EC PAPERS NOVEMBER 2017

Star article by one of the strike committee members Sally Groves and in a longer study by George Stevenson. Another feature of the construction of this play, evident to varying degrees in our tradition of theatre, is that it was highly collectively assembled and used the voices, the ‘actuality’ as Banner Theatre call it, of interviews with those involved in the struggle. The plays cover the 134 year struggle from the first charter for the universal franchise to the legislation that gave everyone over the age of 18 the vote. The move from the period when trade unions were illegal to the period when over half the workforce were active in them and able to win equal pay for women and thereby settle another long standing demand. The move from the period when Britain was a mainly rural country to when it was the most advanced industrial economy on earth, to the beginning of the period when it became the first nation to de industrialise with the adoption of the free movement of capital and labour, is felt in these plays.