YES! YES!
UCS: WHAT A SHOW OF WORKING-CLASS POWER!
How delighted I was to be invited by the organisers -
People’s Past People's Future - to their showing, in Rutherglen, of YES! YES!
UCS!
What a show! What an amazing night of popular theatre. What
a powerful, awe-inspiring portrayal of the power of the Scottish working class,
once mobilised. And what an impact it had on the audience, overwhelmingly local
working-class people.
Written by Neil Gore for Townsend Productions to celebrate
the 50th anniversary of the momentous 1971-72 Upper Clyde
Shipbuilders famous work-in, the production is a phenomenal combination of
entertainment, education on a key chapter in labour movement history, and lesson
in class power, delivered with uplifting verve by two young women actors, Janie
Thomson and Heather Gourdie.
Workers Occupy the Shipyards
The theatre show is part musical, part sketches and dialogue
by the two characters, interspersed by powerful speeches, peppered with humour,
pathos and brilliant storytelling. It draws the audience into the whirlwind
events of the workers’ occupation of the closure-threatened shipyards, solidarity
conferences and general strikes, and the ultimate victory of the class power
unleashed against the vicious axe-men of the remote Westminster Tory government,
led by Ted Heath.
In what was an overwhelmingly (almost 95%) male workforce,
the play dares - successfully - to portray events through the eyes, experiences
and personal growth of the two young women characters, Aggie and Eddy, who
worked in stock control and the shipyard’s drawing room.
Through dynamic dialogue and song - backed up by vivid poster
art, animation, real-life newsreel and recordings of powerful speeches by the
likes of the workers’ main public representative, Jimmy Reid - we witness the
personal growth of the two young women workers into dynamic fighters, at the
same time as the play vividly recounts the mass struggles of the time: the
power of the Scottish working class and their active allies across Britain and
the far continents.
Personal dreams, doubts, bereavement and growth in ‘the
college of knowledge’ that is the trade union movement are all skilfully,
powerfully presented in a fashion that never loses the attention of the working-class
audience. It is funny, moving, inspiring, and absolutely uncompromising in its socialist
message.
Aggie goes from stock controller to shop steward, breaking
through nervousness to become an inspiring orator, discovering the power of words
to ‘light up something inside us.’ Eddy follows the advice of her dying
shipyard worker father and ‘follows her dream’ to become an artist, but never loses
her roots, taking up the fight for justice for workers blighted by asbestosis.
 |
| Part of the large, working-class audience in Rutherglen |
Hope Shines Eternal
And hope shines out. Hope based on this accurate account of
the real victories of united workers’ struggles 50 years ago, but also hope
that new, current generations will reawaken to such methods, as – in Aggie’s
words – “the Tories never learn but also never forget nor forgive us.”
After an interval during which the People’s Past People
Future organisers kindly laid on ‘a strikers’ supper’ of wholesome soup and
rolls, the night was rounded off by songs from Rutherglen Community Choir and a
powerful rendition of two of his union songs by 81-year-old socialist
singer-songwriter, Arthur Johnston.
Socialism Returns!
And yet it didn’t end there! A big group of the audience –
including many of the large numbers who bought my pamphlet Socialism Returns
in the 21st Century, as advertised by the organisers during the
raffle! – kept me back for nearly an hour discussing why we need the spirit of
UCS today, or as a few of them said, “we need a revolution!”
Many of these men and women were scathing about all the
political parties – “For the first time in my life I won't vote for any of
them" – but readily added they trust our party, the SSP, because they know
we are honest and tell it how it is on the side of the working class.
I left this brilliant night thinking: imagine if YES! YES! UCS!
was shown on mainstream TV!
Imagine the impact on younger people with little or no
knowledge of such glorious periods of working-class struggle. Imagine how it
would uplift and embolden workers today, as they face the capitalist thuggery at
P&O ferries, fire and rehire, and a multitude of daily assaults on our
lives as the profiteers seek to recover and replenish their ill-gotten wealth,
at the expense of terrible suffering and privation for millions of workers and
their children.
Which is why those in power would not dare televise it! And
why it’s so important that others imitate the actions of People's Past People's
Future by taking this marvellous, inspiring piece of popular theatre into local
communities: to the people with most to gain by rising up in the manner of UCS.
As John Lennon sang in response to the UCS, “Power to the
People!”
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