In an interview with Channel 4, Mark Oaten talks about why he wanted to participate in the series and what shocked him most and what were his lowest moments.
Channel 4: Why did you want to take part in the series?
Mark Oaten: I got a call out of the blue, and I was a little bit sceptical. I'd been asked to do all sorts of reality
TV before, including the jungle and things like that, and I'd been wary of doing it. But I was persuaded that this was
'reality TV' with a difference. This was going to be as real as it could be, and it had a really good purpose behind it. So I
was pleasantly surprised when I heard more about what was involved, and that was why I agreed to do it, in the end. It just
seemed to be a really testing challenge, a total contrast to anything I'd done before. I represent a rural constituency,
Winchester, without tower blocks and the associated problems, so for all sorts of reasons it felt right.
Channel 4: Where did you end up, and what were your initial impressions of the area?
Mark Oaten: I went to Barking and Dagenham, which I'd never been to in my life. I was dreading having to go and stay in
a tower block, and sure enough, it was a big, run-down tower block in Barking, with lots of social problems. Also, something
which is alien to me in terms of Winchester was that there was a big BNP presence in the tower block area. A lot of people had
voted BNP, it's got the highest number of BNP councillors in the country, so it couldn't have been more opposite to my comfort
zone.
Channel 4: When you got there, who did you stay with?
Mark Oaten: I started off with a woman called Kath. She was absolutely lovely, but we were totally opposite. I spend
my days jumping around doing things, and Kath spends her days watching daytime TV lying on the sofa, smoking cigarettes and
sometimes not even getting out of her pyjamas. I tried to persuade her to come for a run with me, she wouldn't do that. All
her get up and go seemed to have disappeared. She was very lethargic, completely dragged down by the atmosphere of living in
the tower block. And after a day or two I started to feel lethargic as well. There's something very oppressive about the
place, and it got me down as well.
Channel 4: You weren't too impressed with flat Kath had to live in, were you?
Mark Oaten: She had the most appalling mould in her bathroom, it was just disgusting living conditions. She has to bath
and shower in that, and she's not been able to get anyone to do something about it for years. And then also the condition of
the stairs, the lifts, just the whole general surroundings. I wouldn't want to live there, and therefore, why should I, as a
politician, accept them as living conditions for somebody else? If it's not good enough for me, then it shouldn't be good
enough for them.
Channel 4: You stayed with Kath for a couple of days. Then where did you go?
Mark Oaten: I then went to a family of six, with children just jumping all over me, cats jumping all over me, litter
trays everywhere, nappies everywhere, absolute chaos. The guy had a baseball bat by the side of the bed, and he said 'If I
hear you walking around in the night, I'll whack you with the baseball bat.' They were both unemployed, both lived on
benefits. I had to do the weekly shop for them on that amount. But my attitude towards them changed. By the time I got to
know them, I knew a totally different story about them. It was a lesson in not judging. And actually, from their perspective,
they judged me as an MP, they had all sorts of perceptions about what politicians were like, and that was interesting. We
broke down those barriers over the two days I stayed with them. And then the final couple was a couple of guys, I stayed with
them, the flat was beautiful and spotless, I was delighted to stay with them. But they were frustrated with their living
conditions. They've now left. They've escaped from the tower block.
Channel 4: Did you find it a major eye-opener, being there?
Mark Oaten: I've been into people's flats and houses as an MP, and I've seen bad living conditions, but I think the
difference is that I've done that for 10 minutes and then gone back into my office or gone back home. What I think I noticed
here was just how difficult it is to live in that kind of environment. Okay, it was only eight days, but it gave me a much
truer sense of what it's like to have that every single minute of your life, rather than just observing it in a quick meeting
or through pictures being sent to you. It brought it to life.
Channel 4: Was there anything that really shocked you?
Mark Oaten: There was a fight on the estate. There were little children caught up in it. Kids shouldn't have to be
involved in that situation, they shouldn't have to see that kind of thing, and I was shocked by that. It happened so quickly.
There's always this tension on the estate, and unless you're there, living it, you can't describe it, but once you're living on
the estate, it's in the air, you can smell it, you can almost tangibly feel that it's always just about to kick off.
Channel 4: When you say a fight, what extent are we talking about?
Mark Oaten: We're talking about 30 to 40 people ploughing into each other, about five or six police trying to break it
up, kids getting involved in it, people screaming at each other.
Channel 4: You organised a petition while you were there. What was it for, and how did it go?
Mark Oaten: The first thing was to see if we could actually get residents to take some ownership of the problems. There
was no action group, the residents hadn't come together, and I was keen for that to happen. I was amazed that when it did, and
I got five or six people together, it was the first time they'd ever met each other. Somebody had been living in that tower
block for 27 years, and they'd just not met their neighbours. So it was important to get that interaction going. And then we
wanted to try and get something to capture the attention of the local councillors and the chairman of housing. The petition
was to galvanise support, get a bit of community action going, get people talking about their problems, and then formally, once
the petition was handed in, that meant the residents had a chance to formally speak to the full council meeting, which they
did, and they did really well. They got to meet the chair of housing, and then, as a result of all of that, they got involved
in a campaign as a council to come up to London and meet the housing minister, and in the last episode of the programme, you'll
get an announcement from the housing minister about something quite significant for Barking and Dagenham.
Channel 4: You mentioned that you encountered a lot of people voting for the BNP when you were there. Was that based
around the feelings of hopelessness and disaffection of the residents?
Mark Oaten: I wasn't sure. I was trying to work that out. There was a lot of BNP support. I went along with the BNP
when they were canvassing in one episode, to get a sense of what people were saying to them. It was very seductive. The BNP
guys were basically saying 'You must be fed up with your house, you must be fed up with these living conditions. Do you
understand if there were less people we could build houses, we could move you out of here. Why don't you vote BNP?' And what
I discovered, really, was that people were not racist, they were voting for the BNP because they were fed up with the other
parties, and were desperate to get out of the tower blocks. They were looking for anybody that would say anything which might
give them a glimmer of hope. But when you cross-examined them, and said: 'You voted for a racist party. That makes you
racist,' they were very, very strongly denying that. [...] We had a big stand-up row with the BNP. The BNP hijacked a
meeting, that got really loud and really heated, and that was an eye-opener as well, in terms of how the BNP go about their
politics.
Channel 4: Did you feel threatened at any stage during the making of the series? Was there any real
hostility?
Mark Oaten: No hostility. There was one incident where somebody shouted out something abusive about my private life
from the newspapers four years ago. That was the only time during the whole week that that came up. The expenses issue came
up on a couple of occasions. It was just people trying to understand what MPs were like. For example, Kath thought I had a
butler and a cook. In one family, they couldn't understand that I could load the dishwasher, they didn't understand that I
could cook baked beans, they didn't understand that I was happy to watch Big Brother because I'd watched it loads of times
myself. There was a complete assumption that we didn't live in the real world, and that we wouldn't be able to cope in a
situation like this. I could do the mechanics of it fine. What I found difficult to cope with was the depressingness, the
miserable side of living in a tower block. That's what got me down. But I didn't encounter hostility. Bemusement about us,
yes. And I didn't feel threatened, but personally I found it difficult at times, and there were a couple of occasions when I
wanted to jack it in.
Channel 4: When were they? What were your lowest moments?
Mark Oaten: I think just the sense of not having anything to do, and being trapped in such a small space. Nowhere to
run, nowhere to go, not having my phone, my email, my wallet, all the things I'm used to having. I found that difficult. It
was only when I got a purpose, when I got properly stuck in to the petition and the campaign and the meeting with the council
officials, that I started to feel better, because I was doing something.
Channel 4: So presumably the high points were connected with the campaign?
Mark Oaten: The high point, for me, was the day I left, when all the residents I'd met came out and gave me a hug and a
cheer goodbye. That, for me, meant more than anything else, because we'd got to know each other, and I'd got to make some real
friendships with a couple of them. That was more important than the politics or anything else. I was thrown into something I
was quite scared about, they could easily have been very unwelcoming, and they weren't. We got to know each other and there
was a lot of mutual respect there and human nature came through really nicely. That, for me, is what I'll take away from it.
You can be chalk and cheese, you can have different perceptions, but we broke those barriers down. To get a hug from them
meant the world to me.
Channel 4: Do you think any of your political opinions have changed as a result of taking part in the
programme?
Mark Oaten: Yeah, I think I'm much more tolerant now of people who are on benefits than I was. I've got a better
understanding of the issues people are facing, like I'm much, much more committed to changing social housing than I was before.
Especially tower blocks.
Channel 4: Has taking part in the series made you a better politician?
Mark Oaten: It has changed me as a MP. I feel less powerful and have less answers in many ways – it is a
experience I would definitely recommend to other MPs – it helps to get you beyond the 20 minute surgery appointment and
means a rural MP can understand an urban area better. Perhaps all MPs should swap seats every now and then to get an idea of
the different issues facing different communities.
Read also Mark Oaten's testimonial about the making of this series.
