Playwright and screenwriter James Graham has hit out at the lack of working-class people in the TV industry, as he delivered the Edinburgh TV Festival’s prestigious MacTaggart lecture on Wednesday (21 August). Graham, born in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, referred to his own upbringing and state-school education when making the case for a more multi-faceted approach to diversity. He referred to class as “everyone’s least favourite diversity and representation category” compared to “more visible, sometimes simpler to define areas of diversity” that he said “fire up the activist in us”.
Citing statistics revealed in a recent report by Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre at the University of Sheffield , he said that only 8 per cent of people in television are working-class – figures which the report suggested meant class representation was at the lowest it had been in ten years. The Dear England writer said that this limited the number of people bringing their “experiences, outlook, stories, culture” in a medium that is “meant to reflect all those things back to us”. The Emmy-nominated writer of Brexit: The Uncivil War called for greater attention to be paid to challenges of social mobility, particularly in defining it as a concept.
“We are squeamish about defining it, and as a result, we quite often still exclude it from industry measurements around diversity,” he continued. “I could be wrong, but compared to other areas of under-represe.