Two weeks before Josh Simons stood down as the Makerfield MP for his benefit, Andy Burnham was at Salts Mill in Shipley celebrating the life and work of the poet Tony Harrison. It was a small gathering, with actors, directors, writers and family members paying homage. Burnham wasn’t the only politician to speak; Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, is another fan (in 2020 he put down an early day motion in parliament that recognised how Harrison had “always written, and spoken, for the people”). But Burnham’s was the most incisive illustration of how literature in general and poetry in particular can change lives.
Burnham was introduced to Harrison’s poetry as a sixth-former. An English teacher at his school put him on to V, Harrison’s long poem, set in a Leeds graveyard, which became infamous after Richard Eyre dramatised it for Channel 4. The Conservative MP Gerald Howarth attempted to get the broadcast (and broadside) banned for its use of four-letter words, which the Daily Mail described as a “torrent of filth”. V recounts the poet’s confrontation with a skinhead who has sprayed graffiti on headstones, a young man with whom he turns out to have quite a lot in common.
