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PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORK MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2020 PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL WORK MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2020 17 18 Professional Social Work • October 2016 feature

the authorities] ‘there’s owt wrong with him’. by charities. He sees the Children and Social reason films like that are not being made now Those attitudes were there in the 70s but they Work Bill in England – which puts regulation of is because of managerialism, a disease that were subsequently encouraged to come to social work under direct government control afflicts the BBC. It stifles our universities and the fore so we don’t have to care for our and allows for a relaxation of statutory schools and may even affect people in the STILL fellow man and woman.” legislation – as part of the process. social work profession. Today, some 40 years on, it’s a theme “It is a step on the way. It’s the same with “It is the rise of management consultants remarkably similar to that explored in Loach’s the NHS. They keep cutting funding to make it who are enriching themselves at our expense; latest Palme D’Or winning film I, Daniel Blake, more difficult to work within it so in the end of Thatcher’s idea of management’s right to about a carpenter at the mercy of the benefits the public will lose patience with the NHS manage. If you look at the BBC, there is no system after suffering a heart attack. because it doesn’t do the job. They are doing room within the intestines of the organisation Garnett blames the neoliberal project for that with institution after institution.” for creative people to express themselves ANGRY what has happened over the last four Garnett believes the rampant free market of without suffocating supervision. decades. From Margaret Thatcher onwards, America – a country he lived in during the 80s “So the kind of work I helped to make in the he believes there’s been a calculated and – has shaped political ideology in the UK. 60s and 70s wouldn’t be done now.” deliberate shift in ideology, aided and abetted “This country is becoming Amercianised He gives a telling insight into attitudes to by a right-wing press, so that today “ordinary and has been for at least a couple of social work in the broadcasting world (though people like my family and the people next generations. It is not just a love of American ’s new sitcom Damned about a door start to believe that if someone can’t go popular culture but its policies – everything children’s social work department is a sign to work because he has a bad back he’s a and every person is commodified. that things are changing). sponger”. “We deal with price not value. If you can’t “When I came back from the US in the 90s, Social work has also suffered from this shift put a price on it, it can’t be worth anything. I wanted to make a series on a sink estate in attitude, says Garnett. “In the 60s, Everything must be for a profit, everything is which had lost its big industries in the 70s. I sociology was the fashionable thing to read at individualism and competition, winners and needed people who would take me from university. People were a bit suspicious about losers, not society and collaboration.” house to house so we could get the stories it but the hip kids wanted to do it. and they would need to come from a social “I had friends whose ambition was to be a Jeremy Corbyn work department. social worker or a probation officer, the status “But I knew if I went to the BBC and said I With the approaching 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking of those jobs was that high. But at the same time he is wary of the wanted to do a series about social workers “But going alongside this shift toward “tendency towards utopianism on the left”. they would throw me out the door. They social drama Cathy Come Home in November, its producer individualism was the denigrating of the His preferred model is democratic socialism would say there is no audience for it. talks to Shahid Naqvi about politics, changing reputation of social workers. This doesn’t with a “balance between the individual and “So instead I said I wanted to do a cop social attitudes, social work – and ‘poverty porn’ happen by accident; it is a planned political society” and where people are bought up to show and we did a show called The Cops set assault on such professions so you end up “love each other and treat each other with in Bolton. I gave them the show they wanted with a social worker on a hiding to nothing. neighbourly decency”. but within that show was my show.” ony Garnett is reluctant to are a lot of jobs you could be doing which are retirement to work as executive producer on a “There are not enough resources and not Though a far off reality today, he believes Unsurprisingly, Garnett is depressed by the deliver a message to the easier and pay more. But at the end of the new television drama about police infilteration enough social workers. They have too big a there are signs that things are moving in the spate of so-called ‘poverty porn’ shows, such social work profession. He day would you be able to look at yourself in of activists in Britain. caseload. If they intervene with a family in right direction. as Benefits Street. doesn’t feel it’s his place. the mirror with the same self-respect? There Now aged 80, he is able to take the long difficulty they are criticised for being the state “Politics is a long game. I have a feeling He says: “They cut these programmes to But if pushed, it would be are a lot of people, including me, who believe view of society and how it’s changed. telling us how to live and if they don’t and that there is a shift going on. Why should a make it very dramatic and entertaining for the this: “Keep your self belief in you. You just hear from the people who “In my parents’ time through to the 1930s, it something goes wrong they are murderers. backbencher like [Jeremy] Corbyn, who is not public but it is an utter distortion of working Tand believe in each other. You know how don’t.” was a bit like in the US today, a sense that if “So instead of being a profession you a natural leader, be riding this wave and so people and people who haven’t got a job, of vulnerable you are, so don’t allow the political Garnett has long been a leading social you were poor it was your fault and you aspire to, now it must be a hell of a cross to many people be joining the Labour party? single mothers trying to look after their motivations of others to drag you down. commentator via the medium of film. Through should get on your bike,” he says. bear.” “People are generally feeling that things are children. “The people without voice value you. Those his collaboration with director , he “After the war, when I became politically Garnett believes the end goal of such unfair. People are starting to ask questions. I “It is all part of that philosophical attitude who have a voice should be treated with the pricked the public’s conscience with conscious, there was a feeling that there is undermining is privatisation of services and a think that was what Brexit was about. we have. But I don’t think they will be making contempt they deserve.” groundbreaking dramas such as Up the such a thing as society: I am my brother’s return to a 19th century concept of the “The problem with referendums is you ask many of those now. It is a glimmer but I am To those thinking of leaving because of the Junction in 1965, which dealt with back street keeper and we should love our neighbour and deserving and undeserving poor, administered one question and people answer other optimistic things are moving away from that.” current trials facing the profession, he adds: abortion, and Cathy Come Home in 1966, love ourselves. questions. Whether it was nostalgic Garnett does not like to predict the future – “What else would you rather be doing? There tackling , poverty and a mother “With the NHS, and the growth of social Tories from the Shires or the disaffected he once claimed mobile phones would never having her children taken into care. The latter, workers and the caring professions there was old Labour in the north and Midlands, catch on – but he does express a hope for a which he produced, is considered one of the a sense that we could help each other to live people wanted to say, ‘We don’t like society that is fairer and more peaceful. And There are a lot of people, best television dramas of all time and is happier lives.” what is going on here’.” those glimmers of hope he says he sees credited with the launch of homeless charity The end of the 70s, he notes, saw a turning So what about the power of television travelling around the country are enough to including me, who Crisis a year later. back of social attitudes, one he foretold in his to change things? Does he believe the make him believe that tomorrow will be better. Following a recent BBC interview ahead of 1978 television drama, The Spongers. BBC has a role to play in commissioning “The best thing I put in my memoir is that I believe in you. November’s 50th anniversary of Cathy Come “We had a scene in The Spongers where new social dramas holding the mirror up remain a 51/49 per cent optimist,” he says. You just hear from the Home, one viewer tweeted: “You helped one of the characters was talking about to society in the way Cathy Come Home change my life Tony. Young, poor, with a baby, someone with a bad back. They were told [by so effectively did in the 1960s? Cathy made me sob. Ten years later I became A scene from the 1966 groundbreaking Sadly, Garnett does not see much Tony Garnett’s memoir The Day the Music Died is people who don’t drama Cathy Come Home a social worker.” Garnett recently came out of Continued overleaf hope for this in the current climate. “The now available 18 19