It’s not up there with Peterloo, Jarrow or Orgreave, but the People’s March for Jobs in 1981 – when 300 men and women walked from Liverpool to London in protest against Margaret Thatcher’s government – was nonetheless a key moment in working-class history. Mike Carter should have been among the marchers. Though only 17 years old at the time, he’d already left school and experienced unemployment. More to the point, his dad Pete had asked him to come. And his dad – “one of the last of a breed of self-educated, working-class, chest-thumping orators” – was the march’s main organiser. There were good reasons for Carter’s absence and his life over the next three decades was too busy and peripatetic for regret. But after his father’s death, and the discovery among his possessions of a chipped commemorative mug from the march, he decided to make amends. In May 2016, he set out, alone, with a backpack, to walk the same route.
The timing was propitious, just a few weeks before the European referendum: as well as re-examining his relationship with his father he wanted to take the nation’s pulse. How much had changed in 35 years? And had the values his father fought for survived? This book – an engaging blend of walking and talking – is his record of the journey he made over four weeks and 330 miles.
With his Regency flat in Brighton and journalistic career in London, he wasn’t prepared for what he saw: the food banks, payday loan shops, bookies, pawnbrokers and sleeping bags in doorways. He wasn’t prepared for the soreness of his feet, either; in solidarity with the original marchers, he had done no training. But there were half-days and rest days, and plenty of people to talk to – a few by prior arrangement – along the way.
One of the first of them was Kim. At the time of the march, she’d been an unemployed single parent. The organisers initially blocked her from taking part, saying it would be too hard on her three-year-old. She argued back: they were marching for a better future, and wasn’t a child a symbol of the future? A week later, she joined in, wheeling her offspring ahead of her. Within a few days, embraced as a poster girl, she was given a brand-new pram.
Most of those Carter meets have fond memories of the march: of the spirit of togetherness it engendered, the warm reception it received in the north and Midlands (less so south of Rugby), and the end-of-march party in Brockwell Park, south London, where the lineup of musicians included Pete Townshend and George Melly. One group, a punk band from Birmingham called the Quads, marched the whole route. Their song “Gotta Get a Job” caught the mood of the time before they slid from view. When Carter speaks on the phone to their lead singer, Josh Jones, he discovers he’s now a priest in New Zealand.
The book includes a lot of conversations, not just those Carter has with others but those he has with himself, and us, as he analyses what he is seeing and expounds his ideas. As for the walking, he is increasingly keen on what he calls “desire paths” – shortcuts or long ways round, so as to avoid official paths or roads with heavy traffic. Desire paths are about people going where they please, regardless of others – as his father had done, when he walked out to start a new life, with a new family (affluent and middle-class), four years before the march.
That’s why Mike didn’t join it. He couldn’t forgive Pete, even less so when his mum died of cancer soon afterwards, as if killed by grief. Over the years, there were attempts at reconciliation. But his dad always pushed him away. By the end Pete was living alone, on a canal barge, an alcoholic, suffering from lung cancer and virtually destitute, but still bull-headed, so much so that Carter lost it with him, reeling off the grievances he’d long held back. “But Mick,” Pete said, “It was all about the struggle. I sacrificed everything for the struggle.” “Look around you,” Carter screamed back, “It’s all fucked. All that struggle. Your life’s work. For what? Was it worth it?”
That was the last exchange they had and it weighs heavily on Carter’s mind as he walks. Guilt, hatred, the need to prove himself and a recognition of common ground (like father, like son) – they’re all in the mix. Rather than berate his dad for wasting his life, he’s angry on his behalf at what England has become. Almost everyone he talks to is a Brexiter, even young people, immigrants and those from cities that have benefited from EU funding. They should be blaming Westminster, not Brussels, but he understands their demoralisation. Flats and houses are being snapped up by buy-to-rent landlords, pricing out the locals. Public spaces are being privatised and state assets sold off. Local authorities are having their budgets slashed, leaving charities and churches to fill the gaps. Above all, now that little is being manufactured, the sense of community that once nourished cities such as Stoke-on-Trent has been lost.
It’s a depressing picture, backed up by extensive reading and research. But the rhythm of walking is therapeutic and Carter is cheered when people call him “love” or “duck” or “bab”. At the end, when he enters Trafalgar Square and removes his shoes and socks, there’s no triumphalism. But he is tentatively hopeful that the blight of neoliberalism will pass. No less important, he has made a fragile peace with his dad.
• All Together Now? is published by Guardian Faber (RRP £14.99). To order a copy for £9.99 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.
