Burnham’s Literary Roots
Two weeks before Josh Simons stood down as the Makerfield MP, Andy Burnham attended a memorial for poet Tony Harrison at Salts Mill in Shipley. The event, a small gathering of actors, directors, writers, and family, celebrated Harrison’s life and work. Burnham was not the only politician present; Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, also spoke, noting in 2020 how Harrison had “always written, and spoken, for the people.” However, Burnham’s address was the most incisive, illustrating how literature, especially poetry, can transform lives.
Burnham first encountered Harrison’s poetry as a sixth-former. His English teacher introduced him to V, a long poem set in a Leeds graveyard that became infamous after Richard Eyre dramatized it for Channel 4. Conservative MP Gerald Howarth attempted to ban the broadcast for its use of four-letter words, which the Daily Mail called a “torrent of filth.” The poem recounts the poet’s confrontation with a skinhead spraying graffiti on headstones, revealing unexpected common ground between them.
Poetry as a Political Tool
For the teenage Burnham, V proved that a working-class background, shared with Harrison, need not silence or disadvantage anyone. The poem’s epigraph from Arthur Scargill reads: “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 doubted the value of studying English at university. The quote persuaded him, and Burnham went on to study at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
Politicians with English literature degrees are rare; only 4% of MPs elected in 2019 had such a background. Steve Witherden, a Labour MP in Wales, learned to read at age 11, making his English degree at Lampeter especially meaningful. Others argue that an English degree fosters broad-mindedness and empathy. Burnham is more direct: knowledge of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Orwell, and Harrison has served him well on doorsteps. In 2015, he even mused about writing poetry himself “when politics has run its course for me.”
The Humanities in Decline
If Burnham produces literary work beyond political manifestos, 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 (Nobel laureate in literature, 1953), Alan Johnson, Rory Stewart, and even the fiction of Jeffrey Archer, Edwina Currie, and Ann Widdecombe. More importantly, Burnham’s career shows that a humanities degree is not a disqualification. Yet the number of students studying English, history, or languages at university has declined catastrophically, with many institutions cutting staff and closing courses. But does one need science, maths, or PPE to become prime minister? Perhaps not.
Uniting a Divided Nation
Andy Burnham will be judged not on his ability to quote poems or write his own, but on his actions for the UK over the next two years and beyond. However, he should keep Harrison’s V firmly in mind. When the bereaved poet clears “the weeds and rubbish thrown on the family plot by football fans,” he finds “UNITED” graffitied on his parents’ headstone. The skinhead, a Leeds United supporter, did not intend a message about ending division, but Harrison takes heart: he knows “what the UNITED that the skin sprayed has to mean” and imagines 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 then, he admitted the prospects for ending them were slim. But that is Burnham’s task: to unite this horribly divided country. With what he has learned from poetry, he may have a chance.
