Review
Books
Community
Culture
4 min read

Giving voice to those on the edge

A nervy, precarious read echoes the lives of outsiders across Europe. Simon Burton-Jones reviews Ben Judah’s This is Europe.

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A grandmother is embraced by two grandchildren.
Nino, from Georgia, embraces her grandchildren after their mother's death.
Ben Judah.

In The Dream of Europe, Dutch historian Geert Mak takes on the continent’s twenty-first century story.   

There’s something contradictory, he says, about writing the history of an era when you’re right in the middle of it, of a world in which you’re fully involved

His attempt to do this is built round three great socio-economic tremors: the global financial crash of 2008, the ensuing Greek debt crisis of 2009 and following years and the migrant emergency of 2015. It is a long, involved work.   

Ben Judah has tried something very different in This is Europe (Picador, 2023). Adopting the style of his award-winning This is London, he tells the continent’s story via twenty-three disparate individuals. From Turks to Spaniards, Georgians to Swedes and Poles to Serbs, if there is one thing shared most in common, it’s the sense of outsiders trying to make their way from the edge of life to a place of security, even belonging.   

History is having its makeover in the attention given to ordinary, prosaic, unseen lives that are lived in the shadow of bigger themes. Judah is not alone and not the first to deliver this, but it is a welcome departure from the grand sweeping narratives and ideologies by which the story of Europe has customarily been told. 

He begins with a Dutch harbour pilot, Jelle, who boards and guides container ships into port.  It is Europe’s consumer gateway. Jelle observes: ‘What rubbish is actually in these containers?’  It’s toys. TVs. Chairs. Tables. Bicycles. Shampoo. Only rubbish. 

But the commentary on Europe’s excesses ends there and there is no logical progression in the book from seaport to city centre. Judah instead jumps from one location to another and tells each individual story in a staccato delivery that lends a sense of immediacy and urgency to their lives. It makes for a nervy, precarious read. 

There is the resentful Romanian lorry driver whose account lifts the lid on the sordid risks long-distance jobs supply. The Latvian teenage girl who slips into online sex work, satisfying the fantasies of older men across the world but paying for her education along the way. The thoughtful Belarussian family that defies President Lukashenko and pays a heavy price. A young Turkish woman whose romance with an Austrian boy seems doomed to failure until the final moments. The Russian gas worker whose stint in the Arctic circle has a hint of the Gulag about it. A sex-obsessed Syrian refugee who makes it in the world of porn. 

This latter case of the Arab porn star is indicative of Ben Judah’s journalistic style. The seemingly soulless promiscuity and infidelity carries no authorial judgment.  Ibrahim escapes the war-ravaged Middle East, is subject to racist humiliation, has sex with anyone who is up for it and is about to be made homeless when he finds a way into an online Arab market in porn. It is part American dream and part pulp fiction set against the backdrop of conservative family Budapest. We are left wondering what to make of it, which is probably Judah’s intention.   

Geert Mak speaks of Europe as a great project by free citizens who tried to take the course of history into their own hands instead of merely submitting to it; projects with their origins in the Enlightenment ideals of human rights, liberty, equality and fraternity. 

Mak’s dreamy aspiration has just enough about it to attract outsiders but its values when probed are as malleable as playdoh. When pressure is applied, is it possible to say that Europe has cohesive and durable moral values, ones derived from its history? The liberal individualism drawn from the left, where identity has become more distinctive than class, is suspicious of religion that creates hard boundaries, and of objective moral values that constrain behaviour. The right, whose neo-liberal market forces have corroded the very family structures it claims to support, is wary of religion that champions diverse communities. The impact of the left and of the right in these ways is felt in the personal stories of Judah’s book. As unseen forces draw people to poles like filings to magnets, is there a way of transforming these emphases?   

There is a relational view of life, perhaps buried deeply in the European Christian Democratic tradition, that values the person in community and the quality of our relationships at every level over ever-expanding GDP, that sacred cow of post-war politics. Where unity and diversity can be held in a creative partnership as we respond to the call to love others as we love ourselves. But it needs clear policy edges that rescue it from pious bromide.   

In This is Europe we meet people who are deeply human and equally scarred, often by other people and the forces over which no-one seems to have control, who find their hope and meaning in the relationships they form and through which they make community. Further to the east, Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich has spent a lifetime teasing out ordinary stories of the Soviet Union, from the veterans of Afghanistan to the victims of Chernobyl via the trauma of the nineties. Hers is a more discursive tale than Judah’s but carries the same sense of disorientation, loss and stoic hope. 

Europe cannot be summed up, but Judah, in turning to its edges and listening patiently and empathetically to those who only want to make their way against the odds, inhabits the ethic of scripture in giving a voice to the voiceless. If its stripped back, breathless style carries echoes of Mark’s Gospel, the attention he gives to those in existential pain is St John’s.  He calls them each by name. The moral question facing Europe is whether we really want to know their stories. 

Article
Belief
Culture
Music
5 min read

How Mumford and friends explore life's instability

Communing on fallibility, fear, grace, and love.

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A bassist hauls a double bass of its base as he plays it.
Daniel Boud/x.com/mumfordandsons.

“Serve God, love me, and mend” must rank as one of the more unexpected openings to a hugely popular album in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. A quote from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, it introduces us to the potent mix of Shakespearean and Biblical allusion and imagery to be found on Mumford and Sons debut album Sign No More.  

Sigh No More, both as song and album, begins with confident assertions of faith then moves into acknowledgement of human fallibility and prevarication summed up in the Shakespearean phrase that “Man is a giddy thing” before asserting that love does not enslave but is freeing, enabling those who know it to become the people they were meant to be. The song ends with a prayer to see the beauty which will come when the protagonist’s heart is truly aligned with love. Throughout the album, the overriding concern is that personal fallibilities and fears – the darkness within – will prevent grace from having its full effect and the beauty of alignment with love from being fully realised. 

In many Mumford and Sons songs such personal instability is the problem to be resolved; “Man is a giddy thing”, “Why do I keep falling?”. Their search is often for the relationship or place that will provide stability:  

I can't say, "I'm sorry," if I'm always on the run 

From the anchor (‘Anchor’) 

‘Roll Away Your Stone’ describes the darkness within as a God-shaped hole filled with false gods: 

See you told me that I would find a hole 

Within the fragile substance of my soul 

And I have filled this void with things unreal 

And all the while my character it steals 

but this is not how life has to be: 

It seems that all my bridges have been burned 

But, you say that's exactly how this grace thing works 

It's not the long walk home 

That will change this heart 

But the welcome I receive with the restart 

Lead singer and songwriter Marcus Mumford knows how this grace thing works because, on the one hand, his parents founded the Vineyard Church UK and Ireland meaning he grew up in the context of grace and, on the other, he seems to have experienced grace personally in relation to the sexual abuse he suffered as a child (which was not experienced in his family or his church). In ‘Grace’ from his self-titled solo album he contrasts grace, flowing like a river, with the experience of acknowledging the abuse he endured and the healing for which he prays. 

Such biblical allusions and references abound in the songs of Mumford and Sons, as is also the case with some of those with whom they performed, supported or inspired. The Nu-folk movement of which the Mumford’s were part, began at a club called Bosun’s Locker in Fulham. There, with the likes of Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale, and others, their musical journey commenced. Noah and the Whale’s first album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down featured philosophical rumination on a par with that of Sigh No More including lines such as: 

Oh, there is no endless devotion 

That is free from the force of erosion 

Oh, if you don't believe in God 

How can you believe in love?          

Following the closure of Bosun’s Locker, Ben Lovett from Mumford and Sons, with others, set up Communion Records, a network of musicians, songwriters, industry and music fans who all share a common philosophy and set of ideals. Among the artists supported by Communion have been Bear’s Den and Michael Kiwanuka. 

Bear’s Den is one of several bands, which also included Dry the River, that have used religious and spiritual symbols in their songs. Andrew Davie from Bear’s Den has said: “I wouldn't say I'm particularly religious, but I was brought up going to church every Sunday, I studied a bit of religion in school and just from going to Sunday school, it's almost that I know the stories so well, that I find it a cool way of telling more modern and more nuanced stories about my own life. As a backdrop to that I find it just constantly helpful and it's quite a powerful way to talk about things. It adds weight to me.” Similarly, Matthew Taylor of Dry the River said of the theological imagery in lead singer Peter Liddle’s songs: “It’s always been a tool for Peter I think, to use the imagery you’re talking about, to add weight to what he’s writing about. It’s rich imagery, and the ideas are ones that people can relate to easily, if there’s that familiarity there.” Both recognise, as do Mumford and Sons, the continuing power of Christian ideas and imagery and their resonance for young people. 

Michael Kiwanuka was surprised that his early song about faith ‘I’m Getting Ready’ was enthusiastically released first as the title song of an EP from Communion Records and then by Polydor as a single from his debut album Home Again. Kiwanuka, who is married to Christian singer Charlotte, has consistently expressed aspects of his faith through songs like ‘Love and Hate’, ‘One More Night’, ‘Solid Ground’, and ‘Floating Parade’. Alexis Petridis has noted that Kiwanuka sees more people searching for a belief system: “Having a faith in things now is, I think, a lot more acceptable, whatever faith it is. There’s no dogma, necessarily. We’re connected by the struggles we have and I think that’s what I’m singing about – being a human being and trying to overcome, which is what we’re all doing in a way.” 

Whether opening up space for bands to utilise the power of Christian imagery in their songs or enabling singers with a Christian faith to be heard on mainstream labels, Mumford and Sons, by example and support, have created opportunities for faith to be explored and appreciated. The response to their music, its themes, and those of artists with whom they connect, seems to reflect a growing openness to spirituality and faith. As they sang, together with Pharrell Williams, on ‘Good People’, “Welcome to the revelation”. 

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