Tim Bannerman's Theatre Chronicles - 1984, Spring
The Theatre Chronicles – Part 11: 1984 – Spring
“April 4th, 1984
“He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be around that date, since he was fairly sure his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two.
“For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind hovered for a moment round the doubtful date on the page, and then fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word doublethink. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him; or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.”
From “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, by George Orwell
Looking back, so much of what George Orwell predicted in his 1948 manuscript of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” has come to pass. Take “doublethink”. Any echoes in the deliberate disorientation, disinformation and confusion of Ex-US President Donald Trump’s continuing “fake news” campaign, creating such fertile ground for the rash of conspiracy theories and their purveyors? Or the all-seeing eyes and ears of “Big Brother” on the screens which pervade everything we do now?
Were we so conscious of these things in our lived, seemingly “real” 1984, those of us of an age to remember it? I’m pretty sure I wasn’t then. But I am now in 2021.
Tim in 1984 - the year, that is, not the book…
Leap Year or not, if 1984 was one of the thinnest years where recording my life is concerned, it was one of the busiest as a young theatre professional. Highlights – the birth of our daughter preeminently – are in one thin diary. Otherwise, just the odd letter and scattered scribbles in the back of books remain where, maybe, one day, long after I’ve gone, someone will ripple through a dusty volume on a dusty shelf and find the observation, or would-be poem, scribbled in the back.
Is that a way to “communicate with the future”? Does a “different” past make the present “meaningless”? Or will these physical marks of ink or faded pencil on paper be a critical link in this mysterious chain we belong to, the clue, somewhere, to who and how we are – assuming those marks speak a kind of truth about their maker or, at least, speak with their maker’s authentic voice?
But, letters apart, do we write our notes and scribbles for anyone other than ourselves? In this age of digital evanescence, I think, quite possibly, yes. Furthermore, it’s important that we do, if that doesn’t sound disingenuous.
It would be, of course, pure vanity to imagine any kind of publication of one’s diaries, unless you happen to know an indulgent friend who encourages the odd snippet in, say, www.martinhespfoodandtravel.com. In my case, these snippets have helped my unreliable memory bring back some personal highlights to share with whomsoever of you out there may stumble on them and, with any luck, find some common interest, even pleasure there. Despite the risk of what the poet Edward Thomas called “false permanence” or those you most care about reading your private, personal dialogue between head and heart further down the line, I quite like the idea of what Orwell calls “the unborn” picking it up and thinking: blimey, is that what they did or thought about this or that in those distant days? Or even: “I wonder – is there a bit of my great-great-granpa in me?”
Of course, I wouldn’t wish the worst bits of me on anyone and they’re all in there, I fear. But as a way of bringing history alive, how much better to read a personal, contemporary account of how someone is actually touched by events, from the domestic to the world-shaking, than rely on bare facts and statistics. My father’s letter-diary to my mother over the days before, during and after D-Day is just that: a highly personal and emotional response to an extraordinary event. Described in terrifyingly authentic detail, it has been quoted by historians and commentators in many wartime books and documentaries since then.
Nothing so world-shaking has occurred in my life to date, let alone in the “real” 1984 which fills many fewer pages in my battered collection of Moleskine and motley other notebooks than others over the years. Perhaps because I was too busy doing to write about it. But alongside my relatively happy little life, 1984 was a time of upheaval, conflict, confusion, fear and despair for so many others. Not unlike most years, of course, but, thinking of Orwell’s dystopian projections, maybe that year had some particular aspects that would have caught his eye.
The Miners’ Strike, the Provisional IRA’s attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, the eviction of the women peace protestors at Greenham Common, anti-nuclear protestor, Hilda Murrell, found dead in mysterious circumstances, illegal phone-tapping by police in Surrey condemned by the European Court of Human Rights and the beginning of a global recognition of the then untreatable virus, called AIDS that had already cut a swathe through the gay community in America, for which there was no cure and, often, little care – just a few examples of the struggle between oppressors and oppressed that Orwell, had he lived in 1984, might have recognised as not unrelated to the themes in his last novel published just before he died in 1950.
1984 was also the year the first Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale, for the princely sum of $2,500. Its launch was heralded by Ridley Scott’s controversial anti-dystopian homage to “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in a television commercial of which I have, strangely, no recollection whatsoever.
But this commercial won every gong going and proclaimed that the AppleMac, as it came to be known, was going to give back power from the “Thought Police” to the individual. The hold of the Big Corporation, aka IBM, would be broken, it claimed, as the svelte blonde heroine athletically eluded the agents of the forces of darkness and hurled a sledgehammer into the screen filled with the menacing face of Big Brother. Well, maybe we see things somewhat differently in an age now controlled by social media, algorithms, the World Wide Web and Big Tech.
For me, though, my 1984 felt very different. Not only did I still hammer away at my trusty typewriter, my fountain pen was still essentially my sword, however leaky, battered and unwieldy, and my diary and letters to friends and family my principal means of communication and record of all that mattered to me.
Unlike Orwell’s Winston, from my diary notes I knew very well it was 1984. I was rising 32, not 39. Husband to Gill and father of two with next one well on the way. Living by wing and prayer in damp but lovely old farmhouse at Golden Pot, Alton, Hampshire. Dependent on 33 year old Austin Devon, “Violet” to get about.
Helpless and in confusion, oh yes, more often than not. But, unlike Winston, excited by the future steaming towards me, pregnant with promise and potential rewards, however many pitfalls along the way.
I was so chuffed to be actually working at my chosen craft – acting, writing, directing, producing – as well as procreating and generally trying, and failing, to keep pace with everything both professional and domestic, it was only at certain critical moments that the wider world knocked on my door. It was then I was reminded that – hello! – there were people out there and things going on that I was allowing to pass me by while the world was going to hell in a handcart.
On 5th March, 1984, the first National Union of Mineworkers strikers came out at Cortonwood Colliery in Yorkshire, having been informed that the National Coal Board would be closing their colliery, the first of an official 20 to follow across the UK. I say “official” in that, at a back-then secret meeting between Prime Minister Thatcher and Ian MacGregor, Chairman of the NCB, a total of 75 pits were earmarked to be closed on a “pit-by-pit procedure”, without consultation of any kind, let alone an identifying list of intended closures, with the NUM. But then there was no way that Mrs T. would go into battle with Arthur Scargill , President of the NUM, without keeping her cards close to her chest, particularly after coming off worst a few years earlier. This time she was going to win and had been planning and preparing for a long time before this by reorganising the Police on a national, rather than force by force, basis and making sure there were sufficient stocks of coal to prevent shortages when the time came to throw down the gauntlet. Scargill knew very well what she was about but decided not to call a national vote. Out of the hubris of past success, he just declared “everybody out” and, for a long, hard time, out they came.
No mention of climate change of course, back then. This was “The lady’s not for turning” Thatcher, still frisky from her rejoicing in the Falklands War, lending her warrior-bent to anti-union, “greed is good”, free market economics in a world where Britain could no longer compete with cheaper coal from America and elsewhere. But with St. Margaret “Where there is strife, we will bring harmony” Thatcher at loggerheads with King Arthur “Only a fool wants a confrontation and only a fool wants a strike” Scargill, we knew that, perms and comb-overs primed and ready, neither would give way until long after blood was spilled.
By contrast, on 1st March 1984 my diary reads: “St. David’s Day. Ante-natal with Gill, Josh and “Teddy”, prefiguring importantly in Josh’s life at the moment. Doctor and mid-wife very pleased with Gill – 31 weeks pregnant now. Belly grand and proud. Baby’s bottom uppermost, head down. Heard strange, swishing heartbeat again. Then off to Selborne to find the Stinking Hellebore in Violet (rump still dented after reversing clumsily at the Redgrave mid-My Fair Lady), hopefully much as we’d found the Green Hellebore in the very place described by Gilbert White in his Natural History of Selborne some 200 years before. Asked two superior-looking gardeners if they knew where Helleborus Foetidus was to be found and set off towards Coneycroft Bottom via the Hangar. Josh zooming on ahead with waggy-tailed Henry, flashing in and out of the trees with glee. A glorious, mild, still, sunny day, the sound of children wafting over from the school playground. First celandines showing, display of crocuses. Birdsong carolling away – thrush, robin, chiff-chaff. Into the shadow of the lea of Selborne Hangar and along, away from Zig-Zag Hill, having come off Gracious Lane. And this weekend, we whizz off to Quarry Mill to see my play written just in time for the Young National Trust Theatre production there, staying at the Lion and Swan in Congleton, on the way, where we’d had our £36 dinner, champagne-breakfasted, honeymoon night in ’79. Coming up, posh reading at the French Ambassador’s Residence in London, while my Theatre-in-Education “Theatreaction” pieces for the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham wait to be written. Plus production of Joe Orton’s Ruffian on the Stair at Redgrave Studio in 4 weeks time - all cluttering a very pregnant horizon that I’d intended to clear after playing all and sundry in “My Fair Lady” over Christmas, followed by Charley in Charley, both at the Redgrave, and writing the play for Styal back in February. Good job I turned down Stephen’s offer of Stoppard’s “Dirty Linen” in the Gents…”
No politics or conflict there but the play at Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire referred to above had buckets of both which hundreds of secondary age children from local schools had the chance to witness first-hand. Our story of life in a cotton mill pulled no punches in showing just how hard it could be for a child their age and younger as the mighty engine of the Industrial Revolution gathered steam and the old, slower days and ways of hand-loom weavers were left for dead.
The story of Robert Hyde Greg’s “Model Mill” takes place in 1836 just after the 1833 Factory Act had been passed and just before Victoria became Queen in 1837. Influenced by both the continuing battle for parliamentary reform and the anti-slavery campaign, the act prohibited the employment of children under 9 years old and limited the working hours of those between the ages of 9-12 to nine hours a day for one penny a week’s wages, with provision for two hours schooling. For those between 13-18, the limit was laid down at 12 hours per day.
Our production, inspired as ever by the founder and leading light of the Young National Trust Theatre, Dot McCree, used drama and Gary Yershon’s music with our hardened touring professionals to take our audience in promenade round the mill and bring to life the harsh realities of that world of 150 years ago.
It explored the conflicts and tensions between a well-meaning but not exactly “model” mill-owner and his hard-nosed factory manager and the workers in the factory. Central to the story is a 12 year old girl, played by a young-looking professional actor of older years, who suffers an accident on the day of the visit of the Factory Inspector.
This young apprentice is supposed to work according to the law no more than 9 hours a day with an hour and a half allowed for meals and 2 hours schooling at the end of the day, with 6 whole days holiday a year for her penny a week. It turns out that our central character is made to work from 5.30 in the morning until 8 at night, takes no proper breaks, doesn’t get her schooling and is frequently abused, physically and verbally, by the factory manager.
Shortly after being interviewed by the inspector who discovers that the fresh whitewash on the walls covers up a lot more than bricks and mortar, she loses her finger in the unprotected machinery and faints from agony and exhaustion. On recovering, despite pledges to the factory and her father who took her to be indentured there, she runs away to Manchester. I don’t need to spell out the potential dangers to a 12 year old girl at the mercy of the 19th century city street, let alone the homeless on our city streets today.
Fortunately, a handloom weaver whose wife works at the factory is in Manchester looking for work. He recognises the girl and persuades her to come back. Whatever punishment she receives for running away, he tells her, things can only get better, as Brian Cox’s D:Ream might say. On her dutiful return, mill-owner Greg orders that her hair be cut off and she suffer a week’s solitary confinement with only gruel and water to be given her at dawn and dusk.
“Break the will of the child betimes,” cried the great Methodist preacher, Charles Wesley. “Let a child from a year old be taught to fear the rod and cry softly. Break her will now and she will bless you to all eternity.” And our Unitarian minister with responsibility for the spiritual welfare of all at Quarry Bank continues: “Let us pray… that she may find grace through humility and suffering.”
In counterpoint, we have the campaigning proponents of a new Ten Hour Bill for all children under 18. They include an agitator-publisher of “The Poor Man’s Advocate”, a sympathetic mill-owner, representing the force for change in Parliament, and our out-of-work handloom weaver, all three of whom are committed to “The Liberty Tree” and improving the lot of the common man.
Heavy-handed? True to life? Uncomfortable and disturbing, certainly, and somewhere asking challenging questions about the world we live in now. In 1984, this took the form of nightly battles on our tv screens as we saw police versus pickets playing out the death throes of whole communities built on coal.
As regards authenticity, the play was all based on exhaustive research. I still have vast boxfuls of notes taken from contemporary records at the mill, Hansard, newspapers and other historical commentaries on the period. And for many at Quarry Bank Mill in 1836, the memory of what had happened just up the road just over 15 years before was still red and raw.
On 16 August 1819, over 50,000 people had gathered peacefully on the open croft of St. Peters Field to campaign for political representation in the changing and deeply depressed economy following Waterloo and the end of the war.
Following the arrest of radical speaker, Henry Hunt, local magistrates called in the militia. 18 of the unarmed protestors lost their lives in the ensuing charge and more than 650 were injured by the slashing sabres of the 15th King’s Hussars.
What became known as the “Peterloo Massacre” arguably contributed to the momentum that led, just before the 1833 Factory Act, to the Great Reform Act of 1832. As a consequence, the “rotten boroughs” such as Old Sarum – a deserted Iron Age hill fort near Salisbury with 11 absentee voters commanding an uncontested pair of seats in parliament between them – were finally done away with. This key step towards universal suffrage gave representation to the new industrial towns such as Manchester and Salford which had grown to number some 150,000 inhabitants by the 1830s.
Thanks to Dot and her brave patrons in the National Trust, we never fought shy of tackling difficult subjects. Be they social, political, environmental or looking at life in general across the spectrum, you name it, we did it. Poverty, corruption, religious persecution, slavery, civil war – they all had their turn over the centuries. And the children loved it. It brought History to life in a way the classroom could rarely if ever do. Yet for all the serious subjects tackled, each programme was tempered with humour, music, dance and derring-do adventure but never at the expense of the core learning within. They were powerful period pieces, both participative and promenade, that brought home just how hard-won were the privileges we take for granted today, for all the challenges we still face.
How different, after seeing the production up and running at Quarry Bank Mill, to find myself a few days later, on 3rd April 1984, drinking a very fine champagne in 11 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, in the presence of His Excellency the French Ambassador and his glittering array of guests.
A twist to the usual actor’s nightmare is to find yourself performing to some of the most famous luminaries of the theatre world in what is known as a “rehearsed reading”. By definition, it is just that – a reading. But an audience of actors is always the worst nightmare of all, reading or not. So given the circumstances and the fact that you are a complete unknown compared to your illustrious colleagues in the cast, by God you learn it, even if “rehearsed” is a euphemism for a walk-through the afternoon before. And when you see Sir John Gielgud and the legendary Lady Diana Cooper, then aged 91, within touching distance of you in the front row, you think, good move, mate. Good move!
The show was called “The Enigma of George Sand”. She – for “George”, as in Eliot, was a “she” – was a famously“gender-fluid”, as we might say today, socialite who cross-dressed and scandalised all and sundry with her smoking in public, “subversive” novels and her manifold affairs with both men and women over the middle part of the 19th century.
Most famous among the recipients of her liberally bestowed favours was Frederic Chopin, the composer, a sick man by the time they came together in 1838 and her family, her son in particular, were not happy about it.
This was the focus of the story we performed that £35 a head, black tie, balmy April evening on which I played George’s grumpy son, Maurice, with Alexandra Bastedo as George and Keith Baxter as Chopin. The narrator, John Julius Norwich, son of “Duff” and Lady Diana Cooper, was a well-known historian, tv raconteur, all round people’s toff, you could say. Kind enough, though, to this young man who found himself bizarrely plucked from the obscurity of his jobbing actor world to mix it with the great and the good. I had least to lose but was heartily glad I had invested the time in being, for once, sure of my words while others clung a hint more tightly to the scripted word in their sticky hands.
Barely two weeks later, just across Hyde Park from where we were that glitzy, gala evening in aid of “Action Research for the Crippled Child”, PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead in the Libyan Embassy Siege. Three weeks earlier, David Jones had died on the picket line at Ollerton Colliery.
Back home, though, on 5th April, it was birth that was on the Bannerman family minds with preparation high on the agenda. We were four weeks away from when the baby was due, give or take a week, or two, either way.
But what to write, and when, for Theatreaction at the Redgrave Theatre? Let alone how to stage the Studio production of “The Ruffian on the Stair” – for £200? I’d directed nothing professionally before and we started rehearsals for Ruffian in four weeks time. Before that, a day of casting 3 performers from 23 hopefuls in a sweaty little room in the Wimbledon Theatre for both productions, starting at 9.15 and then at 15 minute intervals – and still the Theatreaction stuff to write.
Three weeks later – pop! The cork reached the laurel hedge at the far end of the garden, just missing our lovely friend and saintly ex-landlady, Angela – the only landlady to say: “Good news! I’ve had a raise so I can lower your rent!” surely? Just minutes after the birth, she came up the path to join the arrival party and share the bubbles in the old glass rummer loving cup.
Amy was born at home at twenty past two in the morning – the beautiful, still, moon- and star-lit morning that was Good Friday, 20th April 1984. There to greet her were Margaret the midwife, who’d got there just in time, Terry the doctor, who hadn’t, still in his dinner jacket from an evening do, Leo the eldest brother, Josh the middle brother, me the father, Henry the dog and now Angela – all there upstairs with mother, Gill, and brand new little sister, both doing just fine after barely an hour of strenuous activity. Plus a bit of work for not far off nine months before that, I grant you.
Afterwards I floated in a golden daffodil sea on the battered Alton Auction Rooms dining-room chair, one of four for £1, as the dawn came up, the moon went down and the first birds greeted this dazzling day in the hottest week for 40 years.
Upstairs, everyone slept, except, perhaps, a little girl who lay there with her long fingernails, shapely head and eyes that drank in everything in the gauzy room. And, being an angel, she sang – it’s true, she sang – sang to the sun as it rose up out there in the clear blue sky on her very first day.
