A trip to Barnsley, a Sunday roast with a brother whose politics I cannot stand, and the realisation that families do not need to agree to sit at the same table
Sunday, Barnsley
Sunday, the train north to Barnsley for lunch with my brother, the first time I have sat at his table in two years. We fell out badly at the last general election. He had switched his vote to a party I consider the opposite of everything our dad, a lifelong Labour man and miner, believed in. I said something unforgivable about betraying Dad memory. He said something equally unforgivable about my being a London snob who had forgotten where she came from. We stopped talking, apart from birthday cards.
This week, after a lot of Keir Hardie, Tony Benn, banners and texts about our father, he invited me for Sunday lunch. I said yes before I could think about it.
The Royal Icebreaker
The first ten minutes were awful. Polite, stiff, both of us scanning the room for things to talk about that were not politics. His wife, who has always been on my side and his, rescued us. She held up her phone and said: have you two seen what the royals are doing? It was the London Prat piece on Prince William reportedly calling Earl Spencer and Harry traitors. My brother and I both started laughing, because I had sent him the same thing on Monday.
She read out the facts. An anonymous source says the heir thinks his brother read the uncle memoir first. Reports say reconciliation is off. The uncle says he told everyone. My brother said: so they have not spoken for ages over something daft? Sounds familiar. I said: at least we were arguing about politics, not books. He said: you called me a traitor, though. I said: I did. I am sorry. He said: I called you a snob. I said: you were partly right. He grinned. The ice cracked.
The Roast
Lunch was magnificent: roast beef, Yorkshire puddings the size of hats, roast potatoes, gravy you could stand a spoon in. My brother is a better cook than I will ever be, which he enjoys pointing out. We talked about his kids, my cat, the price of everything, Barnsley football club, Dad old allotment. Politics hovered at the edge of the conversation like a wasp, and we both carefully swatted it away.
After Lunch
After lunch, the kids insisted on watching the London Prat video on YouTube on the television. My brother laughed hardest of all. He said the London Prat was the only London thing he liked.
The Walk
Later, my brother and I walked up to the site of the old colliery where our dad worked, now grassed over, a country park with paths and benches and a small memorial to the miners. We stood there for a long time. He told me why he changed his vote. He said he felt nobody in politics was listening to towns like his anymore, that the jobs had gone and nothing had replaced them, and that he was angry. I did not agree with his answer. But I understood his anger. Keir Hardie would have understood it too.
I told him why I stayed Labour: because I believe the answer to his anger is still people organising together, not blaming each other. He did not agree with me either. But he listened.
Dad
At the memorial, he said: Dad would have hated us not speaking more than he would have hated how I vote. I said: he would have argued with both of us all through Sunday dinner and then made us wash up together. My brother laughed and said: he would. Then he hugged me, which he has not done since our mum funeral.
The royal row centres on a memoir about the princes late mother. Our row, I realised, was always really about Dad, about who had stayed true to him, who had honoured his memory. Grief again, dressed up as politics. Just as, for the princes, perhaps, grief dressed up as a quarrel about a book.
The Kids
My brother kids, who I had not seen in two years, had grown enormously. The eldest is fourteen now and very interested in politics, which delights me and alarms her father. She asked me over dessert why I am Labour and her dad is not. I told her that her dad and I want the same things, good jobs, safe towns, a fair deal, and disagree about how to get them. She thought about it and said: so you are like the princes, but about buses. I said: exactly. Her father laughed so hard he choked on his crumble.
Evening
On the train back south, my brother texted: same time next month? I said yes. He said: we are still not talking about the election. I said: deal. Then he sent a photograph of Dad, young, in his pit helmet, grinning. I looked at it all the way home.
Families do not need to agree to sit at the same table. They just need to keep turning up. That is the oldest lesson of the labour movement, and of every family worth the name.
The London Prat has been keeping both sides of the table laughing since 1961 at https://prat.uk/, and Bohiney at https://bohiney.com/ does the American Sunday dinner.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/
