Yahoo Finance Leftwing music poet Billy Bragg to lecture finance chiefs at Bank of England
He’s built a reputation for railing against the establishment, but now leftwing music poet Billy Bragg finds himself face-to-face with people he should despise.
Bragg is to deliver a lecture to some of the City’s leading financiers on how to build a better society.
He has been invited to address them at the Bank of England, where he was once kettled by police during a protest outside.
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Bragg, a firm supporter of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, told BBC Radio 4’s Today show: “It’s going to be quite interesting to go in there today and look them in the eye.”
He will give a presentation entitled ‘The Struggle for Accountability in the Digital Age’, followed by a Q&A session.
He told Today that he was was surprised to be asked to give the seminar.
“I think the Bank is trying to get people in from outside their profession and for someone like myself it is always good to try and get beyond preaching to the converted and all that,” he said.
“It is good to face up to someone you don’t necessarily agree with.”
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Now aged 60, Bragg has been active in politics since his youth. He formed a punk band in 1977, and released his first solo record in 1983.
He gigged extensively in support of the striking mineworkers in 1984/85 and helped found Red Wedge, a collective of artists who campaigned in the mid-80s against the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher.
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He told Today that he would be tackling issues of how the little people, the small businesses, those struggling to make ends meet, had not felt the benefits of such measures as quantitative easing.
Bragg said the £500bn of Bank of England money pumped into the system after the 2008 financial crash did little to make ordinary people feel more secure.
He said: “It’s still sloshing around in the financial sector and that money was put forward to help corporates feel secure after the financial crash.”
As for what the bankers and financiers will hear, Bragg appears to be relishing the opportunity. As he told The Guardian earlier this month: “I’ll be way out of my comfort chamber [at the Bank of England] but I’m not there to be polite.”
You can follow a live stream of the lecture and subsequent question and answer session from 4pm today, April 19, here.