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14 things we learned from reading Marvin Rees’ book
Let’s See What Happens by Marvin Rees details his journey from growing up in Easton and Lawrence Weston to becoming the first directly elected mayor of Black African heritage of a major European city.
Recently named as an honorary industrial professor at the University of Bristol, Rees could have been MP for Bristol North East by now but failed to win the Labour nomination for the seat held by Damien Egan, himself also a former mayor.
That last story does not feature in Let’s See What Happens, which does not see Rees sharpening his pen too often to settle any scores but does still feature plenty of criticisms of the Green Party and the media.
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These are 14 things we learned from Rees’ book:
1. He started working at his dad’s nightclub at the age of 14
Rees describes his father’s life as “a hustle” but that he was “primarily a businessman, owning a shop and a nightclub called Crystal Dove that was particularly well known. It was on the corner of Grosvenor Road and St Nicholas Road. While other nightclubs would close at 2am, Dad’s club would carry on into the small hours. He had a pool table there which was available during the day, and I used to work there every Saturday from the age of fourteen. I’d do everything from sorting the change for the pool tables to flipping burgers.”
2. An eye condition, keratoconus, prevented him from continuing boxing and from joining the Royal Marines
Rees writes that he was “gutted” to have to give up boxing as it had given him “a purpose and a goal. It gave me discipline and did wonders for my confidence and self-belief.” On being unable to join the Marines because of keratoconus, he writes that it was “desperately difficult to take… It was going to give me a path through life.”
3. He feels like he was never given a proper chance while working for the BBC
Rees worked for the BBC for five years which he said “sucked the life out of me, affecting both my self-confidence and my mental wellbeing. And I can’t deny that the memories of my time there frame my interactions with journalists to this day. Both the profession and the organisation spat me out.”
4. He was nominated to stand as a Labour council candidate for Ashley ward but withdrew in order not to beat Lib Dem incumbent Shirley Marshall, who then was Bristol’s only Black female councillor
Rees explains the reasons for his withdrawal: “The whole point of Operation Black Vote was to increase Black and Asian representation – not pitch us against each other. If I ran against her, I would have to argue that she wasn’t good at her job. But being a Black woman in a posh white man’s space gave greater weight to Shirley’s position. She might have represented a different party, but she was ours and I couldn’t tear her down.”
5. He was “shocked” when first attacked by the Green Party on Twitter
One theme in the book is Rees’ criticism of the Green Party who he says “have cultivated a brand that is friendly and caring, grown-up and beyond traditional political party bun-fights. But in my experience, they have been the most aggressive and well-organised party on social media with a well-coordinated structure of outriders ready to lead a Twitter pile-on against anyone who challenges their ownership of the moral high ground.”
6. He had “dark times” after losing the first mayoral election in 2012
“Dark nights, dark moments, dark thoughts,” Rees writes, describing the time after he lost to George Ferguson. “I’m one of those people, for better or worse, who doesn’t talk about things when they go wrong… I’m far more likely to internalise everything. I know it’s not healthy, but it’s who I am. I might look calm on the outside, but inside, I’m turning everything over and over. In that moment, all I felt was a sense of meaninglessness. Here I was, facing middle age and again feeling as though I’d failed.”
7. He says his biggest legacy as mayor is making sure that a political leader can look like him
“The biggest achievement, which might not seem like much at first glance, has been to make sure that the mayor – or any other political leader – can be someone like me,” Rees writes when talking of a possible legacy of his time in office. “This was confirmed when my friend Poku Osei told me his daughters said he looked like the mayor. We laughed because we don’t actually look alike. Poku is Ghanaian-born and two shades darker. But his daughters have grown up with high-profile Black political leadership as the norm. Poku and I talked about how that opened a door in their minds.”
Babbasa founder Poku Osei and former Bristol mayor Marvin Rees – photo: Babbasa
8. He says that having to acknowledge unsolved challenges is “painful”
Rees writes: “”I just wanted to be able to stand in front of the city at the end of my time and say, ‘This is what I wanted to do. This is what I did to make it happen,’ and for them to believe I did all I could with what I had, in the face of the opportunities and challenges we faced to deliver that, because that’s all I could really do. I wanted to be judged against that.”
9. Even as mayor, he was racially profiled by the police
Rees recounts a story of being approached by a police officer while he was driving through Easton. “Even if you’re mayor, you’re still going to be subjected to racial profiling,” he writes. “It would be nice to think that one day this might change, but until it does, the next generation needs to know how the world works and the best way to navigate it.”
10. He blocked Lib Dem councillor Tim Kent on Twitter in the middle of a council meeting
Rees does not mention Tim Kent by name in his book, but it was Kent who lodged a formal complaint against Rees for blocking him on Twitter after he questioned the then-mayor’s right to block people on Twitter.
Rees gives his side of the story for the first time in the book: “If someone is being foolish or bringing toxicity into your life, block them! If the mayor is doing it, you can too. A number of opposition councillors were very angry about this and said I was being anti-democratic. But I’m not stopping anyone from posting. I am just not engaging. One councillor who had been particularly mischievous over the years was making particular hay over this in a full council meeting. So I blocked him as he spoke. It was quite amusing to some, but it remained very serious for my children and others.”
11. He was going for a walk in the Avon Valley when the Colston statue was pulled down
Rees says the situation he found himself in after the statue’s toppling was “scary”. He writes: “This is now a situation, I told myself. It was scary, to be honest. There’s a famous quote from Mike Tyson about how everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. That was pretty much where I was at.”
12. He found talking about the aftermath of the toppling “exhilarating”
In the book, Rees estimates that in the days after the statue was toppled, he had spoken “to the best part of a quarter of a billion people on the subject”. He said: “I found the whole thing exhilarating. You can’t do this job unless you like speaking and enjoy being in front of people, but I was still surprised that I didn’t feel nervous or overwhelmed by it all. Finding a truth is a great comfort… It felt genuine – genuine in my responses and genuine in terms of the politics and honest about the complexity and contradictions.”
13. Meeting the Colston Four in a pub was pure coincidence
Despite reports that it was set up, perhaps even by Banksy, Rees says that meeting the Colston Four in the Star & Garter pub was entirely by chance: “A report appeared in a magazine later claiming that ‘voices were raised’. That was just untrue. We just talked, and truth be told, I was very happy to have the opportunity to speak with them directly. They were in the full flush of victory and probably didn’t want to hear what I had to say about it anyway.”
14. He criticises Carla Denyer but does not mention her by name
Like his story about Kent, Rees writes about Carla Denyer – former Clifton councillor and now MP for Bristol Central – but does not name her. “One of their leaders brought forward a motion to full council to declare a climate emergency. I struggled to sign it… Politics is easy on the margins. You can espouse all the platitudes that you want, without ever having your priorities properly put to the test. The minute ideals come into contact with reality, the situation changes… The closer the Green Party gets to power, the more you get the sense that instead of serving the environment, they are using the issue as a springboard to power. At which point, they’re no longer an environmental movement, but just the same as any other party.”
Let’s See What Happens by Marvin Rees is published by Picador and is on sale now from all good bookshops for £22
Main photo: Martin Booth
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