Peter Viney's Blog

By Paul Unwin

Directed by Jonathan Kent
Set Design by Joanna Parker
Costume by Deborah Andrews
Lighting & Video Design – Peter Mumford
Composer – Gary Yershon

The Minerva Theatre,
Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 31st July 2024, 14.15

CAST:
Ellen Wilkinson – Clare Burt
Herbert Morrison – Reece Dinsdale
Ernie Bevin – Clive Wood
Aneurin Bevan – Richard Harrington
Jennie Lee- Allison McKenzie
Clement Attlee- Andrew Woodall
Violet Attlee- Suzanne Burden
Richard Stafford Cripps – Peter Hamilton Dyer
Hugh Dalton – Miles Richardson
Lord Moran (aka Charlie Wilson) – David Robb
Winston Churchill – Martyn Ellis
Joan Vincent – Felixe Forde
Thomas Merriman / Photographer- Majid Medhizadeh-Valoujerdy

The set first. It looks blank, with projection creating the sets. The backdrop has multiple doors, and necessary desks, sofas, beds, the cabinet table slide on effortlessly on robotic platforms. It’s smooth and efficient. The backdrop has to lift for the cabinet table to slide on, but that’s all.

We had avoided the theatrical Nye by Tim Price at The National Theatre. It costs much more per seat, there’s distance, trains. It sounded like a biodrama in honour of the man. Chichester is nearer, cheaper and we instinctively trust Chichester’s choices. Also, the Minerva’s intimate space is usually the ideal place to see a play. An actor told us that it’s the ideal space to act in too.

On the way there we were worrying that we really might not be in the mood today for a play on the Labour government of 1945 and the creation of the NHS. This review is going to go along some political side tracks and personal history. The play about the 1945 Labour government has been timed perfectly for the arrival of a new Labour government. They face the same problems. Health. Education. Not enough houses (exacerbated by wartime bombing for them). Palestine. Train strikes. Trains not running on time. Economy in bad shape after the war / after Covid.

Immigration’s not an issue, and they work out that inviting nurses from the Empire will be a great benefit. There are still a million soldiers abroad. As my dad said, the war didn’t end in May 1945 for him. It was June 1946.

Right at the start, we couldn’t understand the negativity of several of the reviews. It may be reviewer age. So much resonated for us.

I know about Aneurin Bevan. My mum was from Tredegar. I was in this world at the start of the NHS. I’m there as it either approaches its death throes or needs virtual reinventing. The day had started with my annual health review. I attend part of the mega multi-centre practice that embraces the entire town. It was with a nurse. Doctors? What doctors? Blood test. Urine sample. Weight.  Shoes and jacket on for weight.  Gained 2 kilos. Last year was shoes and jacket off. Three questions.

Smoking. Drinking. Exercise.
No. Yes. Not enough.

It used to be 30 minutes. Now it’s fifteen. I haven’t seen a GP since 2019, but if it’s the same as the last two years I will get a text saying a prescription for statins awaits at the attached pharmacy.
– Why is it prescribed?
– High cholesterol.
– Please email my blood test results.
(I will phone back),
– My cholesterol is below average.
– Then it’s your age.
– Shouldn’t the GP see me?
– They don’t do that for statins anymore.

(The text was same day before the blood could be tested). I will decline. We had twelve hours in A&E last year. It was like a war zone. It was mind-bogglingly inefficient too. BUT Karen did get good treatment in the end. She wouldn’t have in 1945 without a lot of money. I’m reminded that Paul Unwin was one of the creators of Casualty.

Then we listened to Women’s Hour in the car on the way to Chichester. We have our brand new Labour government, which should mark the end of the two party see-saw of British politics. They had a lower percentage vote and lowest total vote, yet the biggest majority ever. We have entered five or six party politics, but the electoral system remains two-party see-saw. Most disappointingly, ‘Even Newer Labour’ are into the politics of division and vengeance within three weeks. 20% VAT on private education to provide 6500 more teachers. This means one school in three will get an extra teacher. It’s a bit like the 100,000 extra dental appointments for kids. One for every 96 kids. Who will fulfil them? Dentists have near universally abandoned the NHS. There was a woman in the phone in who said they prioritised private schooling. Their friends had a new car, new kitchen, designer dogs and foreign holidays and used state schools. Was it not a question of personal choice and priorities? She said they eschewed those luxuries and would downsize their home to stay private. The Labour speaker started talking about the 97% at state schools and had to be corrected … 93%. Let’s not even go into special needs. The 20% VAT rise will mean nothing for Eton and Harrow. The vast majority of private schools are NOT public schools. Often they exist because of poor local provision and parents struggle to send kids there.

Then on division and revenge, capital projects would have to be abandoned to fund pay rises for pubic servants. Which projects? Oh, surprise. Three in the Lib Dem / Tory south … the much needed A27 to by-pass Arundel and Worthing, the A303 at Stonehenge, the Oxford-Cambridge railway. Then the news. Junior doctors were rejecting their 22% pay rise. They want more. A friend is a retired consultant. He pointed out that it costs £500,000 to train a doctor. His generation knew that the payback for that was five years as a junior doctor on tiny salary and long hours. Then your career took off. Yes, they’re ludicrously underpaid, but given comparison, 22% is generous for now. Then the old, wrongly seen as not Labour voters, lose their £300 winter fuel allowance to pay for it. They will be cold. The effects of a cold winter will come up in the play.

My condolences. But what did you think of the play, Mrs Lincoln?

The play is complex and subtle and above all timely. Chichester is fortunate having decided on it many months ago that it has hit the stage at exactly the opportune time. It’s a brilliant script by Paul Unwin, with just the right number of flashes of humour.

These Labour cabinet ministers all become distinct characters. One realizes that the likes of Herbert Morrison, Ernest Bevin, Aneurin Bevan, Stafford Cripps and Clement Attlee tower over politicians of any party of the last thirty years.

Ellen Wilkinson (Clare Burt)

In fact, in biodrama terms, it’s the story of Ellen Wilkinson. Her name does not resonate like those above, yet she was the only woman in the 1945 government. Unwin has said he didn’t even know who she was when he started researching. Nor did I. She was a leader in the Jarrow marches. She was a junior minister in Churchill’s wartime National Government (and liked by Churchill). She was a major architect of the 1945 landslide Labour victory. She was the key voice in persuading Labour that it was indeed time to break with the National Government and run for power. A background note. In 1940, Tory grandees wanted to appease Hitler. Churchill opposed them, and only managed to gain the premiership because the Labour party supported him and formed a National Government, with Labour figures prominent. As he said once, Attlee was the only cabinet minister he trusted not to stab him in the back. Ernest Bevin in particular was reluctant to run for election against Churchill in 1945. These new Labour ministers had extensive government experience. Ellen Wilkinson opens the play with a fiery speech (with the fiery red hair of the real person) at the Blackpool Labour conference. She closes the play … she had asthma, smoked heavily and died in 1947 of an overdose of amphetamines and barbiturates. Was it suicide? Atlee in the play decides instantly that it wasn’t.

Wilkinson. We’ll have to read more about her in future. She was one of the side-lined great Labour women politicians … Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams (the best prime minister we never had), Mo Mowlam, Clare Short. The Conservatives have had three women leaders. Labour? None, yet they had the better candidates. (I don’t include any of the current bunch). There is intrinsic sexism in the party, stemming I’d say from the Trades Union wing, and the play points that with Joan Vincent, the secretary, subject to casual sexism (which Ellen will point out). Violet Attlee is another dogsbody.

Clem Vi, dear, rustle us up some tea, don’t you think? It’s getting rather chilly.

Earlier to Joan

Ernie  Rustle up the tea, can you , Miss … or do something for crying out loud!

An instant reminder of Karen and me as union reps. First, Karen was asked to take the minutes, ‘Girls have neater handwriting.’ Then when we broke for tea, ‘Milk and two sugars, love,’ from the GMWU official. Karen said, ‘Who said I was doing the tea?’ He looked perplexed.

Then when Nye Bevan is describing his new council house:

Nye A lavatory and wash basin off the main hall. So when the man returns from work he can wash up – before he joins the family. No more coal dust everywhere.

Intrinsic sexism, but when we went to Tredegar in 1954 (before my grandparents moved into a council house) I remember seeing my uncles covered with coal dust, getting ready to wash in a tin bath.

Violet Attlee (Suzanne Burden)

Violet’s main task is telling Clem that he’s exhausted and needs to rest. However, she also gets the line that went down best in the play. Clem is off to meet his first cabinet.

Violet  Let’s get you ready to meet the bastards, shall we?
Clem  You are describing His Majesty’s Government.
Violet I am certain the King and I are of the same mind.

Clement Attlee (Andrew Woodall)

Attlee sits back quietly, exuding lack of charisma, or perhaps not exuding charisma, but he is the ultimate committee chairman. He’s from a different class, looks at home in morning dress. Andrew Woodall inhabits him beautifully, though we lack the short stature of the original, which made him even less charismatic.

Herbert Morrison (Reece Dinsdale) & Ernie Bevin (Clive Wood)
Morrison comes across as the ambitious schemer. He was Peter Mandelson’s grandfather. Definitely ‘Blairite.’ Ernie Bevin is the illegitimate Somerset trades unionist. He was a powerful figure and said ‘fuck’ a lot.

Morrison plots with Ellen to oust Attlee before and after the election. He believes that Attlee’s total lack of charisma, and upper middle class background are wrong for an election. He believes he is the man for the job (no one would consider there might be a woman for the job in 1945). The thing is he’s having a long running affair with Ellen – in the play. It was a persistent rumour at the time. There’s politician history there too. Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams, Cecil Parkinson and Sarah Keays, John Major and Edwina Currie, Boris Johnson and anyone available. Let’s not go into Roosevelt, Kennedy or Clinton. It’s what some of them do.

Their affair punctuates the play. Ellen’s curt responses to his amorous advances are welcome pieces of humour. Herbert is a married man with daughters who need taking to the ballet, as he explains to Ellen.

Then Ernie Bevin tries to persuade Attlee not to have Ellen in the cabinet. This is one of several scenes where Attlee sits back, saying nothing, listening to the much more vehement and energetic colleagues, then ends discussion with an apt remark. That must be how he operated. A committee chairman.

Ernie Ellen and Herbert. There are rumours.
Clem  What sort of rumours?
Ernie Rumour sort of rumours.
(Ernie moves his hips. The shyest hint of sex. Joan stares into the middle distance)

Ernie With all Herbert’s plotting and conniving, I’d send a bunch of my dockers from Limehouse to knock his teeth out if it were me.
Clem  But Herbert CAN be in the Cabinet, and Ellen CAN’T? In my experience scandals usually involve two people.

Decision made. Ellen is in. Attlee is not tolerating double standards.

Aneurin Bevan (Richard Harrington)

While all the publicity shows nurses with babies at the start of the NHS, Nye Bevin is not the central character as the Minister for Health and Housing, though he is the lead male part. It’s time for an aside.

My grandparents lived next door to the Bevan family in Tredegar. My mum worshipped Nye Bevan. The reason I have no blind allegiances in politics is that my mum was a staunch Labour supporter, my dad was Conservative. I therefore never “hate” all Tories or all Labour.

My Great-Uncle Ben did not worship Nye. But Ben hated Churchill. Ben claimed to have been at Tonypandy when Churchill as home secretary sent horses in to attack the crowd. There was similar in the 1920s and Ben was only twelve at Tonypandy. Hmm. He told us that Welsh mining communities booed Churchill’s radio speeches. A friend’s dad was a Derbyshire miner and told me exactly the same story. Ben lived near us with his daughters in Bournemouth and was a character who walked around the streets all day. My dad, a sales rep, would often pick him up on the road and take him with him for the day. Ben was a marvellous raconteur and car radios were rare and crackly. Ben would regularly turn up at our house. I spent hours listening to him. The thing is, Ben sat next to Nye in class in Tredegar. They were not friends … politically Ben was to Nye’s left. Yes. I mean that. He said Nye stole his pencil and his books and was a bully. More to the point for this play, Ben used to carry a newspaper cutting on Nye’s death, listing how much money he left. Ben would then add up a cabinet minister’s salary over the years and stab his finger at the amount. Nye had become wealthy. Ben never forgot that pencil. His ire extended to Nye’s wife, Jennie Lee (Allison McKenzie in this) who he thought ‘a celebrity.’

Nye had stayed on the back benches, declining to join the National government in the war. That is local South Wales history, rooted in the absolute loathing of Churchill as Home Secretary. More could have been made of it.

We first see Nye in the play in a scruffy brown suit, while the others are in formal tailored greys. His suit improves twice until it is beautifully cut, then he adds an extremely expensive overcoat.  A stage direction reads Each suit marks a change in status.

Moran That suit is exceptional fabric.
Nye  Yes. My wife chose it.
Moran And very hard to come by, I am certain. She’s right. A minister in His Majesty’s Government must dress the part, at least.

Later, either Herbert or Ernie asks if the rumour is true that Nye changes to a more modest suit before he gets off the train in Ebbw Vale. I can’t find it in the text. It may be a later addition.

Nye has had to meet Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor and the head of the BMA. After a chilly and surly argument, Nye finally agrees to taste the vintage wine.

Then he hands out black market chocolate to colleagues with a wink.

The most telling scene is at Nye’s place with Joan and Thomas, a young architect, who is going to design the council houses with indoor toilets and large windows.

Take a look at this. The demolition plot on the left is where my grandparents’ later spanking new 1950’s council house stood in Cefn Goula, Tredegar. The house next door is Nye Bevan’s idea of the future and the architect’s dream.

This is the coldest winter (1947) on record until 1963. There have been none like it since. It’s a crisis. The winter was so cold it destroyed stored potatoes. No coal. No money.  Ellen has pointed out that with coal severely rationed, the cabinet should be setting an example.

However, at Aneurin’s place, there are bottles of black market whisky everywhere. Nye boasts of getting Bourbon from the Americans. He is serving ham and eggs from a frying pan – two eggs and ham to a plate. The ration in 1947 winter was just one egg per person a week, and 3 oz of ham or bacon (down from 4 oz). Nye is in shirtsleeves. No jacket. Nor are Thomas and Joan wrapped up. The house must be warm then. So here is Nye, swilling illegally acquired whisky, eating very well and partying with junior staff while the country shivers and starves … the screamingly obvious reference is Boris Johnson and Partygate. Or Keir Starmer’s more modest Beergate.

I begin to wonder if the playwright ever met my Great Uncle Ben and saw his newspaper cutting.

It’s an important scene once Ellen arrives. Ellen is sounding off about the terrible atrocities she witnessed in the war … she was in charge of air raid shelters. The home ones were ‘Morrision’ shelters, named after Herbert Morrison. Joan is deeply upset. Jennie Lee will explain why. We realize that Nye and Jennie have empathy. They have taken the trouble to find out about Joan the person. Ellen has defended her against sexism loudly, but hasn’t.

None of this detracts from what Nye Bevan did for the NHS. It was based on simple insurance schemes set up in Tredegar as my mum often told me. His main failure was he could not incorporate GPs. He disparaged the hereditary father to son GP practices. In the end, as he said in 1948, he pushed the NHS through ‘by stuffing the doctors’ mouths with gold.’ That is, GPs did not become NHS employees, but were, as today, free-lance suppliers. Consultants were allowed the three day NHS / two day private mix. ‘Stuffed their mouths with gold?’ 22% rise for junior doctors?

Ellen Things will change, Nye. Costs will go up. Not every government will be as enlightened as you. The Tories will flog it off. It will become a National Treasure. Up for sale … You’ve left the teaching hospitals alone! And Harley Street. You were going to integrate the pharmaceutical industry and stopped their profiteering. That would have reduced costs. But you blinked, Minister. You blinked.

I can’t imagine that Ellen was that prescient. It’s a speech for 2024. She could have added that when the drug companies invented expensive new drugs, the NHS would have N.I.C.E to decide that we couldn’t have them.

Bevan foresaw modern health centres rather than the stuffy waiting rooms in doctor’s homes, crammed full of coughing and sneezing patients without appointments that I remember from my childhood. At least when I got to sixteen my GP (who had delivered me) offered me a cigarette in the surgery. The health centres worked very well when my kids were young in the 1980s. Then Tony Blair removed the commitment to 24 hour care, and things changed. Entrepreneur GPs combined practices into bigger practices … our ‘Super Practice’ has 58,500 patients. American companies started buying up practices. In our area, that means six figure paid partners who are rarely there, and young doctors on the very lowest wage level doing the actual work. If you can get an appointment. A phone consultation can take a fortnight. Warmonger Blair fucked up the NHS, the legal system (you now need lawyers for  everything), education by encouraging extremist faith schools and international relations.

The ending is odd. In the penultimate scene, snow falls on the dying Ellen while Winston Churchill intones. It is a jerky move into the surreal, and we remember that during Ellen’s opening speech, someone was lying on the stage in the same position in the same clothes (Felixe Ford at a guess).

Anachronisms? It’s been written with hindsight. I doubt that ‘fucking’ was as frequent an adjective in 1945 . Ellen smokes Craven A, just like the adverts in 1940s Punch magazines. However, one of the ministers brandishes a blue £5 note. The first blue £5 was 1957. In 1947, it would have been white, larger and printed on one side. I just checked that online. They cost £195 now but you can just print one off a picture.

I added this. I remember Herbert Morrison’s Government & Parliament (1954, and revised). It was required reading on my political studies course in 1967. My copy has the adhesive film to preserve it and has underlinings and is well-thumbed. We were told it was the definitive work, especially so as written by an insider under Ramsay McDonald (Morrison was Minister of Transport 1929-1931), and Churchill (1940-45) and Attlee (1945 to 1951). A lot he says on civil servants point to the sitcom Yes, Minister. Morrison suggests there should be an inner cabinet and a full cabinet, exactly as we see it in this play. I checked the index. Yes, Ellen Wilkinson is mentioned twice. The second as a ‘brave soul in the Blitz whose early death was a great loss to the country and the Labour party’ who made an apposite quote on unhappy parliamentary secretaries, ‘less than the dust’. The quote, Morrison says, is from India’s Love Lyrics. I see. They were discussing it together. That and the Kama Sutra?

There are index references for all the major ministers in the 1945 government … except one. Aneurin Bevan does not get a single index reference. So Unwin’s portrayal of mutual dislike is true.

We were expecting it to be didactic, preachy and dull. It was none of these. The negative reviewers didn’t like the arguing and shouting. Bless! That’s reality in a bunch of competitive, committed individuals who have climbed to the top of the greasy political ladder. No, they won’t be friends. Always remember John Humphries advice to interviewers on all politicians. He told them they had to keep at the front of their minds, ‘Why is this bastard lying to me?’

We thought it a compelling view. We also found it truthful.
****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

5 star
Theatre South East *****
4 star
Holly O’Mahony, The Stage ****
3 star
Fiona Mountford, The Telegraph ***
Theatre & Tonic ***
Susan Elkin ***
2 star
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian **
Dominic Maxwell, The Sunday Times **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

JONATHAN KENT (Director)
Peter Gynt by David Hare after Ibsen, National, 2019
The Height of The Storm, Florian Zeller, Bath 2018
Sweet Bird of Youth, Chichester, 2017
Gypsy by Arthur Laurents / Stephen Sondheim, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014
Platonov Chichester 2015
Ivanov Chichester 2015
The Seagull Chichester 2015

CLARE BURT
The Salisbury Poisonings (TV)
Miss Littlewood, RSC, 2018
This Is My Family, Chichester 2019

ANDREW WOODALL
The Other Boleyn Girl, Chichester 2024 (Norfolk)
Antony & Cleopatra, Globe 2017 (Endobarbus)
Julius Caesar, RSC 2017 (Julius Caesar)
Wars of The Roses: Henry VI, Rose Kingston (Gloucester)
Wars of The Roses: Richard III, Rose Kingston (Derby)
First Light, Chichester 2016 (Major General Shea)

RICHARD HARRINGTON
Home I’m Darling, by Laura Wade, National 2018

CLIVE WOOD
Antony & Cleopatra, Globe 2014 (Mark Antony)

PETER HAMILTON DYER
A Midsummer Night’s Dream RSC 2016, ‘A Play for the Nation’ at Stratford
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, RSC 2016, Second Viewing
The Changeling by Middleton & Rowley, Wanaker, 2015

SUZANNE BURDEN
Salomé by Wilde, RSC 2017

MILES RICHARDSON
King John, Rose Kingston 2016
Volpone, RSC 2015
King Charles III, Mike Bartlett, London 2014