Mixed Media: Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be (2015)

The Mixed Media column from the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, the comedy play with music by Frank Norman and Lionel Bart was revived in 2014 at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in London, directed by Terry Johnson. The original 1959 production by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop was described by Littlewood as 'Guys and Dolls but with its flies undone.' The music and lyrics were written by Lionel Bart, a gay Jewish East End boy, or in his own words 'a working-class homosexual Jewish junkie commie.'

Fings depicts a world of the 'lumpen proletariat' of gamblers, pimps, prostitutes, razor gangs, and crooks in a struggling 'schpieler' (a mix of gambling joint and knocking shop) in a 1950s Soho reminiscent of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. The play is performed in cockney rhyming slang, thieves cant, and Polari, the slang in gay subculture until the late 1960s. Paul Baker in Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men writes 'Polari flourished in the repressive 1950s, where the regulation of post-war sexual morality was viewed as a priority, and prosecutions against gay men reached record levels.' The play includes a song Contempery (sic)sung by Horace, a gay interior designer while the title song includes the line 'poofs in coffee 'ouses'

In the 1950s the police's image was projected by BBC TV's cosy Dixon of Dock Green, and it was not until 1963 that police corruption became public knowledge when Detective Sergeant Harold Challenor was charged with corruption offences at the Old Bailey: 'Soho sounded like Chicago when Challenor described it, he believed that fighting crime in Soho was like trying to swim against a tide of sewage' (James Morton Bent Coppers).

In Fings the 'schpieler' is handed over to the bent copper. Before the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act it was 'fahsends of pounds passing across the baize' but the Act legalised gambling in the UK, betting shops opened, and the government hoped to take gambling off the streets and end the practice of bookmakers sending 'runners' to collect from punters. The Act 'knocked their street-based competitors out of business at a stroke, a lot of them found that the capital required to set up premises, pay staff and 'go straight' was beyond them' (The Independent 5 April 2008).

In the 1950s there was concern about the visibility of prostitutes in London, and the Wolfenden Committee recommended a crackdown on street prostitution, and these were put into effect in the 1959 Street Offences Act: 'It shall be an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution.' The song Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be is Bart's satirical ode to the good old days of unchecked prostitution: 'I used to lead a lovely life of sin, dough! I charged a ton, now it’s become an undercover game... there used to be class doing the town, buying a bit of vice, and that's when a brass couldn't go down under the union price... I've got news for Wolfenden, Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be.' The Act forced the majority of prostitutes off the street. In Fings the prostitutes are skint. Helen J Self in History Repeating Itself: The Regulation of Prostitution and Trafficking writes 'the essence of the scheme was not to abolish prostitution, but to push women off the streets . . . off-street outlets for prostitution multiplied . . . other unwelcome side-effects was an increase in kerb-crawling.'

The Socialist Standard of October 1957 wrote 'the Committee's aim is simply to brush the dirt under the carpet' and 'the real causes of prostitution are the economic and social conditions in which it lives and flourishes. It is, in fact, a product of the monogamous marriage system within the framework of buying-and-selling societies' which reflects Marx and Engels view that 'the bourgeois family finds its complement in public prostitution' (Manifesto of the Communist Party). Lenin in an interview with Clara Zetkin argued that prostitutes are 'victims of bourgeois society, accursed by two concepts; firstly of its accursed system of property and secondly of its accursed moral hypocrisy' (The Women's Question).

The English Collective of Prostitutes established in 1975 seeks the decriminalisation of prostitution which is supported by trade unions such as the CWU and GMB, but 'sex work' has divided the trade union movement. In 2009 the TUC Women’s Congress voted against the decriminalisation of the sex industry and the unionisation of sex workers. The 2009 Policing and Crime Act, by targeting brothels for raids drove prostitution further underground, increasing the vulnerability of sex workers, and preventing women from reporting violence.

Fings concerns Rosie, an innocent young woman on the run from a violent partner, who goes on the game. Bart's Where Do the Little Birds Go, and The Ceiling's Coming Dahn are 'two of the best songs written for women in post-war English musical theatre' and makes Bart 'the uncrowned King of composing the English Whore's lament: give him a brass, and he'll expose the pain and doubt and fear and love in her' (The London Bluebird, 30 August 2012).

Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be is vibrant working-class theatre devoid of bourgeois moralising.

Steve Clayton

Three Plays Revisited (1998)

Theatre Review from the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seeing a film or a play after an interval of several years is an interesting, and sometimes a very surprising, experience. We often seek out films and plays which we have enjoyed, only to find, occasionally, the second viewing very disappointing. A film which, first time round, made for a marvellous evening, now seems very ordinary; another which appeared exciting and unusual, has become bland and boring. Of course it isn't the film which has changed--unless that is we are now seeing it in miniaturised form on television, rather than in its full glory on a cinema screen. Most usually what has changed is that we have changed. We have "moved on", our perceptions. And what is true of films is frequently even more true of plays. Last night's revival appears slight and insubstantial, whereas an earlier production had us on the edge of our seats. What then of three new productions of well-loved pieces of theatre?

Joan Littlewood's production of "Oh What A Lovely War" at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East was, by any standards, an extraordinary theatrical event. Those of us lucky enough to see it are unlikely ever to forget its wit, pathos and savage irony. The experimental company at Stratford, which Ms Littlewood always saw as at the forefront of "people's theatre", wanted to do something about the First World War; especially the trench warfare that had extended from the English Channel to the Swiss border. But there was a problem: events on the Western Front were so horrendous as to defy being presented in a straightforward way. By basing the show around the songs of the period, and performing it as a typical end-of-pier show so popular both before and after the war, the Stratford company came up with an inspired solution.

I wish I could report that the National Theatre's touring production (due in Brecon, Telford, Dewsbury and Chester in May, and Richmond, Salisbury and Nottingham in June), was a worthy successor of the great original, but it isn't. The irony has been largely lost, and pathos and genuine sentiment has become mawkish sentimentality. Fortunately, some moments are so intrinsically powerful as to survive the flaws. But what in the original was a celebration of the bravery and the stupidity, the humour and comradeliness of the working class in the face of cupidity and the arrogance, the conceit and the chilling indifference of their "masters and betters", is now largely lost.

Much more successful is the revival of David Hare's Skylight, at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich. Perhaps the actors don't quite make the impact of the original London team (see Socialist Standard, May 1996), but this serves only to mark up the quality of the writing and it's contemporary relevance. Great as distinct from only good plays, are so rich in nuggets as to reveal themselves fully only over several sittings. In this my third visit I noted subtleties that had previously escaped me: perhaps especially on this occasion Hare's contention that the entrepreneur is also a victim of capitalism. Marx argued that society's values and standards reflect its economic nature, and here is Tom forever striving for more, impelled by the inevitable imperatives of the market; wanting more and more happiness as well as more and more wealth, and destroying his relationship with his partner in the seeking.

Finally, the Oxford Stage Company is touring widely with Wesker's Roots. (Guildford, Cheltenham, Oxford and Worthing in May.) This is a play for all seasons, a definitive and unambiguous classic. Beatie and her struggle to find her own voice is both an intensely moving personal story, and also a metaphor for the enlightenment of empowerment of the whole of the working class of which she is a member. Abandoned by her boyfriend and deserted by her family, Beatie thrillingly finds her own voice in the play's final moments. It seems the most exhilarating ending of any play in the English language. If I had enough money I would want to engage a theatre company and take Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropist and Wesker's Roots on tour. Just imagine their impact!

Michael Gill

Mixed Media: Oh What a Lovely War (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the August 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London revived in February this year the anti-war musical entertainment Oh What a Lovely War to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. The original production by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, Charles Chilton, and Gerry Raffles opened at the same theatre in March 1963. Littlewood's Theatre Workshop was notable for left-wing and proletarian productions such as Brecht's Mother Courage, A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney, Brendan Behan's dramas and the musical play Fings Ain't What They Used T'Be by Frank Norman.

The 2014 production was directed by Terry Johnson, writer of Insignificance. Production design was by Lez Brotherston who wrote 'Joan Littlewood wrote it as a piece for a bunch of actors presenting a story, rather than very real characters. It was very Brechtian.' Littlewood indeed used Brecht's ideas on the politicisation of theatre to better convey the realities of war, using minimal props and Brecht's half-curtain for rapid scene changes. Littlewood like Brecht was searching for truth in the dramatic realisation of soldier's stories. Littlewood was influenced by the Expressionist techniques of Meyerhold in Russia, Erwin Piscator's use of newsreel in Germany, and the Theatre National Populaire use of bare stage and pinpoint lighting. She combined a European aestheticism with a deeply English love of popular theatre evidenced in the Pierrot costumes. Oh What a Lovely War is a pierrot show with songs, battles, a few jokes and is anchored in a seaside tradition. The presence of music-hall is evident in the way the MC (Shaun Prendergast in the 2014 production) chats to the audience as they come in.

Oh What a Lovely War is sourced in the songs of the First World War, Barbara Tuchman's August 1914, Haig's diaries, memoirs by Siegfried Sassoon, and Robert Graves plus Alan Clark's 1961 military history The Donkeys. Clark identifies the High Command of French, Rawlinson and Haig as responsible for the virtual destruction of the old professional British Army in 1915. Clark's book title originates with Falkenhayn's Memoirs where it is written 'Ludendorff: 'The English soldiers fight like lions', Hoffman: 'True, But don't we know that they are lions led by donkeys.' The play clearly portrays working-class lions being exploited by upper-class donkeys, the main villain being Haig whose contempt for the working class is clearly evident in his diary entry 'mostly gamekeepers and servants' after hearing 13,000 men were killed in three hours during the battle of Passchendaele where they gained one hundred yards.

The working class soldier is central to the play, everything is viewed from his perspective and sympathy for the working class soldier is paramount. We wrote in the Socialist Standard ofAugust 1964 that it was a 'witty and savage denunciation of the murder of a generation.' In a letter to Littlewood and Raffles on 5 June 1963 Bertrand Russell wrote ‘a statement on war such as I have not experienced... I wonder that it has been allowed on a London stage.’ The newsreel panels in the show are grim statistics of the casualties in the so-called 'Great War': 10 million dead, 21 million wounded, 7 million missing, the battle of the Somme July to November 1916 – 1.5 million casualties. The 1963 programme read: 'In 1960, an American Military Research Team fed all the facts of World War One into the computers they use to plan World War Three. They reached the conclusion that the 1914-18 war was impossible and couldn't have happened. There could not have been so many blunders nor so many casualties.' We wrote in the Socialist Standard of August 1964: 'When war broke out in 1914 it was much vaster and grimmer than anything the Victorians had seen, something for which people were totally unprepared.'

In Act Two the MC announces 'Part two of the War Game, find the biggest profiteer' and we have a scene of British, French, German, and American Munitions Manufacturers with a Swiss banker, which identifies international capitalism as the cause of the First World War and the ultimate beneficiary: 'two peace scares in the last year. Our shares dropped forty per cent, caused a flutter on Wall Street' and 'I'm a patriot, but I'm also a businessman; my stockholders must have dividends.' The suffragette and anti-war left-wing communist Sylvia Pankhurst makes an appearance reading a letter from Bernard Shaw: 'The men of this country are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the lusts and lies and rancour's of bloodthirsty men who love war.'

American capitalist Henry Ford was honest when he said 'Tell me who profits by war, and I will tell you how to stop it.' Oh What a Lovely War contributes to an anti-capitalist and an internationalist outlook but needs some socialist rigour so we say, as we did in 1914, 'Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.'

Steve Clayton