The Red Shed

I first discovered politics whilst sitting in an A Level Economics class with my two friends, Iain and Anthony. The qualification was my political awakening as each week we were told to buy a broadsheet and share what we'd learnt the following week. Up until that point, politics didn’t mean much to me. I knew my parents voted Blair in ’97, along with the rest of the nation, but didn’t know why my dad had stopped voting Conservative, nor why my mum was so pleased that a smile had come to office – I guess I just wasn’t interested. 

Studying Economics changed me. 

We learnt about the two different economic ideologies – Classical and Keynesian – and in nearly every debate I came down on the side of John Maynard Keynes. Classical economists believed that the sheriff should leave town and let big business slug it out in the market saloon. Keynes argued that this wild-west approach to economics was all well and good, but who would attend to the broken infrastructure and citizens that resulted from this free-for-all. Keynes wasn’t a socialist by any means – he promoted the market – but he appreciated that the State had an important role to play in society.

At university my friend, Al, would sit at the kitchen table with a can of diet coke, some roll-up baccy and a copy of The Guardian. The first thing I noticed about him was that he started at the front of the paper. Everyone I knew up until this point had started at the back, treating the text like a Manga comic. For me, the news was like eating my greens: I only consumed it because I was told that it was good for me. But Al devoured these greens in the same way I shovelled in the sport. It was there that I started picking up the paper, finding an affinity with the way it approached news stories. My family had always read the Daily Express  - still do, even though they both support immigration and have moved on from Princess Diana’s death; I guess it’s just become a habit for them. In reading The Guardian I was touched by the humanity of the reporting: how it called business to account and promoted the underdog. Even though the paper sometimes feels it’s beating you over the head with agenda, it remains a left-wing voice in a right-wing world; a noble whisper amongst the screams.

Along with Al the music I listened to informed my politics. Listening to The Smiths, Pulp and Arctic Monkeys turned me on to reading working-class writers. Reading Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner; watching Taste of Honey; listening to John Cooper Clarke made me realise that so many people were trapped in the system; and trapped, not by the content of their character, but by the cut of their class. Realising that people weren’t where they were through ability was a political awakening. From there I would go on to become a state school teacher, join a trade union, strike over pay and conditions, and read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists ­­– the socialist bible.

From The Ragged.

I’m of the left then. I will always be on the left. I don’t care how many people peddle the lie that the older you get the more right-wing you become, it won’t happen to me. I’m happy to have a system of high taxation and public spending. When I get my payslip at the moment I look at those National Insurance contributions and think, ‘my work in the classroom has helped build a hospital.’ (I’m very egotistical). If I’m honest, I barely look at the number in the bottom right hand corner; I think it’s a little unseemly to reflect on your own personal wealth when you’ve got a society to save. I do, however, appreciate that should I ever own a home - or a child - that I mightn’t welcome taxation with the same open arms, perhaps instead a begrudging shrug; the kind you reserve for a christening invite, where you go to please others and not yourself. So, I mightn’t always love being taxed, but I love what it does.

This week I went to see The Red Shed with my old comedy mate, Andy. The play is performed by comedian Mark Thomas, a man that you might not know from his 90’s Channel 4 show The Mark Thomas Comedy Product. I only heard Mark Thomas for the first time last year in his spellbinding show, Bravo Figaro!; a beautiful piece about his working-class father’s love of opera. I was touched by Thomas’ tale of how his dad, a common man, had fallen for the most esoteric of art forms. In it, Thomas is a natural raconteur, funny and congenial; but even his family story has a political edge: hearing about how dress code and prices sought to exclude his dad from attending the thing he loved makes the thing bubble with some anger.

The Shed in Wakefield.

The Red Shed is a more political piece than Bravo but no less personal. The Red Shed is a Labour club in Wakefield that Thomas has attended since he was a student in Yorkshire. During The Miners Strike Thomas and friends collected for the families by putting on plays and performances in the Wakefield club. He was so immersed in the struggle that he was awarded by the National Union of Miners one of two honorary badges to mark his support for the pitmen – his friend Pete was meant to get the other one but a young NUM lad mistook the Sandinista male for a female Tory (this acts as a running joke throughout the play) . The Shed is celebrating its 50^th birthday this year and to mark the occasion Thomas has decided to write a play. He wants to write about the exact moment he knew he was a Socialist.

The year is 1985, the pitmen have been starved back to work after a year of being on strike. Throughout this time, miners depended upon charitable donations from their community- since Thatcher’s government had denied them social security payments. It was supposed to be a dispute that broke the government, instead it broke the will of workers and their families. Returning to work without getting the reversal on pit closures was a failure: the men felt it, their wives felt it and the community did too. In a dignified show of strength, the men walked through the streets, banners aloft, keeping the red flags flying high; the community came out to clap, to cheer in solidarity. Thomas was one such person. He remembers something even more poignant though: schoolchildren singing. Singing the union anthem, Solidarity Forever (‘Solidarity Forever. Solidarity Forever. For the union makes us strong.'). A student Mark Thomas cries. He knows that their fathers' loss is theirs. If the pit closes, then their history shuts too. These towns were built on flesh and bones industry, now they're being closed on cold hard commerce. Thomas wants to tell this story but in an era of post-truth he can’t be sure it’s true. He has embellished so many stories as a comedian that he’s worried he might have fabricated this one too. In an age of lies he reasons even the façade of theatre must tell truths; his mission is to find that village, that school, those children to find out whether it happened or not.

His journey begins in the Red Shed’s meeting room. Since The Miners Strike, the Shed has gone on to support the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, gay rights and workers rights. In regards to workers rights, The Red Shed was instrumental in unionising local food workers, and helping Wetherspoons staff picket against the EDL holding meetings in their pub. Over its 50 years the Conservative Club opposite has closed down, yet The Red Shed remains (if only this were a microcosm for the national political landscape) . During the meeting, Mark proposes his plans for his theatre show about The Red Shed and the children of the mining village. The committee members are played by the live audience, whom Mark has pre-selected and given face-masks to, to replicate the real-life characters. The parts in the meeting room are redolent of The Vicar of Dibley with petty squabbles about calendars segueing into big talk about issues. In one funny moment, Thomas is forced to rebook Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, because it clashes with the bingo.

Audience members in character.

After the meeting, he enlists a few of the members to help him find the pit village that accommodated the school that housed the children. Given there were hundreds of pit villages and Mark can’t remember which one, this is an arduous task. In his odyssey to reclaim the past, Thomas ruminates on the state of a nation. What were once pit yards are now McDonalds. Emblems of comradeship have been tarmacked over by corporate monoliths. With their grandfathers past erased is it any wonder grandchildren vote Tory? 

Over the course of the journey, Thomas wonders whether he will ever find the children that stirred his soul: in one choice moment, he even tells the audience members on stage,

 ‘It occurs to me  my memory may be wrong … and I wonder momentarily if I could lie and pretend to find the school… if you think I should lie and make the story better raise your hand.’

The fact that the audience votes for the lie over the truth might be why we’ve got Brexit. People would rather hear a narrative that appeals to their prejudice than facts that serve them. With this question in the middle of the play, we’re left wondering how true Thomas’ story is. What is fundamentally true though is that it is beautiful, and as Keats once said, ‘Beauty is truth,’ so I guess in a world that promotes lies sometimes that's all we can ask for.

The Red Shed is on tour now.