-IF YOU were at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square on the evening of 15 July, you would have been watching some rather unusual gollgs ou.
A reggae band, theatre groups, teachers, militants, residents of Southall, poets took the stage to express their anger in words and music at the death of Blair Peach and the behaviour of the Special Patrol Group.
You would have been forgiven for thinking that the theatre was under occupation rather than that a cultural evening was in progress.
The evening presented a rather different kind of culture than we are used to. Debate, theatre and music interwove resulting in an exhilerating political event, which culminated in a headlong rush from the theatre to burn an enr or męNee boce commissłoaer, SOn Sloane Square.
As the police sirens began to converge on central London we knew we were fighting back.
GAVIN RICHARDS, director of Belt and Braces theatre company, had a lot to do with the NULLOA evening WOODWARD talked to him significance of the event. 1 The winte Rogas oed, •people in the Royal Court theatre, who were obviously sympathetic towards the issue, approached the management to theatre for benefit for the Memorial Fund.
They were persuaded to offer it to us for one evening free of charge, and the 'Friends of Blair Peach' accepted the challenge.
Basically there were two views about what to do with the evening, though they weren't could have done ateiauona-ivoc Deicul. wacke vou elTOl of prestigious people to come and do turns.
The night would be used to draw in the liberal inteligentsia. theatre wịth a strong following in that layer.
We could have done it as a straight money raiser, charging f10 a seat, and playing on the consciences of a rich audience to give more money.
But i think the death of Blair Peach has had a real effect on the people in the ANL. Lots of famous people weren't coming forward to do it. And I thought a lot of other people were really angry.
The effect of his death has been good and bad, making people show where they stand and shocking the liberals.
• wanted a undvng evening to buldoze through the contradictions. well-known people but they had to understand the need, for radical change, humanitarian.
I thought that the main support for the evening would come, not from inteligentsia, but from working class people drawn by Blair Peach's death into taking part.
And people did come from watch and take part. Misty, the reggae band, brought some of their following. support from Hackney and the East End, where Blair worked.
Also we brought events more in line with the CONCHI the Rainbow Saturday, so it stood as a whole weekend rather Inan a one-ol callural evening at lne koyai Court. I think that was important.
What we did in the end ran right across the spectrum. It became an event rather than a traditional theatrical evening.
IHD-CLANCG thus is demonstrated thạt normal culture break down as the polițical climate hots You find willeis, musicials, .responding Kotelner generate the energy required by the situation. They can't do that on their own at home being a writer. or in a lazz club just Dlavıng lazz.
And you find that a building that for years has had a very elitist following can suddenly be expropriated and used by would never normally find there.
In Paris, in '68, Barrault's theatre thrown to the demonstrations emanated from it. It became a cultural meeting house.
Culture and debate can cross over and the debate determines culture. determined on high democratic forum. Ihe most democratic torum you can find.
It's how self-expression happens among the mass of people there. It's culture not packaged and presented, but coming out of the situation. e That was there in embryonic form on Sunday night.
Those companies that are basing themselves among sections of the community in active Wriers ald JUDE about the when some offer the Blair Peach an Amnesty The Royal Court is a There were some not just be the liberal Southall to got Friday and there's a demand for us.
left isolated to that definitions of an intense aLLOS CLO Grunwicks.
reggae from Misty. that there was a jolt.
people that you trom Ealing. was students and When it is not them becomes the Cotili C encampment.
Severing.
Politically it was Misty at the Royal Court. Inset Gavin Richards. opposition to all kinds of oppression have to break down definitions of culture.
We're just artists and we have to respond in the forms we can best communicate in because When the demand isn't there and we are define our own forms of self-expression obviously we find those forms defined for us by bourgeois forces.
So on Sunday night there was Lynn Farleigh - a very accomplished actress performing dramatic monologue requiring silence and concentration. It came after a very uplitting speech by Paul Foot, coming after six minutes of film of the police at That had followed 20 minutes of tantastic And there was no feeling Those things belonged A highly regarded writer like Edward Bond was speaking his own poetry after a 13 year old Again that appeared to be natural, which of course it should be, and is, but generally it wouldn't appear so.
I should mention the contribution of the witnesses from Southall. 20 people or so sat on a stage relating things that had happened to and describing, more articulately than any trained speaker, what it's like to be living in of an aggressive, military Who can tell me whether that was theatre, news, propaganda or what? What you must say is that it was what we needed to know and again it didn't appear unnatural in the context of the also important as evening as it signalled the end of the mourning for Blair Peach and brought forward the demands for the disbandment of the SPG and an end to the show trials of the Southall residents.
It's all part of the fight back against the terrifying growth of the country - the speed of it.
Blair Peach won't have died in vain if the fact of his death helps to mobilise people sufficiently for a few victories that stem that tude.
A £1000 of conscience money is not so important as raising political demands in a cultural context.
If culture is pushed aside as part of our general response it's of great assistance to the growth of Stalinist forms of struggle. That's because culture is the chief guardian of real socialist democracy It's value should be recognised by the left.
In the future we'll be battle against the Tory anti-union laws. In this context culture must be used.
Culture can teli the truth guardediy than in a straight political context. It can be controversial and alienating.
For Sunday night a lot of friends got together to help organise it. It was a real collective thing. It was mainly people around Belt and Braces and connections through that.
We contacted the writers, who'd also been contacted by the Committee. Collectively we decided on what kind of political issues and demands we wanted to cover and take up.
People were left to make up their minds about what they wanted to do — skits. seriors drama, music evening niusic.
capitalist skills to meet this.
CHICCILS Russians. Joan Littlewood TOSLUCK. the West End. coachloads of miners. brought down Heath.
energy now Against Racism.
strong state in this they did the acting. fighting a massive much less усь much less Name Address We settled on a strong finale, with Mike Carver doing his song about Blair Peach with the Belt and Braces band. i ney hadn't met before, but they got on and gave it a strong end.
Basically I decided to give a lot of time to the witnesses, to let the wholé thing run over time, I made all kinds of decisions which you don't normally make, giving the audience a hard time, disregarding style and expertise. It was an event rather than a neatly constructed theatrical In a way that comes from my experience with this company and other companies before. We've played to a whole lot of different kinds of polițical audiences and situations — a trade union, trades council, a women's group.
You realise how narrowly defined normal political theatre is. It's a real shock to come uf against other forms of self-expression like rock We have to use people who have more experience in 'Variety" more than people with experience of straight theatre.
When you put yourself in opposition to society those categories become meaningless, and when your audience is in opposition too they make big demands which conventional theatre can't meet.
If you face the audience of the future you have to have a whole different set of skills. You are not talking to a roomful of specialists but large numbers of people. You have to have the You end up thinking about circus and rock - the politics of spectacle - aLIa . than introspective thoughts about psychology.
Spectacles — that's the path that so many have gone down. That was the early training of Brecht, the German producers of the 20s, the she finally came or at least her company drifted into She came at a time when the working class movement was at its lowest ebb in the fifties What she succeeded in doing at that time was monumental when you set it in context.
So it's a well trodden path when you're facing large conscious audiences.
It's ten years since Alan Plater and Alex Glasgow (who was at the Royal Court on Sunday) put on Close the Coal House Door for That movement is more disparate now but is still widespread. It depends on whether the political movement picks up and gives that disparate movement some conesion There's a real sense of flux going on in the touring companies because the energy that brought them into existance was the energy that Five years of demoralisation under Labour virtually drained that energy away. But small groups, particularly of women are making the running in this area. And Black theatre groups doing plays about Sus, and the PTA. That's the It's appeared in music too, notably in Rock The burning effigy of McNee in Sloane Square, that stunt showed that theatre can carry on beyond the walls. I think people felt really liberated when they got outside. weren't determining things anymore, it was theirs. We gave them the props and MURDER OF BLAIR PEACI To: SW Recordings, 265a Seven Sisters Road, London N4 2DE.
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