{"id":6062,"date":"2017-11-09T23:14:43","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T23:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=6062"},"modified":"2025-12-26T23:34:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T23:34:00","slug":"poverty-safari-glasgow-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2017\/11\/poverty-safari-glasgow-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty Safari and the Glasgow Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THIS is an unflinching and courageous insight into Darren McGarvey\u2019s personal life and the social conditions which crushed him, until an epiphany led to a radical change in his outlook and approach.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up in Pollok, the south-west Glasgow housing estate where physical and verbal violence was the norm \u2013 and where debt was incurred by \u201cacting like we had more money than we did\u201d because the price of looking poor \u201cwas always far higher\u201d \u2013 is an experience, McGarvey says, that is very rarely represented, reported and discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His direct connection to this life means that he\u2019s been involved in numerous BBC documentaries but, when he tried to bring a class perspective to bear in them, it was made clear that being descriptive of the symptoms was fine but analysis or even being prescriptive is not what was required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need to tackle this outlook, so that working-class life is represented and acted upon, is one of the motives for, and lessons in, the book .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But remedial action cannot take the patriarchal form it did previously, where decision-makers , excluding the community, decided what is good for local people. An example is the failed tower blocks named A, B and C by the planners and ironically dubbed Alcatraz, Barlinnie and Carstairs by residents and locals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dividing the community<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Another example McGarvey provides later in the book is the \u201cregeneration\u201d of Pollok \u2013 a political proving ground for the author \u2013 where he learns that \u201cin the tension between the concerns of locals and the aspirations of the middle class, there would only ever be one winner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political participation, McGarvey says, was not about the community making its voice heard but corralling the herd to a pre-determined destination behind closed doors. Pollok Country Park \u2013 gifted to Glasgow to remain open-space woodland \u2013 has the M77 motorway running through it, dividing the community, and leading to the Silverburn shopping centre being built there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McGarvey\u2019s anger about poverty and class sees him heading up an angry mob whose object of ire was the artist Ellie Harrison<\/a> and her project The Glasgow Effect<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His impulse, angry and violent, lacked any comprehension of even the most basic facts of the matter. The title of the book comes from his dismissive, knee-jerk description of Ellie Harrison’s Creative Scotland-funded year living within the confines of Glasgow. It was, he said, a ‘poverty safari’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a technique refined in Scotland during the 2014 referendum campaign and deployed against predictable targets since, including McGarvey himself. He confesses that his urge for retribution was so strong that it blinded him to the fact he and the artist were fighting for the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I realised the depth of my error, it reframed my whole perception of class and, to some extent, of poverty,\u201d he writes. After meeting her, and revisiting his reactions with characteristic honesty, McGarvey saw that, “Ellie Harrison, in all her middle-class glory, was not an enemy but an ally in the war I’d been fighting all my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking the cycle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This epiphany, along with the realisation that he\u2019d wasted years of his life with his heavy drinking and a dissolute, self-centred lifestyle saw a change, a transformation that he thinks is \u201cthe most radical thing a person can do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking the cycle of his old ways by being a responsible parent is \u201cthe most practical way of transforming my community,\u201d a lesson that a lot of men \u2013 and it is mostly men \u2013 need to learn if communities like Pollok are to change on their own terms, not those set by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the author says: \u201cThose who shape the discussion about poverty often lack the necessary insight to accurately represent the issue,\u201d but McGarvey does this with great honesty, humour and perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClass, above all, remains the primary dividing line in our society. In truth, it\u2019s less a line and more an industrial-scale wound,\u201d he declares, and such comments make this a book that should be required reading for all those engaged in the fight against poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy it. Discuss it. Act on its insights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain\u2019s Underclass by Darren McGarvey (Luath Press, \u00a37.99)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a slightly expanded version of the review first published in the Morning Star<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n