Walking around the streets he grew up in during the 1960’s and 70’s, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg is most shocked by the fact all the pubs he remembers have closed down. But as he guides Huck around his hometown of Barking, Essex he notices much else has changed too.
Barking has always attracted those looking for work and in his lifetime Billy has seen people from Ireland, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh pass through its streets, on their way to leafier and more affluent areas. Like all of the other migrants since, his great-grandfather came to Barking in the 1860s to look for a better life for himself and his children.
Unlike Billy, there are many who don’t accept the changes the area has undergone. Since the Ford car plant closed down – where many of the migrants once came to work – the area has fallen on hard times and witnessed the rise of the far-right who have fed off a sense of hardship and hopelessness.
From the very beginning, Billy has always challenged these negative and divisive ideas through his music. Despite experiencing the pressures and the tensions of a community ill at ease with itself, Billy says, “I feel very fortunate to have grown up here.”
Find out more about Billy Bragg, his music and activism.
Subscribe to Huck’s YouTube channel to catch our short films first.
Latest on Huck
Exploring the impact of colonialism on Australia’s Indigenous communities
New exhibition, ‘Under a Southern Star: Identity and Environment in Australian Photography’ interrogates the use of photography as a tool of objectification and subjugation.
Written by: Miss Rosen
My sister disappeared when we were children. Years later, I retraced her footsteps
After a car crash that saw Magnum photographer Lindokuhle Sobekwa hospitalised, his sister ran away from their home in South Africa. His new photobook, I Carry Her Photo With Me, documents his journey in search of her.
Written by: Lindokuhle Sobekwa
Inside New York City’s hedonistic 2000s skateboarding scene
New photobook, ‘Epicly Later’d’ is a lucid survey of the early naughties New York skate scene and its party culture.
Written by: Isaac Muk
Did we create a generation of prudes?
Has the crushing of ‘teen’ entertainment and our failure to represent the full breadth of adolescent experience produced generation Zzz? Emma Garland investigates.
Written by: Emma Garland
How to shoot the world’s most gruelling race
Photographer R. Perry Flowers documented the 2023 edition of the Winter Death Race and talked through the experience in Huck 81.
Written by: Josh Jones
An epic portrait of 20th Century America
‘Al Satterwhite: A Retrospective’ brings together scenes from this storied chapter of American life, when long form reportage was the hallmark of legacy media.
Written by: Miss Rosen