with music and art. Gigs in pubs, St Andrews, LV21, the Woodville. Joe hopes this would bring more visitors to the town, people who might then make overnight stays and help reinvigorate the hospitality sector. He’s also passionate about community and human relationships – and how creativity and culture can bring us together. He thinks that experience based visits are the way to rebuild a flourishing Gravesend. This was dream before Covid but now it feels even more needed. 

We talk about the devastating impact of the pandemic on music and performing arts – of not being able to travel and perform. How Brexit has meant that the added visa complications for performers will further diminish people’s ability to make a living – many musicians and theatre performers relied on work in Europe to sustain their livelihood. How it may also reduce the artists who come to the UK, put off by the added bureaucracy and associated costs. How this in turn will impact music venues ability to keep going. We try to stay hopeful but both know first hand how precarious trying to make an income from the arts is, especially now. 

Joe was drawn to folk music as the music of protest, his politics developed at university where he joined a student Library action group. At the same time he was volunteering at a Simon Community – where people experiencing homelessness and volunteers work together. For Joe, folk music is about the life that ordinary, working people lead. 

Joe is an economic historian and we have a fascinating conversation about how money is a confidence trick – one that has fooled a lot of people. He shares with a me a recent Freedom of Information request about who the UK repays debt too, and the shocking reality that we don’t know. That UK debt repayments, taxpayers money, goes through complex nominee accounts and, as such, could very easily be deeply corrupt. I’m fascinated and not surprised.  I wonder if this will be exposed and who will take notice, and will it make any difference? I share with Joe the brilliant work of artists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn who took on debt culture with their project, Bank Job

Joe signposts the book, The Sovereign Individual, as something to read to contextualise the current governments approach to policy – it sounds like it might make grim reading. I’m not sure I can face it. We talk about how low wages and job insecurity make community actions and organising difficult – people are exhausted and beaten down and time poor.

We chat about our backgrounds – realising we are both culturally Methodist. From families with a strong Methodist tradition though never practicing ourselves. Joe says that now he feels closer to Quakers with their commitment to equality and peace.

I ask what Joe is hopeful about. He is so pleased that his grandkids health has not been affected by Covid. This is tempered with a concern that new variants may start to affect children. He’s hopeful that people will see the structural failings of our current government – of how they have failed to deliver our basic safety and wellbeing.  He’s also worried about the real threat to our culture posed by the policies and actions of the current leadership – on many levels.

I don’t quite remember how but we segue into talking about a memorial for the Battle of Atlantic. Joe has been an active member of a group campaigning to have all lives lost in this long running campaign remembered – the merchant navy and the men who served on U Boats. It’s a radical but deeply compassionate and humane idea. It’s also political because it’s about commemorating the everyday man from all nations, and not the officer class – for whom there are many memorials.  Joe’s connection to this cause comes partly through his father, who served in the Navy. The plans for the memorial have been scaled back and back to become a trail and some projected names on a building. So Joe has written to the Number 10 to request that this be reconsidered and he’s written to Queen to ask her, in her weekly meeting with the current Prime Minister, to raise the issue. Prince Philip served on the same ship as Joe’s father, and he hopes that as someone from the generation who sacrificed so much she will take action. I find Joe’s approach to life so inspiring – he finds something that sparks his deep curiosity and usually appeals to his strong sense of fairness – and then gets into action. 

We finish the chat and I pick up the Swing the Lead album and look at Joe’s picture. I’d love to hang out more with Joe, ideally over a pint or so in The Three Daws. I feel I could learn a lot about living well from him. He lives his values, and was happy to talk politics and economics and history and music with a total stranger. It’s a curiosity and generosity of spirit that I’ve been lucky enough to keep encountering on this residency.  I really hope that Gravesend gets the Franklin Festival one day – and the town is filled with music and art. I hope that the festival could also include discussions and talks about politics, justice and economics, something like the Byline festival programme (and it just so happens that I know someone in Gravesend who works on Byline so I must connect them!)