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The Popular Front Pageant: Its Emergence and Decline

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Mick Wallis
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Abstract

In NTQ38 (May 1994) Mick Wallis explored some of the characteristics of the phenomenon of working-class political pageantry which reached its peak between the two world wars, looking in detail at one such pageant, Music and the People, mounted in London in April 1939, and at the tripartite five-day festival of which it formed a part. Here, he explores earlier and later forms of modern pageantry, from the bourgeois civic style (of which Louis Napoleon Parker was virtually inventor and remained the presiding genius) to the attempts of working-class organizations to create a people's form of pageantry, whether in the interests of Communist Party recruitment or – following in the footsteps of the Victorian monarchy and provincial city fathers – of creating its own, alternative memorializing traditions. Mick Wallis, who teaches drama at Loughborough University, has recently published on using Raymond Williams's work in the integration of practical and academic approaches to teaching. His one-man act, Sir John Feelgood and Marjorie, was an experiment in popular form for the sake of left-wing benefits.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 11 , Issue 41 , February 1995 , pp. 17 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

Notes and References

1. Bramley, Ted, ‘London's Historical Pageant’, International Press Correspondence, XLIV, No. 16 (26 09 1936), p. 1201Google Scholar. For the ‘Jolly George’ action, see Branson, Noreen, Britain in the Nineteen Twenties (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975)Google Scholar. Boilermaker Pollitt was disseminating Lenin at the dock gates. He helped form the Communist Party in the same year, 1920.

2. See my previous article, including Note 20.

3. Withington, Robert, English Pageantry: an Historical Outline, two vols. (Harvard University Press, 1918, 1920)Google Scholar. See also Parker, Louis Napoleon, Several of My Lives (Chapman and Hall, 1928)Google Scholar; Nicoll, Allardyce, English Drama 1900–1930: the Beginnings of the Modern Period (Cambrdige University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

4. See ‘The Democratic Aspect of the Modern Pageant’, in Withington, 1920, p. 202–7.

5. Gilbert Hudson, quoted in Withington, p. 203.

6. This high profile as technician-celebrant is also claimed by André van Gyseghem in the late 1930s. See, for example, ‘Pageant Genuis’, Co-operative News, 25 February 1939, p. 11.

7. Parker, quoted in Withington, 1920, p. 196.

8. Parker, ibid., p. 197.

9. Hampson, C. P., quoted in Salford City Recorder, 4 07 1930Google Scholar. Film at Salford Local History Library.

10. Parker, quoted in Withington, 1920, p. 227.

11. Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions in Europe, 1870–1914’, The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 263–307Google Scholar.

12. Ibid., p. 282.

13. David Cannadine, ‘The Context, Performance, and Meaning of Ritual: the British Monarchy and the “Invention of Tradition”, c. 1820–1977’, Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds., op. cit., p. 101–64.

14. Programme at Museum of London Archive. Also see my previous article.

15. Programme at Labour Party Archive, London.

16. Hobsbawm, op. cit.

17. Pudney, John, London's Docks (Thames and Hudson, 1975)Google Scholar.

18. Hobsbawm, op. cit. He notes that the new Labour and Socialist International of 1889 had not envisaged any particular form of festival: various militants actively resisted any such notion.

19. Quoted in London Trades Council, London Trades Council 1860–1950: a History (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1950), p. 76Google Scholar.

20. Daily Worker, 12 March 1938, p. 5. The Party's perceived need to take the initiative on May Day was not new; but in the sectarian days of the late 1920s the CPGB had tried either to gain unique control of the event or to mount counter demonstrations. For Labour complaints, see London News, June 1928, p. 2.

21. The plans are reported in Daily Worker, 7 March 1938, p. 5.

22. The Guardian, 12 July 1937; Daily Worker, 12 July 1937. Handbill at Working Class Movement Library, Salford.

23. Programme at Communist Party Archive, London. Handbill at Working Class Movement Library, Salford.

24. See Daily Worker, 22 July 1939, p. 4, for outline scenario.

25. Programme at Working Class Movement Library, Salford.

26. Manchester Evening News, 29 March 1938. Press cuttings and the Pageant Book of Music and Book of Words at Manchester Local History Library.

27. Nottingham Guardian, 18 April 1938.

28. Biggar, Helen, Challenge to Fascism, National Film Archive (1938)Google Scholar. Other features of the day included Waiting for Lefty presented by Glasgow Workers' Theatre Group, massed choirs, and a showing of a Spanish film by Kino.

29. Daily Worker, 14 March 1936. See Daily Worker, 11 September 1934.

30. Daily Worker, 13 March 1939, p. 1.

31. Film at Liverpool Records Office.

32. Earl of Woolton (Frederick James Marquis), The Memoirs of the Right Honourable the Earl of Woolton (Cassell, 1959). Papers of the Liverpool Organization, including programmes for this and other events, at Liverpool Records Office.

33. Anderson, Matthew, ‘A Revival of Pageantry: How Liverpool Evolved a New Technique’, The Liverpolitan, III, No. 3, (01 1934), p. 8Google Scholar; The Book and Programme of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Centenary LMR 1830–1930, at Liverpool Record Office.

34. Book of the Liverpool Shipping Week, at the Liverpool Record Office.

35. Lancashire Cotton Pageant programme broadsheet, at Manchester Local Studies Library; Dorothy Kelly, taped interview with the author, 3 August 1984.

36. Promotional leaflet, private collection of Alan Bush.

37. Pageant of Labour, Official Book and Programme (1934) at TUC Archive, London. My account is based on a duplicated typescript in the private collection of Alan Bush. Kirwan, Bernadette, ‘Aspects of Radical Theatre in England in the 1930s’ (doctoral thesis, Lough-borough University, 1989)Google Scholar notes the ‘essentially marginal’ role the pageant affords women.

38. Slater's posthumous papers are in Special Collections, Hallward Library, University of Nottingham. And see Gyseghem, André van, ‘British Theatre in the Thirties’, in Clark, John, Heinemann, Margot, Margolies, David, and Snee, Carole, eds., Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties (Lawrence and Wishart, 1979)Google Scholar.

39. Alan Bush, unrecorded interview with the author, 28 March 1984; Age Exchange Theatre Company, Of Whole Heart Cometh Hope: Centenary Memories of the Co-operative Women's Guild (Age Exchange, 1983).

40. Souvenir programme at Co-op Union, Manchester. My account is based partly on a filmed record by the nascent CWS National Film Service: video copies are available from Co-operative Retail Services, South Eastern Section. Kirwan, op. cit., notes how the concluding images of peace and democracy are reminiscent of the climax to the South Suburban Co-operative Society's pageant The Night is O'er (1932). There are multiple annual celebrations of international co-operation from 1930.

41. See van Gyseghem, op. cit. Some relevant photographs and papers are at Special Collections, Hallward Library, Nottingham University. Interest in mass spectacle had been aroused by Carter's, HuntlyThe New Spirit in the Russian Theatre 1917–28 (Brentano's, 1929)Google Scholar.

42. Bill Williams, recorded interview with the author, 18 December 1984; report by W. H. Williams to May-Day Sub-Committee of the Labour Research Department, LRD Archive, London.

43. From programme-script / scenario at the LRD. See Francis, Hywel and Smith, David, The Fed: a History of the South Wales Miners in the Twentieth Century (Lawrence and Wishart, 1980)Google Scholar; Slater, Montagu, Stay Down Miner (Martin Lawrence, 1936)Google Scholar; New Way Wins (Lawrence and Wishart, 1937).

44. See the start of the last article.

45. For a fund-raising event at the Phoenix Theatre, see Daily Worker, 16 November 1936. Unity did several benefits. See also Fyrth, Jim, The Signal Was Spain (Lawrence and Wishart, 1986)Google Scholar.

46. Programme at Marx Memorial Library, London. See Daily Worker, 14 January, p. 3.

47. Photo in Nezvs Chronicle, 20 February 1939.

48. Picture Post reported this and the previous week's fascist rally, on 29 July 1939, p. 32–4, and 5 August 1939, p. 32–4. See also Daily Worker, 17 July 1939, p. 3, and 24 July 1939, p. 4. Programme and duplicated typescript at Communist Party Archive, London.

49. Interview with the author, 18 July 1984.

50. Printed in Our Time, Vol. II, No. 4 (July 1942), p. 1–11. For this event and MacNeice's, LouisSalute to the Red Army (1943)Google Scholar see Steve Nicholson, ‘Theatrical Pageants in the Second World War’, forthcoming.

51. Programme, script, and score in Alan Bush, private collection.

52. History Group Committee Minutes, 10 April 1948, Communist Party Archive, London. Reference courtesy of Anthony Howe, Sydney.

53. Scenario and score in Alan Bush private collection.

54. Duplicated script, Judith Williams private collection.

55. See for instance Note 40 above. Interesting is the way some wartime Co-op pageant plays negotiate a pro-Soviet line and ‘discipline’ feminist aspiration. The memorializing Co-operative Century (1944) was done in 100 local proscenium productions by a total of 150 Co-operative Societies.

56. For instance, British Women Through the Ages for International Women's Day in London. See Daily Worker, 7 March 1939, p. 3, and 9 March 1939, p. 4.