by Mark Thomas
‘Is there anything else you’re after?’
I explain about the school and she says,
‘There was a school opposite the pit, it’s been knocked down now, old Victorian looking one. It’s now Roy’s Autos but you can see what it used to look like because the caretaker’s house is still on at the end of the street and that used to be connected to the school.’
So we stand opposite Roy’s Autos as cars and lorries flash past, trying to imagine the end house extending into a school through the gaps left by freight and white vans.
GOES TO ONE SIDE WITH THE CHAIRS AND ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS:23
Now you will have heard of a play within a play, this is where a playwright puts a play in a play to examine themes, ideas and characters that they were too lazy to include in the body of the text. Shakespeare, lazy bastard. Hamlet, Midsummer Night’s Dream … This is not a play within a play, this is an audience within an audience. I am going to talk to you and you alone and ignore the rest of the audience. What this does, this creates an impression of intimacy and sincerity. I have two schools on my list of possibilities. North Gawber and Goldthrope. But in my heart of hearts I know neither is the one. I have to have them on the list because I need a method, a process.
And it occurs to me that I might have oversold the story, I might have misremembered, the school might not be there anymore, it might not exist. It also occurs to me that I have booked a tour for the show, I have had posters printed, hired venues and technicians and have had constructed what can only be described as, ‘a fucking great set of doors’.
And I wonder, I wonder … would it be acceptable to lie?
In a story about the importance of truth in stories, is it acceptable to lie to make the story better and therefore more ‘truthful-ish’?
So, I am going to get your opinion. I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to put your hands at your sides. Now, if you think it is acceptable for me to lie and make the story better, on the count of three put your hands on your knees. If you think I should be noble and tell the truth, on the count of three put an arm in the air … pro tip don’t use the right arm, don’t put it up straight, it looks shit.
OK. One, two, three.
VOLUNTEERS VOTE
We need a second referendum. It’s only advisory.
PART 3
It is a big night at the Red Shed. The first speaker of the programme is tonight and it’s the Guardian columnist, Owen Jones. The Shed is packed. Sandra is doing the door, Peter is in his best shirt and tie, George is behind the bar, Richard sorting subs. Owen Jones, the diminutive and cherubic columnist sits almost unnoticed in the corner. Someone approaches,
‘Are you Owen Jones?’
‘I am. I know I look like a twelve-year-old but I am.’
‘Can I get you a pint?’
‘Please, I don’t think they’ll serve me at the bar.’
Pints are purchased, seats crammed together and some of the local campaigns are here to speak before Owen. Refugees Welcome collect clothes and money. They use a squash court in a local leisure centre as a sorting centre of the donated clothes. I know some people will say, ‘What about caring for British people, aye?’ They have occupied a squash court, which is essentially a container for over competitive middle management to have cardiac arrests, this works for everyone. They are saving lives.
Gareth from the Bakers’ Union is barnstorming the story of how,
‘Wetherspoons in Scarborough unionised and two weeks later went to management and said, ‘You’ve got the English Defence League coming and meeting here, well that’s not on, you endanger our safety and it is racist, you either cancel or we go on strike. Management cancelled EDL and then they went round all the other pubs organising the workers and every pub kicked the EDL out except for one skanky craphole which we don’t care if they drink in.’
Owen is introduced and starts with,
‘This movement is built on the shoulders of giants …’
He does fifty minutes without notes, which some people find impressive.
MT LOOKS AT WATCH JUST TO CHECK
The night ends as it begins with arguments, beer and Peter selling tickets for panto.
Peter still runs an amateur theatre group in the Shed. A socialist panto, in his own words, ‘Wakefield’s Premier Marxist Leninist Pantomime Troupe.’ And as a socialist panto there are rules, no heroine ever marries and anyone with a title has an unhappy ending.
This year the show is Corbyn Hood,24 da da da da daa da da da daaah!
In which Corbyn has to have an archery competition with George Osborne who misses all his targets.
The audience are friends and comrades and if we don’t know them they know the ethos of the place, so it is intimate and rumbustious.
Ken plays Corbyn Hood, he is an ex-miner with a long beard and a thin frame. His wife Olivia – a local councillor – sits in the middle of the club. In one scene Ken has to go into a clinch with an actress and discuss Blairism, Ken grabs the actress and from the middle of the club you suddenly hear,
‘Hey he’s bloody married!’
Ken stands the actress upright comes to the front of the stage and says,
‘Sorry love I thought it were an open marriage.’
‘It’s bloody not and you can tell her that!’
She heckles so much that Peter has to come on, ‘It was as if Olivia the councillor wanted to be in the panto but couldn’t be fucked to come to rehearsal.’
And each performance finishes with the Red Shed anthem, where every one stands and lifts their glasses and fists into the air to sing the song.
It is to the tune of the Red Flag, would you all stand please. I know it’s a theatre but I think we all need a stretch.
DIRECTS AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS WHO PICK UP AND HOLD RED SHED LYRICS BANNER AT THE FRONT OF THE STAGE
On three, one two …
SINGS
Our Labour club is our Red Shed
It keeps the rain from off our head.
So stuff your brick built Tory club
We’d rather pay our Labour subs.
So raise your glasses to the sky
We’ll drink a drop until they’re dry.
Though Tories Scoff and Liberals Sneer
We’ll keep the Red Shed standing here.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS PUT BANNER DOWN AND SIT DOWN
I am called to a committee meeting and it seems like a summons. Coming out of the station I cut past the town hall and head down Westmorland Street – lined with pubs and middle aged men with short trousers and shorter hair smoking, not vaping smoking.
My closest allies Peter and Sandra are not here. So I am on my own with George, David and Richard.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS WHO ARE PLAYING GEORGE AND DAVID: Masks.
George begins.
‘Right best of order, minutes of last meeting approved. Item anniversary celebrations. Thanks due for the previous events. Owen Jones, excellent. Josie Long well done. Now Robert Llewllyn was going to give a talk about the electric car, cancelled. No new date. Why not?’
I am sorting that.
‘And the rest of the schedule we need the other speakers booked.’
‘Also,’ says Richard, ‘I had two emails about the same Bakers’ Union event and they had different times on them, we can not have confusion like this, we must have clarity in the diary or this club is finished.’
David says, ‘Now, you were going to do a chapter for my book?’
Yes.
‘Is it forthcoming?’
Soon.
I am left with the feeling that I have committed the worse transgression possible, I have let them down.
The next day I am ‘chasing children’.
MOVES TWO CHAIRS TO THE SIDE OF THE STAGE
I meet Sandra.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS: Could you bring Sandra mask and sit here?
It doesn’t get off to a great start as I open her car do
or into a wall.
PLAYS EDIROL:
MARK: Oh sorry I have just bashed your door Sandra.
SANDRA: Bloody hell.
MARK: Sorry.
She later assures me that she has nail varnish exactly the same colour as the car and it’ll mend.
With us today is Ian Clayton.25
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you be Ian and sit here?
Ian is a Yorkshire broadcaster and writer. He knows his local history, he knows his family history, he is one of those fantastic Yorkshiremen who can say,
‘Me father were a miner, me father’s father were a miner, me father’s, father’s, father were a miner, me Cro-Magnon ancestors were miners, the lungfish from which I am descend were miners, the big bang were nowt but a colliery expansion.’
Ian is a believer. He believes in stories. He has a list of pits to visit, a route and a story on each along the way.
When we reach Allerton Bywater Ian wants to show me the memorial built by local artist and ex-miner, Harry Malkin.
It is a massive double-decker pit cage, used to hoist miners up and down, with four panels in relief showing miners at work. Ian says this about Harry,
PLAYS EDIROL:
IAN: He were a fitter down Fryson pit …26
They are the men who put in the props and hold up the earth.
PLAYS EDIROL:
IAN: … and he decided to become an artist and when Harry started, I hope he wouldn’t mind me telling you this on a tape, but when Harry started they didn’t know where to buy art materials, when he were a young man, but his father had a massive back and he used to take his shirt off and he used to draw on his father’s back.27
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS PLAYING SANDRA AND IAN: Stand up please.
So Sandra, Ian and I walk around the massive monument staring at the panels of men fitting pit bolts and descending in the cage, gazing at the twisted torsos of pit workers created by an artist who started drawing on his dad’s back.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS: Sit down.
We head from pit to pit from housing estates to Halfords superstores. These are the structures that inhabit the space once occupied by pit yards. We approach one of the biggest pits in the area, the Prince of Wales.28 Ian mutters,
PLAYS EDIROL:
IAN: They leave it stranded and abandoned for thirty years and then clear it and put bloody McDonald’s there.
The golden arches, the symbol of union busting and zero hour contracts – a victory yelp over the defeated communities. Here is your promised future.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEERS: Would you take your chairs back please?
We reach Frickley colliery29 in the village of South Elmsall.
We walk to the housing estate, past bargain booze shops, men playing bowls and kids doing wheelies on mopeds along the length of the street. Ian stops at what was once a school, now a business centre.
‘What do you think?’
‘It could be …’
‘It’s a business centre now …’
‘The railings are different …’
‘These are new ones, changed since that time …’
‘Well … yeah, it could be …’
‘I had high hopes for this one.’
Opposite is a pensioner in her garden, Ian says,
‘Excuse me, love, Mark’s doing a project about the miners’ strike and we were wondering if you were around then?’
She says, I promise, quote,
‘Which one ’26 or ’84?’
‘’84,’ says Ian. ‘Were you around for the march back to work in ’85?’
‘No, we were on holiday. I’ll tell you who will know about that, Clare at the community centre at the bottom of the hill.’
The community centre has an old Victorian roof and Ian says,
‘This used to be a school right here—’
But before we can finish this conversation we enter the entrance hall and at the end of it stands a solitary cleaner, mop in hand like a sentinel.
‘IT’S YOU! It’s him. It’s you. Off the telly. Ian Clayton.’
A scrum builds around Ian and I feel Sandra’s arm on my back pushing me forward, saying,
‘Tell ’em you were on Channel 4.’
‘So what is it you’re after?’ says Clare from the community centre who it turns out is also the Town Hall clerk.
‘During the miners’ strike I was on a march back to work and I think it was here.’
‘I was on that.’
‘The march back?’
‘Yeah, it went past here up the hill.’
‘Where the housing estate is?’
‘Yeah, me dad made us take the day off school. You were on it?’
‘Yeah …’
‘Amazing … What is it you’re after?’
I explain about the kids and the school.
‘You need to speak to local NUM officials, local historians and local photographers.’
She writes a list and I start at the top of it.
An old NUM official first. I explain what I am doing, he says,
‘I’d help but me memory has gone to shit, sorry.’
The second number can remember but if you are the holder of a story not often told, and working-class stories are often ignored, then your version of the events becomes the version of the events.
‘I’m trying to find a pit with a school nearby where children sang …’
‘There’s no schools on our march back, we didn’t pass any.’
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE: I am aware I have made him sound like a pirate.
‘There are schools …’
‘No there are no schools.’
‘On Westfield Lane, there are two, one at the bottom and one halfway up.’
‘I will grant you that. What else do you remember?’
‘Clapping at the pit yard entrance as the miners went into …’
‘No one went into work that day. We had a picket line and not one man crossed!’
‘But what about …’
‘Not one man crossed, not one man went to work.’
‘But the picket was about redundancies, which meant men had to go into work to get their redundancy notices, come out and then picket.’
‘That is true. But there were no children singing.’
‘You might not have heard them …’
‘We were marching back nine deep.’
‘Surely that reinforces my point that you might not have seen them.’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. But it didn’t happen.’
I call a local photographer,
‘It’s about the miners’ strike.’
‘Oh I took loads of photographs, at least once a week.’
‘Do you have them?’
‘Oh yes and the negatives.’
‘To hand?’
‘They are in a warehouse …’
‘A warehouse?!?!’
‘There’s a lot of them.’
‘And you still have them all?’
‘Well we had a flood …’
‘No!’
‘But I managed to save all of the photos.’
‘I am after the ones on the march back to work.’
‘Oh that roll of film didn’t come out. Sorry.’
I ask Clare for help.
‘The only person who might know someone is the head of the council.’
I phone the head of the council. I say I am trying to find someone to talk to who might have seen children singing in a playground on the march back. He says,
‘Speak to me, I remember it as if it were yesterday.’
The head of the council saw it, his name is Steve Tulley.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEER ON LEFT: You are Steve. Could you stand up, put one hand in your pocket, feet apart and pull your shoulders back?
Steve is an ex-NUM official, after the miners had gone back to work he lead a wildcat strike, was taken to court and fined ¼ million, he is only just straight from it. He is leader of Sou
th Elmsall Council and on Wakefield District Council – he was thrown off the Labour group for opposing cuts, he is only just back on.
I ask about the children singing on the march back and he says,
PLAYS EDIROL:
STEVE: Oh I can remember it as clear as it were yesterday. I can remember setting off and I can show you today where we set off from and where we walked and where we went to. We passed two schools, we passed a school on the right hand side which is now our community centre …
This is the community centre that Clare works in, that is our school.
PLAYS EDIROL:
STEVE: … and Jean Elliott was the school teacher there, and she was crying on the wall is the school teacher. I can remember it as if it were yesterday.
Steve knows the school teacher who led the children into the playground and I ask if he will approach her so we might talk.
MOVES TWO CHAIRS TO CENTRE
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE VOLUNTEER: Would you be Jean please and sit here?
MT GETS A TRAY WITH TEAPOT AND CUPS AND SAUCERS, PLACES IT IN FRONT OF CHAIRS, POURS TEA INTO CUPS AND GETS EDIROL AND HIS OWN MASK. THEN SITS NEXT TO AUDIENCE VOLUNTEER PLAYING JEAN
Jean Elliott, two L’s and two T’s, lives fifteen minutes from where she was a deputy head in Westfield Lane. She is now eighty-four and has an exercise bike in her front hall. I have bought her chia seeds as she has started a new diet and cannot find them anywhere so I have brought them up from that there London. She gets best cups and saucers out, which is a gesture I always find humbling, a gesture of kindness and welcome to complete strangers. And she has some biscuits and sandwiches made too.
I ask her what she thought when Steve Tulley contacted her.
PLAYS EDIROL:
JEAN: I was quite surprised when Steve rang me and he remembered it. I have always remembered it. I get very emotional when I think about it because my dad was a miner and he died before he was sixty. I have quite funny feelings through the strike, because in one way I was glad they were going to come to an end. ’Cos you could see with global warming it had to but it was done in such a cruel horrible way wasn’t it?
MARK: Do you think the North has ever recovered?
JEAN: No I don’t, no I don’t.
We talk about growing up in Grimethorpe, her father, her sister and how she wishes she had done more in the strike and I say I have similar feelings, that I wish I had done more. Then I ask if she noticed any changes in the children during the strike.