05 MARCH 2013
POSTED IN THEATRE
Ian Buckley on why he felt compelled to put
his Communist father's story on the stage
Being the son of a Savile
Row tailor, and visiting his small Soho workshop over many years (including
stairwell and toilet-cleaning duties!), I got to know the trade of high-class
tailor very well.
I also got to know Soho very well. The reason? My father worked
from a small, somewhat dark, workshop in a well-proportioned Georgian terraced
house that had seen better days. When I knew it in the early 1960s, it was full
of tailors like my father, working in their often cramped little rooms, for
prestigious high-class gentleman tailors whose grand shops were in Savile Row.
My father's employer was one of the most prestigious of these:
Henry Poole. Dad's actual workshop was in Broadwick
Street, off Wardour Street and, wonder of wonders, it
was in the same house that William Blake, the great English poet, had lived in.
It had the blue plaque to prove it! Unfortunately this national treasure has
not withstood the march of progress. In its place now stands a squat, ugly
block named William Blake House - they haven't even bothered to replace the
blue plaque.
Like many tailors my father was, and still is, a strong
communist (as is my mother). Fighting against Hitler led him to believe
communism was the only system that could withstand fascism. He was also a strong trade
unionist, joining the NUTGW (National Union of Tailor & Garment Workers)
and fighting for better conditions for his fellow tailors. He combined his
communist party duties with his obligations as a trade unionist all his life.
He was blacklisted early on in his working-life. Before the
Second World War, he was being trained for management by Horne Brothers. The
company announced a wage cut for the company's machinists – all of whom were
women. My father was the only cutter (at the time all men) to join them on
strike. When the machinists reached a deal and returned to work, my father was
left stranded. Banned from factory work, it was then he turned to high-class
bespoke tailoring, serving an apprenticeship and becoming a trouser-maker of
the highest quality.
I was born into this communist family. It was at once an
exhilarating and difficult experience. Exhilarating because you grew up with
such strong admirable ideals: socialist man and woman, equal in all areas,
forging a finer, more peaceful world where opportunity would be for all people,
where the wealth of the economy would be communally owned, where there would be
no rich and poor, no exploitation and no war. Difficult because as I grew up, I
realised not all communists measured up to these ideals. And in parts of the
world where our socialist system was in operation, amidst the undoubted
advances working people were making, horrible things could happen to people
which seemed to go against the very basis and essence of my ideals.
This is why growing up in a communist family is both a wonderful
and a sad experience. It's wonderful because you grow up with such admirable,
beautiful ideals – ideals I cherish and fight for to this day. Sad because you
have to incorporate into your system, into the deepest recesses of your
personal history, the tragic and often brutal things that were done in the name
of your beloved system alongside the undoubted and spectacular advances they
made for working people.
All this is relevant to the writing of my play. It's the
background to it, the soil it sprang from.
More immediately its genesis was as follows. One day my father,
at the age of 89, told me that he went traipsing half way across London to
Bethnal Green Labour Party rooms for the retired section of his trade union's
monthly meeting. I was astonished. I tried to dissuade him, anxious he might
have an accident, fall getting on and off the London tube. 'I've got to go,' he
said. 'It's my union duty.' A few weeks later I asked him what happened at
these union meetings. He began to tell me stories that made me laugh and made
me cry. Just four of them left, two Jewish and two non-Jewish, in their mid to
late 80s, one even in his 90s. All still firm communists – but the minute they
sat down, at least two of them would be striking sparks off each other for
supposed betrayals and mistakes committed an age ago.
I started to write my play. I had to capture this unforgettable
group of men, one of whom was my father. In their own small way they symbolised
the political currents that had shaken and shaped much of the twentieth
century. I had to write a play as a memory and a tribute to them and to their
continuing belief in their better world, to their amazing energy and to their
comradeship. This, then, is The Tailors’ Last Stand.
The Tailor’s Last Stand by Ian Buckley is at the Baron’s Court Theatre in London until 10
March 2013