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eBook details

• Title: Diamonds in the Mud
• Author : Brian
• Release Date : January 05, 2021
• Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : KB

Description

SOMETHING unusual happened in Britain during the spring of 2020. As the nation went into lockdown to fight a killer pandemic our view of what constituted a hero changed.

Suddenly celebrity businessmen, actors, sports stars, singers, even royals seemed irrelevant. The people we were truly in awe of were the low-paid lifesavers, so much so that we stood outside our homes every Thursday to applaud them.

As spring turned to summer and the Black Lives Matter movement gathered momentum, action was taken against those from past generations who had been feted, such as Bristol slave trader Edward Colston whose statue was hauled down. It felt as though the country was re-evaluating the notion of heroism. But how did we arrive at such a skewed version of it?

‘Diamonds in the Mud’ asks why the British have traditionally been taught to venerate kings and queens, generals and Eton-educated Prime Ministers, while, a few notable exceptions aside, those who changed history from below rarely got a look-in.

It does so by telling the stories of a selection of working-class heroes the award-winning writer has met through life and journalism. Men and women who rose from humble backgrounds to change the world. Some in a huge way, others in a smaller way, but all made the people they came from immensely proud.

From relentless matriarchs like Doreen Lawrence and the Hillsborough mothers to Omagh bomb victim Donna Marie McGillion whose stoicism told the men of terror they wouldn't win; from football men like Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley who brought their people joy to the Fans Supporting Foodbanks group and Marcus Rashford who fed the poor; from class warriors like Dennis Skinner to glass-ceiling breakers like Barbara Castle; from trade union leader Jack Jones who fought fascists in Spain to Muhammad Ali who inspired a generation of British black people to stand tall; from sacked dockers who opened a social justice hub for all-comers to NHS nurses who lost their lives on the Covid frontline as they battled to save others.


The book’s title was hatched when the author was at a celebration of the centenary of Jack Jones’ birth in Liverpool’s Garston district, where locals are known as Mud Men. As the author stared at a mural of Jones, an elderly man asked what he thought of him. When he answered that he was one of the finest men he’d met, he replied: “You’re right lad. He’s Garston’s finest. A true diamond in the mud.”

A phrase that perfectly describes Jones, and other unsung working-class heroes whose contributions to making the world a better place have never received full recognition.

This book attempts to right that wrong.

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