Chris Bryant: Working Class Hero.

Rhondda MP Chris Bryant has made an early bid for hypocrite of the years

In his first interview in the  Guardian (Which seems to back Bryant in his hypocrisy)  Labour , new shadow culture minister Chris Bryant said one of his priorities if he became a minister would be to encourage diversity and fairer funding in the arts. In particular, he suggested that Labour would try to address a “cultural drought” afflicting areas outside London and the south-east because of lower funding, as well as encouraging the arts world to hire people from a variety of backgrounds.

Chris Bryant Working Class Boy,  As  If.

“I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for best actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk,” he said.
“Where are the Albert Finneys and the Glenda Jacksons? They came through a meritocratic system. But it wasn’t just that. It was also that the writers were writing stuff for them. So is the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, doing that kind of gritty drama, which reflects [the country] more? We can’t just have Downton programming ad infinitum and think that just because we’ve got some people in the servants’ hall, somehow or other we’ve done our duty by gritty drama.”

Of course Bryant is a Typical working Class success story


Born in Cardiff to a Scottish mother and a Welsh computer engineer father. Bryant grew up in Cardiff, (where his father worked for five years)[ and Cheltenham.] He was educated at Cheltenham College, an independent school (ie Fee paying about £10000 a year) for boys and Mansfield College at the University of Oxford. He graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in English. This was later promoted to a Master of Arts degree (MA (Oxon)), as per tradition.

Although initially a member of the Conservative Party, and an elected office-holder in the Oxford University Conservative Association, he joined the Labour Party in 1986 after leaving Oxford.


Maybe Bryant saw Blunt as a n easy target after all he's  regularly mocked as a Posh Boy.


Bur to his credit Blunt  (and I'm not a fan) came out fighting and wrote to Bryant

James Blunt A Little More Privileged than Bryant. 

Dear Chris Bryant MP,You classist gimp. I happened to go to a boarding school. No one helped me at boarding school to get into the music business. I bought my first guitar with money I saved from holiday jobs (sandwich packing!). I was taught the only four chords I know by a friend. No one at school had ANY knowledge or contacts in the music business, and I was expected to become a soldier or a lawyer or perhaps a stockbroker. So alien was it, that people laughed at the idea of me going into the music business, and certainly no one was of any use.In the army, again, people thought it was a mad idea. None of them knew anyone in the business either.And when I left the army, going against everyone's advice, EVERYONE I met in the British music industry told me there was no way it would work for me because I was too posh. One record company even asked if I could speak in a different accent. (I told them I could try Russian).Every step of the way, my background has been AGAINST me succeeding in the music business. And when I have managed to break through, I was STILL scoffed at for being too posh for the industry.And then you come along, looking for votes, telling working class people that posh people like me don't deserve it, and that we must redress the balance. But it is your populist, envy-based, vote-hunting ideas which make our country crap, far more than me and my shit songs, and my plummy accent.I got signed in America, where they don't give a stuff about, or even understand what you mean by me and 'my ilk', you prejudiced wazzock, and I worked my arse off. What you teach is the politics of jealousy. Rather than celebrating success and figuring out how we can all exploit it further as the Americans do, you instead talk about how we can hobble that success and 'level the playing field'. Perhaps what you've failed to realise is that the only head-start my school gave me in the music business, where the VAST majority of people are NOT from boarding school, is to tell me that I should aim high. Perhaps it protected me from your kind of narrow-minded, self-defeating, lead-us-to-a-dead-end, remove-the-'G'-from-'GB' thinking, which is to look at others' success and say, 'it's not fair.'Up yours,
James

After seeing the letter, Bryant suggested Blunt should “stop being so blooming precious”, while stressing that he was not knocking the success of either Blunt, whose album he has bought, or Redmayne, who he admired as Richard II.

“If you’d read the whole of my interview, you’d have seen that I make the point that the people who subsidise the arts the most are artists themselves,” he said. “Of course that includes you. But it is a statement of the blindingly obvious that that is far tougher if you come from a poor family where you have to hand over your holiday earnings to help pay the family bills.

He added:

“I’m delighted you’ve done well for yourself. But it is really tough forging a career in the arts if you can’t afford the enormous fees for drama school, if you don’t know anybody who can give you a leg up, if your parents can’t subsidise you for a few years whilst you make your name and if you can’t afford to take on an unpaid internship.“You see the thing is I want everyone to take part in the arts. I don’t want any no-go areas for young people from less privileged backgrounds. And I’m convinced that we won’t be Great Britain if we waste great British talent in the arts. You seem to think talent will always out. My fear is that someone like Stanley Baker, the son of a disabled miner in the Rhondda, who rose to be one of Britain’s greatest film actors (Zulu), would have found it even harder to make it today.”

Baxter a life long Labour supporter from the Rhondda would have found it even harder to find a career in politics.

Bryant may well ask where the sons of disabled Miners are in the House of Commons and why the Rhondda is represented by a privately educated Oxbridge graduate with no links to its industrial past and will undoubtedly leave the area when her retires?

The idea that Bryant and his ilk including the Guardian are champions of the working classes  is laughable .

If we are tto have champions its not from Bryant (or the Guardian) er should seek who attack privilege even though they have been the recipients themselves.