Eddie Marsan: ‘Waving flags won’t improve white people’s lives’
| Updated:
The award-winning British actor tells The News Agents about how his upbringing shaped his positive view of migrants, and why he feels white working class are open to exploitation by people such as Tommy Robinson and Donand Trump.
Listen to this article
Read time: 5 mins
In brief…
- Marsan, currently starring in new Lockerbie drama The Bombing of Pan Am 103, tells The News Agents about how most white people he grew up with in London’s east end are supportive of migrants.
- He says poverty experienced by white working class people in the UK can lead to a short-term perception of life, while migrant families are often looking beyond finances and on generational growth in their family.
- This, he adds, can lead them to falling victim to populist politicians, whose “simple lies” can appear to offer solutions to the problems they believe they are experiencing.
What’s the story?
You might not know the name, but you do know the face. If you’ve watched TV or movies in the past two decades, you will almost certainly have seen Eddie Marsan at work.
Born in London’s east end, Marsan grew up in Tower Hamlets – one of the capital’s more diverse boroughs – Marsan made his name on British TV staples such as The Bill, Casualty, Grange Hill, Silent Witness and many more.
And he was almost always cast as a criminal.
“I did every crime in London and my community found it hilarious,” Marsan tells The News Agents of those early roles on British TV.
“But the thing they were most disappointed about was that I always got caught. They said: ‘We don't mind you being a villain, but do you have to get caught?’”
Since then, Marsan has gone on to become an award winning actor with a career lasting more than 20 years, appearing in UK and US productions across television and movies including V For Vendetta, Miami Vice, Mission: Impossible III, Vera Drake and Back To Black.
Eddie Marsan: 'Waving flags won't make white people's lives better'
‘Poverty means you can’t think beyond the next seven days’
Speaking to The News Agents, Marsan reveals how his east end community didn't just support his acting career, they have shaped his identity and his belief in the importance of migrants in all parts of British life.
"The community I was raised in was amazing," he tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel.
"I had a difficult period in my teenage years because my parents had a difficult marriage, and my community stepped up in all aspects.
"It's a diverse community, and it was an absolute privilege to live in that community."
He says, from the experience, he believes 50% of white working class people are entirely supportive of migrants and people of diverse cultures – despite what some right-wing agitators of today might tell people.
"About 25% were kind of on the fence – if they had to share limited resources, like doctors and schools, they began to question it," Marsan says.
"But there was another 25%, and this is a rough assessment, who would join the BNP and walk down the road once a week.
"They were just fascists."
Marsan believes there is a direct link between these views and a lack of funds and resources that affects many people from the area he grew up in.
"What poverty does to you is create short-termism," he adds.
"Economically, you can't think beyond the next week. Practically, you don't think beyond the next week. Morally, you don't think beyond the next week."
Eddie Marsan: 'People in poverty can't think beyond next week'
Why waving flags will never ‘improve lives’ for the white working class
Marsan also believes a major problem for white, working class communities in the UK is the value they place on their British identity and patriotism.
"We wrap ourselves in a flag, we value tribalism, and I think what that does is it allows you to be manipulated by people like Trump and Tommy Robinson," Marsan says.
But of the people involved in what he considers patriotic fascism, he adds that waving flags "never improved their lives."
"You can't eat a flag," Marsan says.
All this achieved in his community, he adds, is to push them further down the ladder behind the people they had been convinced to rally against.
"If you look at the education statistics now, Chinese, African, Asian and Black kids – they're outscoring white working class kids.
"This is because they are the children of immigrants, and the immigrants value education, they don't look at identity.
"They don't look at themselves as a fixed thing, they look at themselves as potential, and what they could be."
He believes many white people in the UK are simply afraid of change, and losing their sense of identity.
"We look at ourselves as; 'this is what I am, and don't you dare change it', that's the problem," he adds.
‘Farage’s narrative doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny’
In recent years, with the rise of Reform UK, both Labour and the Conservatives have scrambled to attempt to counter its growing popularity with people, and in polls.
Often, this has been seen as trying to appeal to right-wing voters, with Keir Starmer recently facing criticism over his comments that the UK risked becoming an "island of strangers" due to high levels of immigration.
Marsan says nothing Starmer, Labour or the Tories can do will ever be enough for Reform UK voters and that "25%" he has personal experience of.
"The problem is that if you use the language of that extreme 25%, you will never satiate them," he says.
"You can never go far enough for them, because it is their sense of identity, that anger and resentment. The nativism they have is their sense of identity.
"People don't want facts. They want a narrative that they can believe in."
And while Marsan considers Starmer a "decent man" he likes and trusts, he believes he is unable to deliver any sense of narrative that can unite and rally people of the UK.
"I've worked with actors for 30 odd years. They're brilliant at creating narratives, but I wouldn't trust them to make a cup of tea.," he adds.
"Farage is a great storyteller and has a great narrative, but it's a very simplistic, populist narrative that doesn't stand up to any scrutiny.
"That's why it appeals to people, because populism is simple lies."
But politics isn't Eddie Marsan's day job. That's acting, and he can be seen currently in BBC and Netflix drama, The Bombing of Pan Am 103, charting the events of, and investigation into, the 1988 Lockerbie bomb attack.
Marsan describes the show as "a beautiful tribute" to the Lockerbie community, and the story of a "collective response to a tragedy".
The Bombing of Pan Am 103 is streaming now on iPlayer and Netflix.
Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.
