When I lived in Manchester, I worked evenings in a banking call centre. One of the (very few) benefits was getting to know people that I might not ordinarily have met. One such example was a man on my team.
We were quite different. He grew up a practising Christian in a small town in Rochdale, I grew up in Birmingham with only occasional whispers of faith trickling down from my English and West Indian grandmothers. We bonded over the mutual trauma of our employment and the fact that we shared a birthday.
Back in 2017, we discussed the doom and gloom of Brexit.
“We all knew it was coming,” he said, after about half an hour. “Something had to be done in the end.”
I realised at this point that we had been talking at cross purposes. His view was that, although drastic, the UK leaving the EU was not just productive but inevitable. My view, in comparison, was that it was an early indicator of a right-wing apocalypse.
I say echo – echo say I
What was interesting about our conversation was not our opposition but the extent of the echo chambers in which we both clearly existed. We were able to speak candidly about a politically sensitive topic without either of us suspecting that our views weren’t shared. We seamlessly applied our presumptions to our interpretation of each other’s words.
This is one of the dangers of an echo chamber. It dampens our need to articulate our views into coherent arguments meaning that we’re questioned less about what we think and why we think it. It also reduces the risk of us ever being confronted with a compelling counter-argument and, consequently, means that we’re shook every time things don’t go our way. And I was: about Brexit, about Trump and about Lawrence Fox on Question Time.
Know your audience
For such a small island, the UK is greatly divided, both on and within city lines. The causes are aplenty but most relevant to this argument, I think, are wealth and geography.
In 2019, total UK wealth stood at a record £12.8 trillion – a figure split between private pensions, property, finance and our possessions. The richest 10% of us are worth upwards of £671,200 whilst the poorest 10% are worth just £3 or less. Geographically, in 2016, Birmingham and Manchester had the highest rates of child poverty than any other UK city. Simultaneously, Birmingham and Manchester are consistently listed among the top 10 wealthiest places in the UK.
London is another factor in this wealth/geography paradox.
Still today, £6 train tickets between Birmingham and London are not difficult to acquire, but Manchester to London – just 30 minutes further – can cost £60 for a return with a railcard and up to £360 (first class) without one. The reasons for this are, of course, myriad (distance, route popularity etc.) but the consequence is singular: many parts of the country are financially restricted from their own capital city. They can’t access its fruits at their most concentrated.
The great disconnect
In Manchester, phrases like “A classic, up-his-arse London dickhead” were common as was the view that Southerners (Londoners) skirted hard graft. Comparatively, in London, “Who would want to work in Manchester when you could work in London?” was a sincere question, as was, “Why would Channel 4 move to Leeds? It’s so inconvenient for people to move their lives miles out of London to somewhere shit.”
This divide was even clearer at the People’s Vote march in London last year. Chi Onwurah – a Labour politician from Newcastle – opened her speech with, “There’s a lot of talk about the Northern working class. Well, that’s how I grew up, just like everyone on my Council Estate.”
This was met with silence.
“I am tired of the idea that Brexit is the North’s fault,” she continued, “when it was two southern public schoolboys who led the campaign.”
A few feeble whoops came from the crowd.
In Manchester, I can say with confidence that these statements would have been met with rapturous applause. ‘Northerness’ and industrialism are a big part of the city’s (and Northern) liberal identity. But at the People’s Vote march, this was not the identity of the crowd. I realised then that liberalism in Manchester was different from liberalism in London – and even it was divided.
Technology
The last two decades have seen record-breaking technological growth. Our world of devices, social media and hyper-personalisation mean that we are connected, visible and precisely targeted. Whilst the benefits of this are significant, so too are the social and security risks that they bring.
As we know from Netflix’s The Great Hack, our data can be weaponised to influence all corners of our lives. At worst, this can have world-impacting ramifications. But on a smaller scale, it can mean that we’re not exposed to any views that don’t mirror our own.
Everything that we are exposed to online – Facebook, Instagram, shopping platforms, news publications – is based on algorithms that are tailored directly to us. Opposing viewpoints are not just easy to avoid but unusual to see at all.
Don’t fear the other
It can be difficult to hear-out disagreeable views because they exist so far from our realm of understanding.
My friend from the call centre was born, bred and settled in a town with a population of just over 13,000. He had been to London a handful of times, he had never had a female friend, he had never met a lesbian (that he knew of), and he went to Christian festivals over the summer. Whilst this profile may seem niche, it’s not. It probably resonates with a lot of the country.
This was the frame through which he viewed the world, so from what vantage point can I call him ignorant when my experience – a female, mixed race, private schooled, city-born-and-bred writer – is so far removed from his?
Unless we become more tolerant of views that differ from our own and start trying to understand the context that harvests them, we will remain divided and shook when ours turn out only to reflect a loud minority. An openness to a diversity of thought is as productive as diversity in gender, sexuality or ethnicity. In fact, it’s probably the most powerful of all.
I think that it might be key to addressing our divided seams.
