Friday 13 December 2013

The George Garrett Archive Project

 Module Three. Workshop Four 
On The Parish. 1937 – 1939. 
From Popular Front to Another War.


For this, the final workshop of our third module, and the last meeting of the group before Xmas, we looked at the period of George’s life from the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War through to the beginning of the Second World War. A tumultuous time, which saw George respond, in classic George Garrett style, through his writing and his personal, social and political activities, to the events he was living through.

Although poverty and unemployment was still endemic throughout the late 1930’s, there were the signs of some improvement on a number of fronts. The ‘Stand Still’ act of 1935, won on the back of the consistent unemployed demonstrations, marches and crusades of the 1920’s and early 1930’s,  a ensured no further cuts in benefits. The parochial councils, ‘The Parish’, had shown themselves incapable with dealing with mass unemployment and the paying of benefits, which were disparate across the country anyway, and as this was taken under state control, so too the state began to offer support to local councils (corporations), particularly in the area of housing. Alongside the rise in available and affordable private housing, a building programme was under way which saw the development of tenements and Gardens, such as Gerrard Gardens in Liverpool, leading to a rise of families in rented accommodation from 1% in 1914 to 14% in 1939. Slum clearances were underway, something commented upon by George Orwell, who George Garrett took round a number of the new developments in Liverpool when Orwell was researching ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’.

In his diaries, Orwell, ‘was impressed by the fact that Liverpool is doing much more In the way of slum-clearance than most towns. The slums are still very bad but there are great quantities of Corporation houses and flats at low rents.’ He comments upon the developing new towns outside of Liverpool ‘consisting almost entirely of Corporation houses, which are really quite livable and decent to look at’, and finishes by noting how there is no tradition of wearing clogs and a shawl over head in Liverpool – ‘how abruptly this custom stops a little west of Wigan’.

George, following his brief illness, as mentioned in the previous blog, is still out of work, and will remain so up until the outbreak of war. He has had some success with his short stories, and judging by ‘The Pianist’, a story taken from real-life experience which remained unpublished until 1980, he would have had plenty of material to play around with, including documentary evidence and his own reportage, which he demonstrated some skill at being able to work up into short stories. This is shown in the ‘The Parish’, published in October 1937 in Left Review, which was culled from his longer autobiographical work, ‘On The Parish’. But nothing was forthcoming. Like the three plays before, he had the ability to leave them behind and move forward, no doubt restless, but maybe bored at the same time.

Alan O’Toole, whose monograph on George we hope to publish, speculates on the reasons given for George leaving behind his short stories. As George, in this period, wrote a major study on Hamlet, ‘Worms: Hamlet of Denmark’ (no doubt embarked upon after the success of having his critical piece ‘That Four Flusher Prospero’ published alongside two essays by leading critics in Shakespeare Survey, 1937) and also spent many hours on his as yet unpublished autobiography, ‘Ten Years on the Parish’, Alan pours scorn upon the idea that George had no time to write, that family commitments got in the way, and states that ‘The idea that his well of creativity simply having dried up overnight is not even worth consideration.’
What Alan does draw out is that George’s success in being published also brought disappointment and some disillusion at the milieu and the literary cliques around these magazine, The Adelphi in particular. George revealed this in his own sardonic manner, inviting delegates at one Adelphi convention to line outside the toilets for the ‘privilege of passing Murry (The editor of The Adelphi) his toilet paper. He goes on to say that George, along with other working class writers of the period, may have been irked by the realisation that he had ‘an almost exclusively middle-class audience’.

To consider this is also to consider whether this could have literally been the end of the story as far as Garrett’s writing goes. But something new, and ultimately both inspirational and dreadful was to once again demand George’s attention and involvement.

Fascism, and fascist groups, had been attempting to gain ground across Europe, in the UK, and also within Liverpool. Liberalism had failed amidst the age of extremes. Both extreme left and extreme right were vying for popular attention. The fascists, even though Liverpool’s Tory Lord Mayor, Margaret Beaven, visited Mussolini in 1928 and was photographed giving the fascist salute, were given short shrift within the city. Amidst the dithering of the national labour organisations, Liverpool generally supported a ‘no platform’ policy, and moved swiftly to break up meetings and demonstrations the fascists attempted to hold. British Union of Fascist leader Oswald Mosely made some forays into Liverpool to try and gain ground, but each time was repelled, even with what appeared to be tacit support from the local police who hospitalised and arrested many a demonstrator. But regardless, the protests continued, and in 1937, after Oswald was felled and knocked unconscious by a brick thrown by an ant-fascist after Oswald’s latest attempt to appear in the city, Oswald ‘lost a great deal of his image as being a man of action who could control the streets’, and never appeared in Liverpool again.

But Oswald’s raids were child’s play compared to the events that began on July 17th 1936, when General Franco assumed command of the Moors, and virtually every one of the 50 Garrisons throughout Spain declared support for his fascist manifesto. In response the workers of Barcelona, virtually unarmed, stormed and won the city’s barracks, and the Spanish Civil War, which would rage for two years until Madrid fell in 1939 was underway.

Many workers from Liverpool volunteered and lost their lives in the International Brigades. Less than 10% of the volunteers were married men. George, now with five children, and maybe not as fit as he once was, stayed at home. But George’s activism was as significant as any at that time, as George, along with jerry Dawson and others, as a direct response to the events in Spain, formed Merseyside left Theatre, which then joined with the national movement and became The Unity Theatre.

Formed with an avowedly radical manifesto that declared, ‘We are a political theatre involved in the struggle for socialism’, it sought out a working class audience to bring to them the ‘most urgent political issue of the day – the need to rouse support for the Spanish people in their fight against international fascism and to warn: Madrid today – Merseyside Tomorrow’. The first plays were called ‘Guernica’ and ‘Spain’, and they toured the region appearing in theatres, church halls, on the streets, and anywhere they could get an audience. There was a ready response and many of their productions played to full houses.


George Garrett and The Unity Theatre were a marriage made in heaven. Here George could bring his experience, contribute his writing, and express himself through acting, something which also brought appreciative reviews and critical support. Writing in ‘Left Theatre, Merseyside Unity Theatre – a Documentary record’ Jerry Dawson comments upon Garrett’s role and influence, saying, ‘Merseyside left theatre were lucky. They had a man who had worked with the Wobblies in America. He could set the cast firmly in Brooklyn and in the Bronx. He had led the Liverpool contingent in the Hunger march of 1922. He could carry the American Struggle across the Atlantic and make it British.’ George’s impact, and his zest for performance can also be seen on this page in the glowing tribute paid to him by Jerry Dawson.


Where George went, trouble did seem to follow, and in December 1938 he again found himself under arrest, along with eleven other cast and crew members, after the curtain was brought down upon the left theatre’s performance of Clifford Odett’s ‘Waiting for Lefty’, which they were presenting in Chester as part of a pre-Christmas Drama festival. Bishop Norman Tubbs, The Dean of Chester, along with a number of other ‘prominent patrons’ walked out at a perceived blasphemy in the play. It appears that this was an excuse to put a halt to a radical play being performed to a theatre that, as a result of the trades-union and Labour party branches being circulated, had an audience with a distinctly working class tinge to it. Due to not complying with the demands of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, the defendants were bound over for twelve months with costs. But the case made national publicity and was even discussed in the House of Commons.

George’s involvement with The Unity Theatre, up to the war and into the late 1940’s, contradicts the idea that his writing career was at an end after his last short story was published in 1937. The Unity Theatre was ‘an enterprise which took both literature and “the message” straight to the people on the streets’, and George no doubt felt this to be a ‘more worthwhile project on which to devote his time’. And, alongside acting, he devoted many hours to writing and contributing scenes and dialogue to new plays, and is credited as the co-writer of Man with a Plan and One Hundred years Hard, two plays that were highly successful across the North-west region at the time.

And then came the war, and George was now allowed ‘to risk his life once more at sea’. A Stoker again, who understood more than most the need to engage in the fight against fascism, now rampant across Europe following the defeat of the Spanish workers, George signed on and spent time at sea, and then endured some of Hitler’s worst bombing raids while working as a night-watchman on the docks at Bootle.

This has been an immense decade in George’s life. His writing, at least what we know about, has ranged across the genres – theatre, short story, reportage, poetry and criticism. He’s seen success in literary spheres, but seems happier engaging in the drama of struggle, sharing the stage with others on his wavelength rather than holed up in singular writing. He has lived in America, and again sailed the oceans, but he is changed by it all, and after the war changes will come which will suit him even less.

Alan O’Toole writes that ‘George’s own way had become a more isolated path than ever.’ As many of his former comrades, the ‘old guard of libertarian socialism’ had disappeared. ‘I think George was glad to get out of things’, he writes, and that may be true, but there are far more stories of George to be told, and we’ll be returning to them after Xmas, when we move on to Module Four of the course.

Blog created and written by Mike Morris & Tony Wailey, based upon a series of introductions by Tony Wailey to the George Garrett Archive course.

The George Garrett Archive project workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off Hope Street). The next meeting will be on Monday 6th January 2014. All welcome.

Wednesday 11 December 2013

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

Nelson Rolihlahala* Mandela was a hero and icon of our time. Millions of words have been written, and many more will be, about his amazing political career – the struggle, the long imprisonment and his emergence, unbroken and unembittered, to steer South Africa away from the danger of civil war to democracy and a degree of unity.
There was, of course, an element of myth-making about all this. The focus on his imprisonment – Anti-apartheid’s Free Mandela campaign – cleverly individualised what was a mass struggle which he was ever ready to acknowledge. His period of membership of the Communist Party of South Africa wasn’t revealed until recently. Detractors have pointed to failures and mistakes, among them his slowness to act to stem the spread of AIDS. But I believe the phenomenal outpouring of emotion and tributes worldwide following his death show that few politicians have touched our imagination or inspired our love as he did. For me, his essential greatness lay not only in his courage, dedication, endurance and toughness, but in his understanding and forgiveness of opponents coupled with warmth, humour, simplicity and absence of arrogance. He conquered white South Africans, including Afrikaner Nationalists, by his unfaked concern for their fears. He was relaxed and easy with people whatever their status. Even his youthful ladies’ man image, two broken marriages and reputed weakness for celebrities, especially pretty ones, are widely accepted as part of his humanity.
Though not a member of the ANC, I worked in Port Elizabeth and Durban with many of his lieutenants and knew he had organised non-violent civil disobedience in the 1950s. His decision to call for armed struggle after the massacre by police of 69 peaceful black protesters against the infamous pass laws in 1960, influenced my own abandonment of pacifism.  Mandela was a successful lawyer with links to the Transkei Thembu aristocracy, but he was nonetheless willing to go underground and lay his life on the line in the cause of a democratic, inclusive and non-racial South Africa.  He movingly said at his trial:

‘I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for…But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’ 

His conduct during his time as president proved he meant what he said and gave South Africans of all ethnicities hope of a better society (a hope sadly dented by his successors).
  In prison for a mere 5 years to Mandela’s 27, I was inspired to begin a cycle of poems depicting him as an African Prometheus, a Titan who stole fire from the gods to empower ordinary humanity and was cruelly punished for it by Zeus (for whom read the South African apartheid state).
I'm moved that there are proposals in Liverpool to celebrate and honour Mandela’s valuable life. Grateful, too, that when Shirley Mashiane Talbot, a lifelong ANC member, and I were campaigning together years ago for the Anti-apartheid Movement we got heart-warming support from residents of the city. And in 2008 several organisations, including the City Council, co-operated to organise events to mark the great man’s 90th birthday.

*an isiXhosa word meaning troublemaker!


African Prometheus

High 
Upon the krantz
Smeared with blood and gore and shit 
Prometheus 
Is chained. 
Handcuffs rasp with aching writsts
The ridge knife-cuts his bleeding back
King Zeus 
Holds a blowtorch to his blistered face.

Nightfall 
Brings the eagles 
Like hunger lust and fear
To rip 
With beak and talons
At his gut 
His groin 
And then it all begins again. 
He prays 
For death – and cannot die
Cursed with endless life.

Girls 
Come in their mini skirts 
Their smooth thighs moist for love; 
He feels sap swell his horn 
Hears the whispers in his ear…
Recant. 

Zeus
Stubs his fat cigar 
His voice too is soft:
You stole the sacred flame for men 
Joined the mob behind my back 
Led revolt against the gods
Tried to turn my world to ash
And build a new. But 
I forgive.
Forget that rabble.
Recant. 

Hermes 
Comes 
The messenger
Soft-footed in his brown-suede shoes
Exit permit in his hand: 
We drank together at the club 
You’ve only got to say the word 
Sign here on the dotted line.
Recant. 

Prometheus
Writhes against the rock
Teeth-torn lips spit out a groan
I can’t. 

Zeus
In his car below
Tells the chauffeur to drive on 
Eagle-wings 
Blot out the sun 
Eagle-beaks tear out the gut again. 

Heracles. 
Is far away
Beyond the reach of a telegram 
While silent on the folded plains 
The unseen people 
Seem to sleep. 


David Evans

Wednesday 4 December 2013

The George Garrett Archive Project

Module Three. Workshop Three


On The Parish. 1934 – 1937. 

The Writer as Historian and Dramatist.


Christopher Hilliard: To Exercise Our Talents, P.105

In introducing this, the eleventh workshop of the George Garrett Archive course, Tony Wailey, in situating and contextualising George Garrett and his work, opened by reflecting back on the previous workshop where we discussed the great slump, the great depression and the 1929 crash. Because of the level of need displayed through mass unemployment, and as a results of the protests against both that and the poor levels of maintenance generally provided by the poor-law parish guardians, there was more state assistance available to the unemployed. But, the sheer length of the recession and the recession meant that a whole generation had grown up with mass unemployment as a permanent feature of their life. For many, Garrett included, ten years could pass with little more than a week or two of casual work to be had. As an interesting contrast to this back ground, Tony quoted from Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century. 1914-1991’:

All this in spite of the fact that the 1930’s were a decade of considerable innovation in industry, for instance, in the development of plastics. Indeed, in one field – entertainment and what later came to be called ‘the media’ – the interwar years saw the major breakthrough, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, with the triumph of mass-radio, and the Hollywood movie industry, not to mention the rotogravure illustrated press. Perhaps it is not quite so surprising that the giant movie theatres rose like dream palaces I the grey cities of mass unemployment, for cinema tickets were remarkable cheap, the young as well as the oldest, disproportionately hit by unemployment then as later, had time to kill, and, as the sociologists observed, during the depression husbands and wives were more likely to share joint leisure activities than before. (P. 102)

However, just as this technological revolution was underway, and later as the move to rearmament brought some relief as it provided employment, this period also marked the fall of liberalism and saw the end of free trade. There were contradictions; the rise of social democracy was tempered by the rise of far-right and fascist movements in all major European countries. Keynesianism gained support, most notably in the New Deal policies of US president Roosevelt. This ‘age of extremes’ drew people in from all quarters into new movements and new activities. Nowhere is this better displayed than in the response to the putting down of the Spanish revolution, and the taking of sides in the Spanish Civil War.

The middle-classes here saw the middle-class in Spain voting republican. Then they saw the army stepping in and stamping upon the new aspirations and hopes for liberal democracy, or even revolution. For sections of the middle class, and for our purposes the literary intelligentsia, this marks a major turning point, and pushes their sympathies towards the working classes.

At this moment reading becomes part of the mass entertainment industry, and John Lehmann, a friend of Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden, and others including John Middleton Murray and Richard Rees, set up new magazines devoted to new writing: The Adelphi, left Review, New Writing, etc.; an English take on the American dime novel. When it falls under the imprint of Penguin, Lehmann’s ‘New Writing’ reaches sales of 75,000 per issue.

This is the moment at which George achieves his greatest success. His first story, fittingly titled ‘First Born’, is published in June 1934 in John Middleton Murry’s ‘The Adelphi’ magazine. George publishes ‘First-Born’ under the pseudonym ‘Matt Low’, a play on the French word for sailor, ‘Matelot’. Between 1934 and 1937 he goes on to have a further nine stories published in The Adelphi, New Writing and Left Review, four of which are attributed to Matt Low. His reasons for using the pseudonym may well have been to avoid losing benefits, although it seems that George enjoyed playing round with identity, using pseudonyms like an ‘overcoat’ to work within a new identity dependending on which genre he was working within. He has moved on from his plays. Too big an enterprise with very little chance of them being staged, could well have been his motivation. But these short stories are where he truly finds his voice. His letters to Lehmann, to Rees, Middleton-Murry and fellow writer Jack Common are numerous. These and his re-discovered notebooks show Garrett to be a committed, intelligent writer, alive within his craft, and a worker who reaches far beyond the confines of the ‘proletarian writer’.

 But this feverish activity comes at great cost. Without a room of his own, and barely able to even find time in a library due to fellow benefit sufferers appealing for help, George finally succumbs to the pressure of balancing enduring poverty with a growing family and a vital need to be creative. Christopher Hilliard, in To Exercise Our Talents, reports the following from a letter of George Garrett to New Writing Editor, John Lehman:


People wanted more from him – Jack Common, Tom Harrison – there was even talk of a publishing contract for a complete book, but it wasn’t to be. He got out 3000 words for Jack Common, but when he turned away ‘the baby tore it to shreds’. Heart-breaking, in every sense, but we are here to celebrate what was achieved rather than mourn what could have been. This, as we know from his involvement in The Unity Theatre dramas in the 1930’s and 40’s, wasn’t the end of George’s writing career, but it was the end of his ‘moment’ in the 1930’s, when he managed to publish an incredible series of stories that rubbed shoulders with the work of WH Auden, Isherwood and George Orwell, to name but a few.

Because of its position as a port, and the possibilities for casual work through the docks and the ships, Liverpool was never classed as an area of distress. But in Liverpool there were pockets of poverty like nowhere else. As one report noted, the human decay was as serious as the material decay, and many people were written off as being beyond rehabilitation into the workforce. This grinding poverty was a challenge and impediment to life for many, but it must have been an added weight upon someone trying to express themselves artistically.

In the late 1930’s George, after a brief interlude to recover, is enjoying something of a resurgence, indicated by his role in showing George Orwell (another George who works under a pseudonym – Orwell’s real name was Eric Arthur Blair) around Liverpool when orwell was researching his classic study of the depression, ‘the Road to Wigan Pier’.

Orwell was introduced to Garrett by the Deiners, another radical working class family who ran an ‘Adelphi’ circle in the area. It’s an indication again of George Garrett’s standing that he was thought of as someone who had the knowledge and authority to introduce Orwell to the working conditions and effects of poverty in Liverpool. They must have felt a certain affinity, and sat up all night discussing books and politics. The following day Garrett took Orwell to the docks to witness how men were hired, or sent away for the day of they didn’t get the ‘tap on the shoulder’.

Orwell spoke very highly of George in his ‘Wigan Pier Diaries’, commenting that:

'I was very greatly impressed by Garrett. Had I known before that it is he who writes under the pseudonym of Matt Low in the Adelphi (a magazine published in the 1920's and 30's) and one or two other places, I would have taken steps to meet him earlier.' - George Orwell. (Hilliard. P 119)

Unfortunately, after ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ was published, Garrett, along with other working-class writers such as Jack Common, didn’t feel as favourable towards Orwell. George regarded ‘Wigan Pier’ as ‘one long sneer’, commenting to John Lehmann that he felt it could do a lot of ‘damage’, adding “That it should appear as a ‘Left Book’ gives it an added damage”. Lehmann himself recognised the difference between Orwell’s middle class sensibilities compared to Garrett’s handling of working class life, saying, in ‘Man In the Street’ from ‘New Writing in Europe’, that Garrett’s ‘needle of sensitivity does not quiver so violently as Orwell’s who hates and despises all the things that Garrett does but knows them in a far less familiar way.’ (p.83-84)

Orwell had previously commented in 1936 that there was no such thing as working-class writing. This provoked a furious response, which in itself would have taken much time and energy for writers like George. This response, and Orwell’s encounter with Garrett, led him to change his mind. Speaking later, in 1940 on BBC radio, Orwell, in a discussion on proletarian and working class writing brought together a number of writers he admired; ‘Oh yes’ he says, talking about good writing that has risen from the ranks of working class writers, ‘lots. Jack London’s book The Road, Jack Hilton’s Caliban Shrieks, Jim Phelan’s prison books, George Garrett’s sea stories, Private Richards’s Old Soldier Sahib, James Hanley’s Grey Children — to name just a few.’

We had a long discussion on a number of issues, some of which will come up next week, in relation to Garrett and Spain, and George’s role in the formation of the Left Theatre and Unity Theatre, and also speculated on just how well known, or how well read, was Garrett’s work in Liverpool at that point. As mentioned earlier, the Deiner’s knew it was Garrett they would ask to accompany Orwell on his visit to Liverpool, and, as the Deiner’s ran a circle connected to the Adelphi Magazine, we know they were aware of Garrett’s writing under his own name and as ‘Matt Low’. This indicates Garrett was fairly well known for his work, even if that was among a relatively limited circle.

Next week , for the 4th and final workshop of module three, we will be looking at the years 1937-39, and Garrett’s life and work moving from the Popular Front to Another War’.


Blog created and written by Mike Morris & Tony Wailey, based upon a series of introductions by Tony Wailey to the George Garrett Archive course.

The George Garrett Archive project workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off Hope Street).



Tuesday 3 December 2013

Pulp Idol Book Launch

We are holding a celebration event on 12th December at The Siren Café, 54 St James Street, to launch the 2014 Pulp Idol book. We will also be inviting people from our What’s Your Story? course to commend all our writing courses throughout the year.

There will be live music to accompany the night, so bring all your friends and family to celebrate our WoW writers getting published! Doors will open at 7pm and run till late.

The books will be available on the night for £2.99.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

The George Garrett Archive Project

 Module Three. Workshop Two 


On The Parish. 1926 – 1939. 

From Seaman to Writer to Advocate.


In a continuation of a landmark series of introductions, both discussing and contextualising George Garrett’s life and work, Tony Wailey this week began by exploring how extreme financial dogmatism permeated the period of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Nowhere is this seen better than the great crash of 1929, which draws the world into its vortex. Britain had returned to the Gold Standard of 1913 in the hope it would return the country to pre-war prosperity. Wall Street crashes under a surfeit of credit. In 1932 an incredible 50% of mortgages were broken. Out of the country’s debt of $6.5bn $1.9bn was on motor cars. In the US everything had been put on the consumer boom, white goods and cars – consumer durables.

The crash impacted upon Britain, with imports becoming expensive, though this was lessened by the UK’s ability, in certain areas, to exploit its own internal market with the growing popularity of white goods and consumer durables among its growing, primarily southern, urban economy. However, the impact upon Germany, Austria, and other central European economies, which had been bankrolled by the US after the crashes of 1924, these countries forced into short-term borrowing for long-term projects, was devastating as the US began to call in its loans. Inflation soon becomes almost uncontrollable, with a major impact upon the value of the German Mark. It was only now that the notion of financial orthodoxy began to be challenged.

At first the Labour Gov’t didn’t fare as badly as expected; it passed the Housing Act of 1931 and embarked upon a far reaching building project to meet the needs of the new urbanisation. This led to developments such as Gerard Gardens in Liverpool. However, this was blown off course as the effects of the Wall St. crash continued to ripple out across the globe.

In 1922, when George Garrett and masses of others were marching across the country, 1.1 million people were unemployed. Between 1929 and 1932 this rose to 3m. However, such was the impact of the defeat of the General Strike of 1926 that this rise in unemployment was met with despair rather than militancy, and any treks across the country had long since turned into crusades rather than marches, denoting a move away from militancy of the 20’s to the resigned mood of the 30’s.

The employing class continued the offensive they had begun before, during and after the General Strike, and punitive measures were dished out to both those within and those out of work. For the unemployed these measures were particularly harsh; the ‘Genuinely Seeking Work’ clauses in the unemployment legislation was used as a stick to both beat the unemployed and keep them in check. Dole camps, which represented little more than hard labour, were just another feature of the problems faced by those out of work, and people were virtually ‘huddling down’ to a life on the dole. Walter Greenwood’s seminal novel, Love On the Dole, is published in 1933.

This period represents the longest time that George was without work – little more than a week in five years, as, added to the general problems faced by the unemployed, George was also well-known as a militant figure whose movements are under constant surveillance by the CID, a leader, and one who would always be the last to get the nod if any work was available.

Although conditions in Liverpool are as bad as anywhere else, the city was not designated as a distressed zone or special area, due to the fluidity of the port, with the idea that there would always be some sort of casual work available. However, with 139,000 livelihoods out of a population of over 600,000 in some way dependent upon the port, and shipping suffering with imports and exports falling, there is no doubt that the population suffered extreme distress.

An indication of the fear of the dole was Liverpool Labour leader Jack Braddock’s refusal to accept the nomination for a parliamentary seat on the basis that it could prove temporary. Jack had worked in insurance for ten years and feared dropping back below the bread line. If you were in work during this period you could survive. Cinemas were cheap, as was gambling, food and drink, and often clothing too.

Author and biographer of Bessie Braddock, Millie Toole, talking about seeing George Garrett ‘sauntering along as only George Garrett can, just watching’, seems to sum up George’s attitude at this time. He watches and observes. He’s far from idle, consistently acting as an advocate for those battling their way through the relief and rates boards, and he even stands as an independent candidate for the Brunswick ward in the local elections of 1928, however, he is clearly beginning to ‘write himself out’ of things, taking a step backwards, and turning once again to his craft of writing.


          SWORDS  INTO PLOUGHSHARES

At last the great day arrived. The Chief emerged from his room in full regalia. One hand hidden to the wrist in the breast of his tunic, the long sword trailing from his heels, the imposing figure strutted aft. Wise members of the crew, catching a glimpse of him, dodged clear, one of them remarked later in the stokehold, after poking a heavy slice-bar in six fires, 'We get enough bleeding gymnastics without playing boy scouts with that barmy fucker.' His mates agreed and kept out of the way. 

The donkey-man, Mangor, was not so lucky.'' Eight to twelve was his duty - and this was the Chief’s watch, though he seldom visited the engine-room. This suited Mangor for he disliked being pestered, but something went wrong with one of the engine bearings and he to seek advice. Ascending the poop-ladder, he stopped to study the Chief. The sight of him revived bitter memories. Mangor had soldiered in scattered parts.


The development of new magazines – The Adelphi, New Writing, The Penguin imprint, etc. that suddenly spring up in the 1930’s, coupled with the Mass Observation movement and a new interest in working class writers, gives Garrett his chance. His key themes are Justice, Identity and advocacy, of puncturing pomposity and celebrating often small, individual victories, acts of revenge, of the small man such as Mangor the donkey-man in ‘swords into Ploughshares’ getting one over on the ship’s deranged captain. It’s significant that the mass movement has disappeared from his stories and reportage. This is the politics of the parish pump.

However, it’s still a major struggle to find the time to write. With five young sons in a cramped tenement, he has to get out to find a place to be on his won. But his popularity, coupled with his wealth of knowledge and inability to turn anyone away, means that he cannot even got to the library to work as he is constantly approached for advice and support about relief, other benefits, seamen still missing, etc, etc.
That he not only manages to write, but sees his work published alongside some of the major literary figures of the day, Isherwood, Auden, etc., is a testament to his skill and his determination.

Blog created and written by Mike Morris & Tony Wailey, based upon a series of introductions by Tony Wailey to the George Garrett Archive course.

The George Garrett Archive project workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).


Friday 22 November 2013

George Garrett Archive Project

Module Three, Workshop One.

On The Parish. 
The General Strike to another War 1926-1930

George arrives back in Liverpool at the end of the General Strike, to witness ‘Strikers and Policemen playing football together’, a metaphor for everything now being ‘boxed-off’ inpreparation for a return to normal conditions. What he returns to is a country with a deep residue of Imperialism running through it. The General Strike wasn’t wanted by the ruling class, nor by the union leadership, one of whom commented that he ‘feared the working class more than the capitalist class.’

The Government had returned the country to the gold standard of 1913, hoping to hark back to the pre-war days of prosperity. It had a catastrophic effect upon British industry. Business wanted wage cuts for it to be able to survive. The wage cuts in the mining industry led to a major strike of the miners. This led directly to the calling of the General Strike.

The General Strike was a game-changer. It immediately, and against the wishes of the union leaders, assumed a political stance. The TUC blamed the government for bringing politics into it, and rapidly began to use the term ‘national’ for ‘general’ in an attempt to water down the implications of the movement.
At the end of nine days, while still more workers were joining it, the leadership, in a tremendous and humiliating capitulation, with none of their demands met, brought the strike to an end. It was a he defeat for the working class.

The miners stayed out for a further six months, but were finally starved back to work, their communities devastated; the South Wales coal fields lost virtually half their population, and the employers went on the offensive, refusing to let workers return, reducing their workforce and victimising those that had played a leading role. In 1927 a wage act was introduced that further cut wages, and those out of work were hounded off benefits with the strict enforcement against those deemed to be ‘not genuinely seeking work’.

George, after having to return from New York without the success he may have hoped for his plays, no doubt realising the depth of the defeat and what it would have meant for his efforts to find work, may well have had his head in his hands in despair.

George manages to ship out for three months immediately after the strike, but this is his last work for thirteen years. He ties to find work in various guises, and letters of rejection in the archive are a testament to his efforts, but he has returned from a cosmopolitan life of culture and ideas in the bohemia of East 42nd St. to a life ‘on the parish’; a hardship it would be difficult to imagine today.

For this long war of attrition he turns to the pen, and embarks upon creating and completing a series of short stories that will see the light of day in the mid 1930’s. He leaves his plays behind and sets out to hone his skills in the short story form, something of which he has had some success in the early 1920’s. It’s a form that suits his circumstances, and one that can stand alone, doesn’t rely upon breaking through into theatre, and can be sent to new outlets.

However, he is far from inactive. He is actively involved with The Fellowship of Reconciliation, and writes for their magazine and even though he has been away for three years, his reputation as a fighter has stood the test of time. In 1928 he stands for election as an independent candidate, The Man Who Can’t Be Bought, Who Led the Unemployed, The Fighting Candidate and The Seamen’s Champion.

But these are hard times, and although George may have felt after the defeat of the General Strike that the struggle had moved to the political plane, there is despair and apathy, and the growing desire for a Labour Government. Once again, it’s George’s creative abilities that keeps his head above water.



The George Garrett Archive project workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).



Monday 18 November 2013

The Story of Our Table

At first we thought we wouldn't understand each other,
but then we dovetailed,
someone drew,
someone translated,
then we all made sense.

In my country it is hard to be a woman,
so I just want to listen.
It's too hard to think about the past
but the future – I'd like to be a fashion maker,
I want to be a successful person in this place.

You can use your past to build your future,
but not to dwell there.



This poem was written by participants in Writing on the Wall's Where are you from and What's your Story? event in association with Refugee Action and Asylum Link.

Saturday 16 November 2013

What's Your Story? Writing Courses

Our three latest What's Your Story? courses have been a fantastic success!


Over the past couple of months, Writing on the Wall has collaborated with Refugee Action, The Stroke Association and The Liverpool Mental Health Consortium to provide free writing courses to connect individuals and communities, develop opportunities for self-expression, using group-work and circle time to ensure accessibility and collective encouragement for members of communities who often feel excluded from traditional writing activities.

The Refugee Action group were tutored by award winning author, Helen Walsh.
This is what she had to say about the course and her experience:
"I can think of few instances in my life to date where a group of people have inspired, challenged and subverted my way of looking at the world in such a way as my students did in those sessions. Each week I was presented with new ways of looking at the human experience, each week I was forced to pare back those uncomfortable truths of humanity, and in doing so re-evaluate my understanding of the concept of liberty, and question how often and how casually it is squandered here in the Western world.

All of my writers were brimming with stories, so rich and complex and ultimately life affirming, that they needed little inspiration from me. I hope that they will continue to lay down their pasts and make sense of the here and now and that one day, we are able to read their stories in print. I’m in no doubt that the face of contemporary fiction will be richer, deeper, better for it."
We are currently preparing a publication of their work on the website and will be holding a celebration event for the writers soon.



Performance artist, Curtis Watt worked with Stroke Survivors in association with The Stroke Association. The group ran for six weeks and ended with a performance at the Liverpool Central Library. This What’s Your Story? creative writing course enabled stroke survivors to tell their story about the impact of stroke and life after stroke. The celebration event was held at The Central Library, the night was full of inspirational stories and poetry from the group.

Kate Charles
Stroke Association Coordinator:
"The project was a huge success and we hope to work more with WoW in the future. The participants of the ‘What’s your story’ project have gained in confidence and developed some hidden talents and skills. Being able to share their stories has really helped them emotionally in their recovery from stroke. Curtis was fantastic with the group and really did get the very best out of them in such a short space of time. 
The celebration event was a huge success and enabled stroke survivors to have a voice and also raise awareness about the impact of stroke, particularly highlighting young/working age stroke as many of the participants were of this age group.They all showed courage and inspiration beyond any of our expectations and we are proud of their achievements. All of the amazing work they produced has shown that there is life after stroke and they all achieved something that they maybe never thought would be possible."


Performer and writer, Clare Shaw worked with our group in collaboration with The Liverpool Mental Health Consortium.

The What's Your Story? writers performed at Liverpool Central Library and were presented with a published book of their work. The evening was truly moving, with heartfelt stories from the group.


WoW would like to thank everyone who made this such a special couple of months. It really has been fantastic hearing and reading everyone's spectacular work. We are proud to be enabling people to express themselves through their words in our What's Your Story? courses.


Thursday 14 November 2013

George Garrett Archive project.

 Module Two, Workshop Four.
Last years in the States.
A Playwright Amongst Stokers. 1924-26.

It’s a question of identity. How did George travel from the image of his early days as a Stoker, or even from the ‘Coney Island Boy’ of 1919, to the image taken when he enters the States, for the second time, in 1923, when he appears to have modelled himself upon the writers of the day, going by the name George Oswald James?

Who was George Oswald James? That’s an open question. The issues really is about where were the influences coming from that he was absorbing; and the answer to that, as we discussed before, lies in the plays of the new radical, Eugene O’Neill, with Far Horizon, Anna Christie and The Hairy Ape. It seems likely that George has already written, or begun writing, his short stories. The Irish tramp writer, Jim Phelan, who first met Garrett (or Joe Jarrett as he refers to him in ‘The Name’s Phelan’) in New Orleans, talks about how Garrett already referred to himself as a writer. It’s most likely, with stories already in his bag, that Garrett’s head was turned by the new drama pouring forth from New York, which would have chimed well with his ‘Wobbly’ sensibilities of mixing theatre and song with a radical message.

Garrett is in New York and needs to earn money. In the middle of the prohibition era (1920-33) he works in a brewery; While seemingly living under the radar he takes a job as a janitor in a Police Station. He lives on East 42nd Street, a bohemian time. The age of prohibition is also the age of the mobster. Like a real life Zelig, he’s even on hand to witness the aftermath of the murder of the legendary boxer ‘Battling Siki’.

During his time in New York there is a major world-wide strike of British shipping. The strike was provoked by a union-imposed wage cut. Seamen, realising they couldn’t walk off at home, who now had to apply for a 'PC5 system' which allowed the Shipping Federation and the union to decide who could work on the ships, began to walk off ships in ports across the world outside of the UK – New York, Montreal, New Zealand, Auckland, etc. A strike against Empire.

George, a good friend of George Hardy, leader of the International Seamen’ Organisation, would no doubt have been fully aware of this, yet appears to have played no part. It’s entirely possible that in this period George still harboured hopes of bringing Grace and his young family to New York and applying for naturalisation. Three years in the States without sailing is a long time, and it seems he may have even decided that his days as a seamen could be over too. But why?

Taking menial jobs, often working at night, coupled with his extraordinary literary output and his lodging with the three young, no doubt struggling actors, suggests that George was in America for one specific reason – to write. In many ways this is his first period of sustained writing, and his decision to leave Liverpool, and the UK, after the end of the 1922 Hunger March, also relives him of his duties as he felt them towards his fellow unemployed, a responsibility he took very seriously, although intensely conscious of the effect it had upon the time he could devote to writing.

The excellent work of the late Michael Murphy, who brought together George’s short stories together for the first time in print in 1999’s The Collected George Garrett, served also to position him primarily as an artist of the short form. When you consider the three plays he writes in the early 1920’s, Two Tides, Flowers and Candles and Tombstones and Grass, the plays he writes, or contributes to for The Unity Theatre in the 1930’s, Man with a Plan and One Hundred Years Hard, plus work we have seen in an as yet undocumented section of the archive, as well his work as an actor for The Left Theatre and Unity Theatre, it could be argued that he was primarily a dramatist.

Yet, taking into account that the only evidence we have of his plays in New York are two rejection letters from theatres, it seems surprising that, upon returning to Liverpool in 1926 he seems to leave his plays behind. Judging by the strength of his technique allied to the progressive themes of his plays, it may well have been that he simply had no outlet for them in Liverpool. When that outlet appeared in the form of The Left and Unity Theatre, he returned to drama, although not his original plays.

George’s time in New York in the mid-twenties represents for him an intensely creative period. But as it draws to a close, when the work dries up and American workers are being favoured over George and the many immigrants trying to make a buck, with America being on an unstoppable course towards the great crash of 1929, and with his efforts as a playwright gaining little success, it’s also a time for some serious decisions. In reality the only choice for George is to go back to sea, back to Liverpool.

Tony, quoting from Olivia Laing’s book, Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink, mentioned Raymond Carver’s quote about the long erosion of hope often experienced by many writers as they struggle to live and keep at their craft. George never turned to drink. But, if he couldn’t make a go of his plays in the States, how in the hell was he going to make it work in Britain, with its ban on American Musicians and still oh so stiff collar attitudes, particularly on a cultural level, where jazz was seen as the devil’s music. The excitement of America, with all its privations, must surely have seemed a long, long way away on his return to Liverpool and the still extant mass unemployment. No doubt the silver-lining for George, the main driving force bringing him home, and something celebrated throughout Tombstones and Grass, would have been his family.

It’s hard to believe, but in all the material we have come across in the archive, from his great friends Jerry Dawson, Alan O’Toole, and from various biographical sketches and critical notes, virtually no-one mentions his plays. And although there’s no doubt, given more time, critical support and encouragement, they may have been developed further, as they stand they are not without merit. What is most incredible is how quickly George absorbs the new direction of the New York drama, and is able to bring it fully to bear in his work, in both his Liverpool play Two Tides, and in the two following that are set in New York.

There isn’t the time here to go into any great analysis of the plays, but I do just want to show some quotes from Tombstones and Grass, which give a glimpse of the progressive nature of George’s themes, and how he is using Modernist techniques, something I doubt many other Liverpool, or even UK playwrights generally were using at this time. It will be some interesting research to look into just what was playing in the theatres in Liverpool in the mid 1920’s.

The short story published in May 1935, ‘The Overcoat’, takes on a greater significance when considering George’s use of pseudonyms, and his ever changing identity. Allen, the young brother, takes advantage of his elder brother Andrew’s hospitalisation to wear Andrew’s new, expensive overcoat. It seems too large, but he grows into it, and wears it out and about to impress his girlfriend. He’s mistaken for his brother and receives a compliment on his behalf. He falls out with his girl after arriving late, leaving her on a wet corner, because he couldn't risk getting the coat wet. He finds himself trapped, unable to let it go, but living a lie. His brother dies, and guilt consumes him – has he killed him off?


‘The Overcoat’ is an incredibly skillful story, with layer upon layer of meaning, within the text itself, and also taken as a reading relating to George’s life. The new overcoat transforms how Allen feels about himself, in much the same way as George’s pseudonyms may have worked for George.

These extracts from Tombstones and Grass, give a brief insight into George’s themes. The play follows the fortunes of Jim, breaking free from his overbearing parents, who suffers the death of his young wife after childbirth. The child is brought up by his wife’s sister, Josephine, a nurse who is resisting the approaches of the doctor. The play ends in tragedy for Jim, but the themes throughout a strong and uplifting, exploring race, the modern family and superficial respectability genuine love.






The plays will all be available on the George Garrett website in due course, and we will be presenting a rehearsed reading of his earliest play set in Liverpool in 1918, Two Tides, during the George Garrett celebration events at the Writing on the Wall festival in 2014.

The George Garrett Archive project workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).


Friday 8 November 2013

George Garrett Archive Project.

Module Two, Workshop Three.

George Oswald James. 1922 – 24.


With the 1922 Hunger March over, George realises his prospects in Liverpool are no better. Leader of the unemployed demonstrations, arrested as one of the leaders at the walker Art Gallery ‘riots’ in Liverpool; George knows his name will be first among equals on the blacklist. With a growing young family to provide he heads to Southampton, gets work on the Homeric, and sails once again for his beloved New York. But this is a different George Garrett than the one who sailed before. He’s not just sailing for money, he’s leaving Liverpool to find some space to write. He boards the Homeric as George Garrett and alights in New York as George Oswald James; just one of the many pseudonyms he used throughout his life.

He finds a place on East 42nd Street, and shares rooms with young actors Barry Fitzgerald and Victor McLaglen, both of whom achieve success in Hollywood, appearing in John Wayne’s 1952 Film, The Quiet Man. According to George’s son John, these actors introduce him to theatre, although it is possible he is already writing drama as his play Two Tides appears to have been written between 1920-22, just after George’s first stint in the States.

In Liverpool George can hardly step out of his front door without being accosted by people seeking his help with benefits, appeals to the Poor Law Guardians, knowing that if he can’t help he will at least provide a sympathetic ear for their woes. In New York, as George Oswald James, he can live below the radar, live out the siege in the room, giving him the first opportunity he has had for some time for a sustained period of writing.

It’s a measure of how intensely he applies himself to his work that in 1925 he registers two plays with the Washington Library of Congress; Flowers and Candles and Tombstones and Grass. Unlike Two Tides these two plays are set in America, but all three plays show clearly just how much he has absorbed, and how tuned in George is to the new age of drama coming ut of New York; drama that will change the face of theatre, with the charge being led by one of George’s most powerful influences – so powerful that he names one of his sons in his honour - Eugene O’Neill.

George is living, both physically and spiritually, at the centre of the dramatic universe. He comes in at the point when the The Ghetto pastoral movement is in full swing. In 1920 Eugene O’Neill’s play, Beyond the Horizon has taken Broadway by storm, winning the playwright the first of his four Pulitzer Prizes for Literature. With characters full of ‘Dis, dat, dem and do’s’, he’s the first playwright to bring the vernacular to the stage, real American characters full of anger, frustration, revenge and repressed desire, played out within tight, confined spaces in tenements and rooming houses. It’s easy to see, coming from the close drawn terraces where he grew up, what impact this would have had on George, and imagine the ‘light-bulb’ moment for him, the realisation that here was the way for him to tell his stories. Being so close to the life of the New York Theatres and living among working actors would have given him the route he was looking for to go from script to stage.

Unfortunately, although we have as a record of his ambition a number of rejection letters from New York theatres where he sent his plays for reading, we don’t have a record of any of his plays being accepted for performance, although it would be hard to imagine, in the circles he was mixing, that he didn’t receive support, and maybe somewhere, in a union hall or among friends, hear his plays read out. Maybe his plays were too influenced by O’Neill – there can be little doubt that there would have been many attempting to emulate his work and follow in his footsteps – but that’s for another discussion.

But still, it takes nothing away from his enormous achievement of completing the three plays – each in four acts as was the style of the day, which have clearly undergone numerous drafts, and bound and sent out who knows how many theatres, written within no more than five years, and most likely within three or four years. He situates his characters in the intense locale, and puts them under a microscope. The plays work well within themselves, the characters by and large are well drawn, and the drama is strong.

In the workshop we divided the parts and read out the first act of ‘Flowers and Candles’. The passage from the play will give you an idea of how much wedded he is to the geography of the city:

“Flowers and Candles”

Scene – Act 1

The Scene is the parlor of one of the many rooming houses situated near the North River, the lower west side, New York City. The furniture is cheap and gaudy, with the exception of a glass bureau, containing souvenirs from different parts of the world…

We all felt it was hugely enjoyable to read out the play, and in the following discussion points were made about how he made it clear it was a typical seafarers house, as recognisable in Liverpool as in New York; how the women dominated the family, the matriarchal line in control as the men were away at sea; how George used the same style as O’Neill and other playwrights to keep the action tight, held in just one room, with people always coming and going towards and away from the action.

George, like the American playwrights, deals with many progressive, challenging themes, and issues of morality are never from the surface of this or his later work. While he may have been influenced by American playwrights, what is remarkable is just how far ahead of UK and Liverpool playwrights of his time he must have been. While George played a key role in the founding of The Unity Theatre in Liverpool in the 1930’s, there is again, sadly, no evidence of his plays being performed in Liverpool either, but again, that is research for another day.

The workshops are free and open to all. We meet every Monday, 6-8pm in Liverpool John Moores University’s Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, L1 9DE (off HopeStreet).