The Companion 009: Parting ways over politics
Reflections on what it means to have radical friendships with Dr Laura Forster.
Last week I watched a legendary film from my childhood called War of the Buttons. It’s one of those movies that I had remembered with such a glorious haze of youth and idealism that I wasn’t even sure if it was real. But it was — and it tells the surprisingly sweet story of two warring gangs of kids in rural Ireland, whose greatest acts of terror amount to slicing the buttons, belts and laces off one another’s outfits.
Written by Colin Welland, the same screenwriter who won an Oscar for Chariots of Fire, it very gently tickles at the idea of politics and the pointlessness of conflicts where actually the different sides have more in common than they’d like to think. By the end of the movie, the two leaders of the gangs, Fergus (Gregg Fitzgerald) and Geronimo (John Coffey) are sent away from home to a church orphanage and become firm friends.
After having spent the past few weeks reporting about politics and friendship for Stylist (read my latest column here, it’s a good one!), it was quite refreshing to wind the week down with such simplicity. Sometimes things just simply aren’t that deep. Most of the time, in my life at least, they really are. One of the things I’ve been ultra-conscious of when writing about friendship thus far is not diminishing it; not making too many basic, sweeping statements that might suggest that there isn’t a greater political purpose to ruminating around it.
“One of the things I’ve been ultra-conscious of when writing about friendship thus far is not diminishing it; not making too many basic, sweeping statements”
There were so many rich seams of thought I wanted to tap into when exploring this key question of whether or not we should choose our friends based on their politics, but it was also an act of accountability. Have I done enough, I wondered, to seek out friendships that are really a reflection of the person I am or want to become? How can I write about friendship in a way that continues to feel meaningful? How can I keep learning and growing in terms of my politics? How do I even define my politics at the moment?
One of my favourite parts of the Stylist piece is this segment: “As put by political commentator Natalie Wynn in a recent ContraPoints YouTube video (the whole vid is worth a watch): “If you want to change people’s minds, then approaching them with compassion and empathy is usually the best way to do that… [But] changing bigots’ minds [is not] the only way to make social progress… Bigotry is shameful and should be shamed… We’re not going to defeat racism by telling Black people to be a little nicer to racists.”
She’s not speaking specifically about cross-political friendships here but this is an important point: withholding friendship from those who you morally disagree with on political grounds can be more than an empty statement or choice to live in an echo chamber.”
Thus far, I am not parting ways with any of my friends over politics, but I’m certainly not averse to doing so, and definitely not actively seeking out friendships with people with whom I don’t see eye-to-eye on key issues. What I am more open to is the idea that, as Fergus and Geronimo found, there is more than one way to reach the futures we desire. Being open to hearing other people’s stories, visions and purpose is never a bad thing; as you might realise that you can love them through your differences as long as your deeper values feel aligned.
I’ve managed to reach this consciousness in part thanks to my conversation with Dr Laura Forster, which you can read in part below. Laura, who is as fascinated by friendship as I am, is a genius and a gem, and we’ve promised to go for a pint next time one of us is in the right city!
Dr Laura Forster is a historian of ideas, political cultures, and political communities in the long nineteenth century, currently working at the University of Manchester. Having produced a series on radical friendships for History Workshop magazine, she is currently working on a book project about friendship and radical struggle.
This is just a snippet of a beautiful and wide-ranging discussion we had about her work, ideas and vast knowledge of some of the revolutionary friendships that have moved the world forward.
Hey Laura! Could you tell me about the book you’re working on about radical friendship?
Laura: It seems like at the minute, friendship is quite open, right? I keep coming across strands of it. It feels like a moment when people are thinking about the power of it, about what's possible. The book (titled Dense Bonds: friendship in radical struggle), which I’m working on with my friend Dr Joel White, is not supposed to be definitive in any way but it’s trying to think about other moments where friendship might have felt potent, and also historicizing some of the themes we're seeing in terms of deconstructing the family and challenging the types of ways in which friendship is policed.
Is there a historical precedent for the moment we find ourselves in with regard to friendship?
Most things have historical precedents and there are lineages of friendship; other people who've thought about friendship and have used or understood the power of friendship. Looking back is a powerful way of creating an anti-family tree. There are material things right now, like the cost of living crisis, economic pressures and the looming ecological disaster, which have made people think more about their relationships, forms of kinship and how those are important. But people have felt this sense of potency around friendship in different historical moments. It's not entirely brand new. In the queer community, for example, there have been other moments of crisis — like the AIDS epidemic.
You’ve called friendship a means to access the emotional worlds of the past. Why did you decide that would be your way into parts of history you care about?
For political historians generally, institutional records are often the most readily available sources. But, as a historian of 19th-century anarchism, for example, there are often only slim and scattered institutional records. And while institutional affiliations might tell part of the story of political ideas, they definitely don't tell the whole story. How could they? I was thinking about how we can access more elusive worlds. I realised that there are other ways of tracing networks of ideas. Friendship was a way in.
“Friendship itself is a political act, a commitment to forming types of intimacies despite the way in which capitalism seeks to isolate us” — Dr Laura Forster
For me, it feels like it's becoming more and more important that my friendships are reflective of my politics. Is that something you relate to?
Definitely. Friendship itself is a political act, a commitment to forming types of intimacies despite the way in which capitalism seeks to isolate us. Friendship is also a key sustaining force in activist struggles of various kinds. The much-overused phrase is that the personal is political.
Do you think it's okay to have friendships that don't fulfil that political need or where you don't align on everything?
Now if I meet somebody, and we have very different politics, we just won't be friends. But I’m not hardline about writing people off. There are plenty of people in my life with whom I definitely don't agree. But broadly, I think that they have kind of good intentions… Even that just sounds really condescending. I would never hold anybody to some standard. My politics have changed quite a lot over time. Not fundamentally, but how I understand things, changes all the time. You need to talk to people you don't always agree with because otherwise, you never learn anything more. It comes down to that classic thing of having a finite amount of time in your life.
You want to spend it with people who make you feel good. Generally, that is people that you sort of feel a sense of a shared sense of creating change with, or a shared sense of utopias, even if you have very different views about how you might get there. It comes down to how you spend your time. But equally not being too dogmatic or hardline about it.
How would you define a radical friendship? Or the conception of radical friendship?
Thinking about friendship not just as something that just happens and you can fall into, but understanding it as a radical practice that might open hierarchies and produce social change. Through those connections, you’re unconsciously challenging other forms of power which seek to create allegiance. Our world works to produce and reproduce power structures based on succession and bloodlines; inherited power, from kings and queens and succession right through to business. Finding lineages of friendship undermines some of that sense. Friendship can destabilise some of that power. I also think revolutionary radical friendship is a powerful generator of political imagination. Friendship can be generative without being productive.
“Our world works to produce and reproduce power structures based on succession and bloodlines. Friendship can destabilise some of that power.” — Dr Laura Forster
I love that idea of destabilisation. What are you cautious of when it comes to thinking about friendship?
I don't want to be saccharine about friendship or romanticise it, because particularly in activist struggles, friendship is important because it forces a lot of self-examination, a lot of ways to encounter people that you don't think you want to be friends with, you don't get on with. But it can sometimes be used as a bandaid on our problems or a way to avoid conflict.
We have to be careful. Part of the reason why it's looming so large is because it's used and instrumentalised in types of branding that deliberately seek to manipulate the idea. Maybe I’m extra annoyed at the moment because I’m seeing the gimmicky, performative, Pride Month, allyship stuff.
Yeah, it feels important to think about the ways in which we can talk about friendship without falling into the trap of becoming part of the marketing bandwagon. What friendships are particularly important to you in your life at present?
Intergenerational friendships. My dad died a few years ago and he was a trade unionist. Since he died, some of his really close friends have become my close friends, and we hang out. Lesley and I usually go for a walk once a month. She really loves history as well and she's big into socialism. She’s 72. But we hang out. And it's so nice because we talk a lot about politics and we each have questions for each other. We have quite a beautiful friendship.
What is the best thing you've read, listened to, or watched on friendship recently? By Hook or by Crook (2001 film). It stars Harry Dodge and Silas Howard, who are now quite big trans activists and writers. The characters, who are very ambiguously queer, are both outsiders, and they meet. It's quite a chaotic and stressful film in some ways, but it's really tender.
How do you sort of think the culture of friendship is changing or will change in the near future? This feeling of impending demise in various ways makes the idea of friendship feel more potent.
What has been your biggest personal learning about friendship? When my dad got ill and died just before the pandemic, I realised he had loads of friends and was really good at being a good friend. They were all coming around, chatting. It was so cool. Now, keeping up friendships with some of his friends and thinking about inherited practices of friendships, I feel like it’s such a fucking cool legacy to be a good friend and to cherish and value friendship.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.