If you’re asking ‘What real poor person could be at Glastonbury?’ you’ve never been poor Watching a Jeremy Corbyn talk about arts and austerity and quote Shelley from the stage at this weekend’s Glastonbury festival […]

Watching a Jeremy Corbyn talk about arts and austerity and quote Shelley from the stage at this weekend’s Glastonbury festival brought forth lions from slumber, and not just the ones he intended. Roaring above the sound of the crowd was that most British of big cats – that of class and judgement of the poor.

Rise, like lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number!

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you:

Ye are many—they are few!

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, speaking at Glastonbury festival

Commentators were quick to call out Corbyn for daring to speak about austerity and opportunity at the arts music festival with a ticket price. What real poor person could possibly be standing in the sea of flags and smoke and dust?

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As one commentator had it on Twitter: “This would be the political force quoting Shelley to people who paid £243 per ticket for the privilege. Irony is dead.” Only those with disposable income and privilege could possibly be at a major cultural event. Only those with sufficient income could even be partaking in arts and culture and the messy, vitality-giving process of actually enjoying life.

When you are poor you want to wring enjoyment out of life

I grew up in the west end of Newcastle before free museums and free galleries and before the internet. I have often in my life been ‘don’t know if I can make the rent’ poor. When you are poor you want to wring every single last drop of enjoyment out of life so that you know that you are still alive. I have never quite overcome the feeling of never having quite enough money, and certainly not enough money to quite overcome my guilt at indulging myself in culture, and art and other fripperies.

‘I made it to Glasonbury by pulling pints as a volunteer for the Workers Beer Company’

Growing up I had a perpetual hunger for more. I dreamed of going to gigs and music festivals and theatres and shows. Later I managed it. I made it to Glastonbury by working pulling pints as a volunteer for the Workers Beer Company. It would have been so easy to give up; to settle for a tiny world and a tiny life and living within my means while my insides went bitter. When you are poor you need dreams and transformations and transports more: a gig, a book, a show, Glastonbury.

Tiny pleasures become a stick for others to beat you with

Those who police the pleasures of the poor are always ready to stand in judgement, to use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs not as a demand for social change but a stick with which to beat you. ‘Why,’ they demand, ‘when you have so little, did you spend what you have on that tiny, useless thing or experience?’

‘It would have been so easy to settle for a tiny world and a tiny life’

You can wait until you have ‘enough’ money to take part in the world that has been passing you by but by then the party has ended; the flowers have wilted, you find the hunger that you swallowed down for decades has died away entirely. People will say you can’t eat books; films; plays; poems; sculptures; records and exhibitions. But if you don’t you starve in a different way.

Poor people are always accused of wasting money

Remember: society has always been terrified by poor people’s sensuality and hedonism. Poor people are always accused of wasting the money and time they have not doing things constructive. You learn that to be poor is to settle for less; to feel your dreams as if they are silly child’s stories, embarrassing now you’ve seen the ‘reality’ of the world.

Culture makes your world bigger. Beauty makes your world bigger. A night out, a cream cake, a trip to the cinema, a something that is yours and yours alone. Having things you love now makes it easier to live in a world that tells you it doesn’t love you. They make the days differ from each other. They make you feel alive. Being poor is a struggle to feel alive, to feel part of the world and all of the things it has to offer.

‘If you don’t seek out culture you are only what they say you are: an animal that just eats and shits and wants a place to sleep’

When you are poor you feel you are continually trying to steal and get ownership of culture that you can’t quite afford, knowing that eventually you’ll have to go back to where you came from and to the struggles you face. You have to blag and graft and save and sneak into culture when you’re poor. It takes years to feel like you have any right. You can never quite afford it but you do it anyway because otherwise is a kind of death. You scrimp, you save you blow your money because if you don’t you are only what they say you are: an animal that just eats and shits and wants only a place to sleep.

Of course, any event like Glastonbury will be full of people who can afford it. But there’ll also be people who can’t but made it there anyway. It seems terrible that this has to be said but it does: working class people are allowed nice things. Working class people deserve nice things. Working class people buy nice things. If your first thought is ‘people can’t be poor if they can afford to do nice things’ then you have never, ever been poor.