How has resistance shaped Britain? With Steve McQueen (Part One)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm head of programming, Connor Boyle. I'm

I'm joined by producer Mia Sorrenti to discuss what we've got coming up on today's episode. Mia, what can listeners expect today? So today we have a really exciting episode, which is a live recording from our recent event with acclaimed filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen.

Now, many people will know of Steve McQueen. He needs very little introduction. He's an Academy Award winner for Best Picture. He's won two BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe, also the Turner Prize, and of course an Oscar for his incredible film, 12 Years a Slave.

He's also known for other amazing works such as the BBC anthology Small Axe and his most recent film Blitz. So he joined us on stage at Union Chapel recently to discuss his new photo book Resistance.

He was in conversation with the journalist and author Gary Young to discuss the book, which is essentially a really amazing collection of essays and black and white photographs depicting a century of protest and power in 20th century Britain.

It's accompanied by a major exhibition of the same name at Turner Contemporary, and it's really a landmark work. So it was a real privilege to have Steve on stage speaking about it. Wow. And this was a live event. So give us a picture. Where did it take place? What was the atmosphere like there on the evening? Yeah, it was really incredible. This event was hosted at Union Chapel in Islington. So a really beautiful church for any who know it.

and it was really just packed full of very enthusiastic people all wanting to see these incredible photos and learn about the importance of resistance and protest in a time where

Lots of those rights are being challenged around the world, the right to protest, the right to free speech. It feels like this collection was kind of more timely than ever and a really important moment to reflect on history, reflect what so many people have sacrificed things for, in some cases, even their lives and the significance of that for today's political moment. And again, another very important moment in social history that I'm sure people will be looking back

on in the future. So yes, it was great to host this conversation with Gary and Steve. Absolutely. Well, without further ado, then let's get into today's episode. Let's join Sir Steve McQueen and Gary Young now.

Thank you, and thank you so much for coming. In 1999, I'm that old, at an awards ceremony for which my first book had been shortlisted, a woman approached me and congratulated me on winning the Turner Prize. I was tempted to thank her and say, look, I can't stop, but I'm playing Centre Forward for Arsenal in about 20 minutes. LAUGHTER

And then I have to read the news at 10. But she had obviously mistaken me for Steve McQueen, who won the Turner Prize early that year. Now, bearing in mind that my mum, who was a teacher where I grew up in Stevenage, had been mistaken more than once for a cleaner and others who...

like myself, are assumed to be drug dealers or muggers or whatever you would like, I consider this a strange kind of progress and promotion that I might be confused with someone who had such stellar achievements. And the degree to which that is progress, however, the fact that I might be at an award ceremony where my book is up for an award and I might be mistaken for having won a Turner Prize

That doesn't come from nowhere. Steve McQueen and I are more or less the same age. And I think... - I'm younger. - You are younger. You are younger. You are younger almost by minutes. I mean, seriously. - A year. - And yet. And yet. Yes, these are the minutes that matter. I think both of us would agree that for all of the hard work that we might have put in to getting to this stage, we didn't get here on our own.

Between us, I don't know everything about Steve's upbringing, but between us, we're the product of a series of struggles for council housing, free school meals, student grants, the NHS, and against racism for workers' rights, to name but a few, without which no amount of hard work would have been enough. And I swear that nobody looked at us

when we were three or four, Steve obviously being slightly younger than me, in the mid-70s as we started school and thought there goes a future Oscar winner, goes a columnist, a filmmaker, someone who's going to make exhibitions. But there were people out there while we were at that tender age who were fighting for a world that they couldn't see but demanded. And it's in no small part thanks to them

that we are here, literally on this stage and at this stage. And in a sense, that is the theme of tonight. Resistance. The power to change things for the better in a moment where we are crying out for change. In his exhibition, which is...

in Margate at the tenor and I recommend it to you all. It's the thing I think after Chads and Dave that is making Margate one of the more famous places in the country. And the book of photographs, it showcases a century of resistance. They are signed and if there are any still, they are here tonight and available if there are still some available. I know they have been being sold and

What Steve McQueen offers in the exhibition and in the book is a powerful illustration of where change has come from over a century from 1903 to 2003. Portrayals of activists, many of whom we can't name, but who'd made change possible. We are going to talk until about eight and then there will be a chance for questions. I'm not going to bore

you all flatter him with a list of his achievements because if you didn't know how accomplished he is or how impactful his work has been or how original his artistic vision remains, you wouldn't be here. So it just leaves me to introduce the globally renowned, award-winning and incredibly young artist, filmmaker and creative mind behind Resistance, Steve McQueen.

Ah, not even 40 yet. Steve, you whippersnapper. So this book, A Hundred Years of Resistance in Photographs, I've got to start by asking when and where, how did you get the idea? Where did it come from? Well, the idea started with the book Leopold's Ghosts. And it was the idea that images...

basically brought attention to the catastrophe that was going on in Congo, where people's hands were being chopped off for not bringing enough rubber. And the fact that these missionaries, in 1904, 1908, were taking these photographs. I think a woman called Alice Harris took these photographs, and they became this sort of global scandal through photographs. And again, these were the first portable Kodak cameras

that the holiday of mobility could sort of some kind of attention on something and it'd be this global sort of news and that people asked, demanded for change through photography and these missionaries. So at first I just got obsessed with Kodak and obsessed with film and obsessed with gelatine and Kodak had this ranch of cows

for farming, but also to crush bones. Crush bones and gelatine and images. I was like, "Wow." So I got really down the rabbit hole with that. And Kodak and gelatine and film and all kinds of stuff like that. Then, you know, as you do. And then the whole idea of year three came about. Again, what happens with me often is I plant ideas as seeds.

Certain things flourish, other things wither and die, but other things give to other things. So that was in my back pocket. And then I had this conversation with Carrie Wallace, you know, co-creator of the show.

And I met Clary in 1995, when I was six. Anyway, I had a rattle. Moving on. So we met at a very important time in both our lives. Clary was on the Royal College curatorial course, which was like the first of its kind. I think there was one in the UK and one in the Netherlands.

These were the two curatorial, how can I say, curators courses. And I just came back from NYU. I had a horrible time at NYU. I left Goldsmiths and it was great and I went to NYU because I wanted to be a filmmaker. I wanted to go to the Femmise but I couldn't because I couldn't speak French. I thought I wanted to go to NYU because that's where Spike Lee, Jim Jemish and Scorsese went to. Hated it.

hated it because they didn't even know who Matisse was. It was a very strange time being in film school then because it was about an industry rather than about an art. And I had been in Goldsmiths where you could experiment. You could throw a camera in the air and find out what it was. Anyway, cut a long story short. I met Clary in 1995. And fast forward 2018 or something, we started talking in 2017.

about an idea I had about photographing every single year three school in London. And it sounds nuts, sounds a bit, you know, of a stretch, but we did it. And Clary was amazing in that with this show called Year Three, where we attempted, and we got over 71% of the schools in London. And for me, it was...

a pivotal age in a child's life where you are just shifting over and understanding race, class, gender and everything else. You're sort of finding out about where you are within the environment and judgment is being made for the first time. So it was just that time I thought this could be interesting to just take these photographs and again so many things came about.

during that time. We could get into this another conversation completely. But anyway, during that time, I started talking to Clary about the whole idea of starting with the Congo and I said, I think of this idea of protest and photography and how photography changed protest and how protest changed photography. I thought it could be kind of amazing sort of idea and then we started to talk

And Clary said, "Okay, it could be interesting if we could put it as 100 years." Because I wanted to start in 1904 with the whole idea of that time. But again, we got to a point where we said, "Okay, 100 years of actual photography." Because then we get the phones out and whatnot. Everyone's a photographer now. But what was key to me was how people related to these images and basically reacted to those images.

with thought, mind and action and how it helped. And again, another thing was in my mind, of course, was obviously the Vietnam photographs and so forth. So a lot of things which was helping me and guiding me, but I wanted to bracket down on the UK. Just because of my own history, I was doing small acts at the same time and I think that helped as well. That was another, again, seeds that feed things. So small acts in year three, things were feeding each other and this came about. So many things were going on at that particular time for me.

that I needed to see and also I needed to actually physically work through, through scholarship, through research and through actually meeting the people who took the photographs and whatnot. I'm going to come back to some of that in a minute but I want to stick with small acts for a moment because of one of the programs which was education, which looks at the Saturday morning school

movement in Britain and a boy's experience of being categorized as educationally subnormal and you're working from Bernard Coward's work and so on and that in the introduction to the book you talk about the first act of resistance being at a Saturday morning school and not even really knowing it was an act of resistance. I hated it. I really hated it. Me and my sister, oh my god.

we used to get dragged over there. I was missing my football focus, missing hanging out with my friends as I said. Anyway, we got picked up by this guy called Steve. Steve was a sort of neighboured friend and yeah, you know, he sort of picks us up and he's Red Vovo. And Steve, you know, these kids in there and we get there and Mr Carter. Listen, it was one of those things where my mum

friend told her about and that we needed to do this for our children. So it was one of those things where it was necessary. At the time I hated it, but I got so much from it because there were so many like-minded people and people were doing something about a situation. And that's why I met this art teacher that sort of changed my life as well, even though I was dragged out every five minutes.

But it was one of those things, it was my first encounter with resistance and organization. It was pretty amazing actually. When I think, again, at the time as a child, you know, it's like going to church, it's horrible. But, you know, not, well, that's not a comparison. That's not a comparison. Back, fuck, choose language. Moving on swiftly. But no, it was one of those things where, in retrospect, I really appreciate it.

Because my mum used to teach a Saturday morning show, and I had a similar experience of like, must we, really? There are cartoons to watch. But this, I just want to sit with this idea of the resistance that you don't know is happening, but that is going on all around you all the time, and that sometimes it's only in retrospect that you even understand it as an act of resistance.

resistance at all. If we could pull up the picture of the people dancing in the run up to Notting Hill, it's quite a good example that 1958 there are, some people call them race riots, but they're closer to pogroms really. White teddy boys chasing, fighting black people in Notting Hill and the response

is a cultural response. It comes from primarily Claudia Jones that we're going to have carnival and the first carnival is in St Pancras Town Hall and then it moves to Notting Hill. And there's this, among all the pictures of the demonstrations and the lie-ins and the die-ins and the kiss-ins, this picture struck me because it's full of joy and in the moment

I don't know that they would have understood that they were doing as an act of resistance and yet here it is. No, exactly. And I think the first response was from South London where the Jamaicans would come up to Notting Hill and fight. Let's not play. My mum said, you know, the Jamaicans will come and patrol the streets because, you know, these meek little island people, the Jamaicans will come and sort of say, no, we need help. And they would come up and help, first of all, first and foremost.

People were being chased all over and then of course, Chloe Jones with the carnival. But I remember so much of, again, you have a... Again, it was all about organisations like the blues parties. Blues parties, I mean, me and my sister were going to these parties with my mum and dad that were organised because people, we didn't have clubs then.

So you'd wake up, the children would be taken to these parties and you'd wake up with a pile of coats, you'd find yourself buried in a pile of coats. And there'd be a party that someone would organise, you'd pay to get into, and there'd be drinks. So again, yes, it was an act of resistance, and fast forward to the 80s.

where we depicted this Blues party in small acts was very much an act of defiance. And you get things like 'Lukusade' and sort of, you know, 'Ribena' being sold, then you get fast-forward like 30 years later at raves, the same drinks that be sugar. So there's so much to be taken from that as an act of resistance. And again, being on my father's shoulders in 1976, when the riots happened.

You know, there's so many things which I didn't know about, I was unaware of, but in some ways as a child you get introduced to racism at a very early age. Or unfairness at first, then you realise it's because of who and what you look like.

In that, in your introduction, and this line reminded me of a Maya Angelou quote where she quotes an African proverb which is, "Be careful when a naked man offers you his shirt." It's just because you can't give something that you don't have. And she's talking about self-love. And in your introduction you say, "My own resistance started with me loving myself. I had to start by seeing myself as brilliant because no one else did.

and to have my ability match my ambitions. And I guess I'm interested in those acts of resistance, those acts of, before we get on to the stuff that is captured by camera, the stuff that can't be captured by camera, because there is a moment at which the photographer can step in, but there is a process of kind of almost self-realization before then, isn't there?

I had to do that for me because I was badly dyslexic and I had a lazy eye. So I was the person at school, if you remember that person with the patch of his eye with the glasses. So I couldn't see anything. So my good eye was covered with the patch because that's what happens if you have a lazy eye. I had an operation to correct my vision. So my eye got that operation. I think I was about six or seven. And if I had found it earlier, I could have corrected it. So my good eye was covered.

I had to be sitting at the front of the class. I couldn't see anything. I was like, you know, I couldn't see anything and I was dyslexic. So, you know, again, and I was this sort of, you know, this black guy in the classroom. So, you know, I was the person least likely to do anything, but I could draw. My salvation was that I could draw.

And that's what I love to do and through drawing, that's how I got in love with things like history and English and so forth and whatnot. But at that time, you know, I was, it's only recently I realized that certain people, again, they were kind of like school reunions, like 20 years ago and people would laugh. And I was like, oh, they used to talk about me behind my back. Oh, they used to laugh at me.

Oh, so you get me. So in that situation, I had to, in some ways, believe in who I was and what my ability... I had to love myself because you could easily hate yourself in that situation. Again, or doubt yourself. You know, enough has been a black male child in the school system, enough being dyslexic and having a lazy eye and not seeing the bloody blackboard. So I had to sort of imagine in myself what I could do, and that's what I had to do.

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I want to go back to your conversations with Clary around 2018. You have this... You have this... 2017, 18, sorry. Your show was in 2019, sorry. You have this notion which kind of ends up crystallizing and creating this exhibition. But by the time the exhibition lands...

we're in quite a different place. We have people being picked up on the street in America. We have Gaza, starvation, genocide. We have Britain, kind of pensioners being frozen, children being pauperized. It lands in a very different moment where I'm wondering what your ambitions are for it in this moment.

Particularly given what you said about the Congo and the power of those. I just think a reminder, because the 80s, when I was a child, the 80s, I mean, again, I was, in some ways, I suppose I was immune to it a little bit. I knew a lot about it because my mother, any time Margaret Thatcher was on TV, it turned off. Every time on the radio, it'd be turned off. There was a powerful...

force going on within the 80s and it was rough. It was rough. I never forget walking to school the day after the Brixton riots and everybody looking at me going to school. I had to go on the main road. Everybody, I lived in Ealing, so you can imagine. Trouble. It was the energy, the minor strike, the energy.

It was, it wasn't, it was, it was fierce. But what I loved about that time, let's talk about love, was the get up and go attitude. Of course, in the beginning, you're knocked out, you're winded, you're sort of, you know, you have to, you have a standing count. But what people did, and look, a lot of people sacrificed themselves during that time. And a lot of people lost during that time, but

At the same time, because of that, they were the bridge for us to cross. And I feel that we're in a similar situation right now where we're being plummeted. We're sort of, you know, we're being plummeted. We're sort of, we're winded. We're sort of, you know, we're getting the hell knocked out of us. But, you know, I'm just waiting for that seventh round. I'm waiting for that when that person gets, you know...

when that person is punched out and then we can use our jab. But right now, we just have to stand up, take the blows. And it's painful, but we have to take the blows and just stay away from being knocked out and keep on our feet because we will have a chance soon. But also just to believe that

in who and what we are and not capitulate. Because I think a lot of times people tell, well, you know, just to roll over. And that is not the way to go. I think that's what, that's a lot of times, especially in the States right now, people aren't really talking about politics in the way that I feel that is needed now. But hopefully at some point, people will rally. So I just feel that this time and with these photographs, it's like the 80s right now. And I'm hoping that that,

kids who hadn't or younger people people not even younger people people who didn't experience it could look at these images and realize that hey um there's a way out yeah i mean one of the things that i really got from from the book and from the exhibition was the

First of all, a large number of demonstrations and protests, I didn't know it existed. The March of the Blind in 1920, the demonstrations against the kind of fancy feathers that women would put in their hats that was kind of making some very precious birds extinct. There were a range, the women in Hull. Fantastic, yeah, fantastic. There were a range of protests that I didn't know existed.

about but also this notion that yes the things that we have we have because someone fought for them which was kind of the point I was trying to make at the beginning the things that we take for granted the weekend which some people don't have because they're casualised workers or whatever and so these things that we have have been fought for

And they can also be taken away. And that seeing that play out over a century kind of gave me some bearings about where we might be in this moment, which I feel is partly the intention. Absolutely. But again, the power of photography, the power of images, the power... Again, we're in a different time now where I don't know if, again, we're in a social media sort of era now,

and how that works, how that will play out and not just sort of, you know, shoe leather, not just sort of the whole idea of marching. How did that... Again, with this photography, again, it was the newspaper, it was the television, it was these sort of things in people's homes. So now we're in a different situation, you know, social media and how that will work. But it's just, I suppose, for me, what was so powerful was the unfiltered...

of seeing something and reacting to it in a positive way. And those images being sort of affirmative. You know, people in mass is affirmative. 80,000 visitors to date in Margate. Last week alone, over 13,000. You sold a record number of copies of any book there. I'm wondering if...

how you account for its success so far? Again, I think it's people looking for, well, again, you want to see yourself. You want to be affirmed. And I feel that it's one of those things where you could take courage in that and to be brave. I think these people were extremely brave. And bravery, again, bravery is just a decision. Bravery is a decision. I'm going to go out, I'm going to do this.

And it's amazing what can happen, you know, going out that door and doing something rather than just staying in and watching TV. You've got to be active. And also sometimes you jump with two feet down and look down. I mean, yeah, it's a bit scary, but guess what? We don't know what you're going to find. I filmed these images, these people. Who knew? I mean, the March for the Blind. I mean, who knew? I mean, again, I always think of Paul Robeson coming out of the theatre.

I can't remember what he was doing, and then hearing these miners, the Welsh miners who were singing outside of the theatre, and then him not understanding who these people were, and they had marched all the way from Wales, and him saying, "I'm going to go down there and join you," and he did. It was just these kind of decisions.

Help shape the world. It's just a fact. It's just a fact. Help shape the world. I never forget when I was doing 12 Years a Slave. It was right on my kitchen bloody table. And I found that book, you know, 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. And I thought, okay, this is crazy. We wrote it on the kitchen table, made the film. The conversation of slavery totally changed. It totally changed.

Not because I'm some whatever, because I just made the decision, well, this is what I want to do. So anyone here in this room is a decision that you can make that could change, have, you know, vibrations, you know, a shout, a scream will be heard, you know, a stomp will be heard. And I just feel that we as individuals can make such an amazing difference if we just not even be brave, just make the decision to switch on.

I'm minded of an interview I did with John Carlos, who was one of the Olympic sprinters who raised his fist in '68. Which, once again, is an incredibly powerful image which endures. And I asked him how he felt in that moment, and he said, "In life, there's the beginning and the end. The beginning don't matter and the end don't matter. All that matters is what you do in between."

whether you're prepared to do what it takes to make change. There has to be physical and material sacrifice. When all the dust settles and we're getting ready to play down for the ninth inning, the greatest reward is to know that you did your job when you were here on the planet. Which I feel is what, now's the time, now's the time for, maybe it's always the time. - Yeah, I think it's always the time, but I think more than any time, it's sort of because people are afraid, don't get me wrong,

People are afraid and people are afraid to stick their noses out and whatnot. People, I understand that fear. I get it. But we've got to die anyway. Let's go out with two guns fucking blazing. I mean, when you realize that you're going to die, what have you got to lose? Nothing. Take a few with you.

And again, when I did Hunger, I thought it's gonna be the first film I ever made and it's gonna be the last one I ever made. I said, "Okay, let's go. Let's get those guns and start spraying." And that was it. But guess what? They didn't want me to make another one. I said, "Okay." So risk sometimes is rewarded.

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