Clash by Ellen Wilkinson
So…. I’ve managed quite well with #WITmonth during August I feel – three titles so far – but needless to say I am *not* sticking with my plans… I had wanted to read at least one Virago this month and had pencilled in “A Fine of Two Hundred Francs” by Elsa Triolet. Not only is it a book I’ve intended to read for ages, but it would have also fitted in with WITmonth and would have been ideal. However, the bookish serendipity I posted about the other day got in the way…
Was there another country in the world where the class barriers were so high as in England, and where it was so loudly proclaimed that none existed at all?
As I mentioned, I was so intrigued to stumble across Ellen Wilkinson’s “Clash”, particularly when I read about her fascinating background and impeccable left-wing views. She lived such an inspiring life, and it seems, from reading “Clash”, that much of the novel draws from her own experience. The books tell of the adventures of Joan Craig; like Wilkinson, she’s from a working-class background, fiercely left-wing and committed to working for the cause. Joan is a trade union organizer and the book is set in 1926, on the eve of the General Strike.
This was a strike that lasted for 9 days, when the country ground to a halt as workers from all industries came out in support of miners whose wages and working conditions were appalling. The strike in effect failed, as the Government were prepared and drafted in blacklegs from the middle classes; their organisation was better and they could hold out against the workers for longer, leaving the latter no option but to give in. However, the General Strike has gone down in to history as formidable display of working class solidarity, as well as contributing to an upsurge of support for the Labour Party.
Joan rose to put some more coal on the fire. She looked thoughtfully at the piece she held between the tongs. “Queer stuff, isn’t it?” she said. “All the hidden possibilities, the light and power and heat and scent and healing, all being squabbled over like a mangy bone some prehistoric cur has buried.”
“And wasted, as though the sole use of it was to grub it out of the ground as quick as possible and chuck it at any price to anyone who’ll have the stuff,” added Royd.
Against this background, an event and a time she lived through, Wilkinson tells her story and it’s gripping as well as perhaps more nuanced than you might think. Joan (like her author) is a fiery and committed women, experienced in rallying the troops at meetings and destined for a career in politics, perhaps even Parliament. However, her story is not straightforward; she has monied friends, like Mary Maud Meadowes, and a whole ‘Bloomsbury’ set. In these circles, she runs into author Anthony Dacre. A slightly older and more cynical character who’s still sympathetic to the workers’ cause, he falls head over heels in love with Joan; however, his cold and somewhat estranged society wife, Helen, is the one who wears the trousers in their marriage and so the prognosis is not good. Further complications arise in the form of Gerry Blain, a veteran of WW1 who has several chips on his shoulder and also suffers a lot from his wartime injuries. Like Dacre, he’s smitten with Joan; unlike Dacre, he is completely committed to the cause. But Joan loves Anthony, and so the romance is in for a rocky ride…
Excitement was rising. These men, Joan thought to herself, were in the centre of a crisis in which actually they, working men, were being consulted and had to give the final decision. In all the history of their class, wars had been decided for them. Their job was to fight and die. At the most they could but grumble under their breath. But now Cabinet Ministers were waiting to see what they would do, and whether their decision was war or peace.
That description perhaps makes this work sound a little trivial, but frankly it’s anything but. The backdrop to the personal story is actually as gripping and involving as anything else in the book. We witness the excitement and tension of those organizing the strike; the difficulties of pulling together multiple trades unions, all with differing agendas; the complexities of deciding where your loyalties lie; the disappointments when things don’t go as planned; and the temptations which can draw a person away from their beliefs and commitments.
The scene at the Memorial Hall reminded Joan of a beehive. Men were pouring in, while others were pushing themselves out. Communists, single-taxers, credit-reformers, were trying to push their papers on the delegates. Unemployed sandwich-men paraded in front of the hall. Press photographers tried to lure the big-wigs to pose. The inevitable mild -middle-class lady gave out leaflets on birth-control. A little apart from the hubbub a typical group of London workers looked on with their usual air of cheerful detachment. A taxi-man, wearing his union button, surveyed the scene with immense benevolence.
Importantly, Wilkinson uses her story to embrace some very important and relevant issues for women. With remarkable foresight, she shows the personal and political as being inextricably linked; I was reminded of the slogan “The Personal is Political” which came to the fore during the second wave of feminism, and it’s clear that Wilkinson believes that you can’t behave in your personal life in a way that contradicts your political beliefs. Joan is a woman with a major dilemma: she loves Tony, but he wavers constantly, wanting her to be his mistress at one point and then when he finally commits to the idea of a divorce, insisting that she would have to give up her work. Gerry, on the other hand, would be the perfect work companion but Joan’s feelings for him don’t have the passion that she feels for Tony. Joan eventually reaches a resolution although, according to the introduction to the Virago edition by Wilkinson’s biographer Betty D. Vernon, Ellen herself never did.
London, Parliament, the folks that make laws and regulations, are afraid of the miners and the steel-workers and the other manual workers. They must be kept poor, or they mightn’t stick at their jobs, they must be kept ignorant of their bodies or they mightn’t produce enough cheap labour, they must be kept overcrowded when slums could be swept away in five years, because, oh why – because we must have some one to look down on, just as we won’t give them enough State hospitals for fear we shan’t be able to give ourselves the luxury of feeling charitable.
These are not the only relationships affected by the Strike, however. That action ends halfway through the book, but Wilkinson goes on to show the aftermath: workers being exploited as the try to go back to work, fund-raising efforts, women in small industrial towns who don’t know the first thing about birth control and struggle with multiple children, and the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots (plus ça change…) The effects of the Strike on relationships in all classes is profound, and Wilkinson’s characterisation is not black and white; Mary Maud is rich but with a heart that is in the right place and wants to help; Helen Dacre is upper class and initially nasty but becomes more human when her side of things is given; gossip columnist Palma is initially snooty but revealed to have left-wing sympathies. This nuanced approach allows Wilkinson to produce a riveting story that embraces left-wing politics, feminism and the struggle to balance work and love.
Mary Maud was a wealthy bachelor woman, an intimate of an exclusive Bloomsbury circle who bestowed fame on themselves by writing reviews of each other’s books. As each slender work appeared it was greeted as a new Tchehov, a more sensitive Dostoievsky, a respringing of the fountain of Shelley’s genius.
The book also has a strong message about the need to be vigilant; Wilkinson obviously felt that there should be no compromises and warns against the dangers of being seduced by comfort and drawn away from the struggle; Joan is tempted by the possibility of a different life that would blunt the edges of her combativeness and wish to fight for her cause, and I got very tense waiting to see what the resolution would be.
Wilkinson’s only political novel (“The Division Bell Mystery” is a crime story, and the politics are nothing like this from what I’ve read so far) is a real winner. It’s exciting, emotional and gives an eye-witness view of a time when working people came together to try and fight for a fairer world. That attempt failed, mainly it seems because the strikers had a desperate need for proper organisation and a more sweeping overview; and in some ways, with the ridiculous in-fighting plaguing the left today, that still seems worryingly relevant. Little changes, and I was vaguely depressed to see one miner character comment about the closing down of the press: “That’ll larn the “Daily Mail” – it seems that particular rag was a problem back in 1926… “Clash” never hides its politics, but those politics give the book an importance and stimulation for discussion which so many works lack. It was definitely a worthy choice for Virago to republish in 1989, sixty years on from its original publication date; and it’s definitely worth tracking down today if you want a novel that will stimulate, engender debate and make you wonder how much we’ve moved on in what is nearly a century since that great coming together of the working class. You’ll notice a lot of quotes in this post, and I could have pulled out so many more; this is a book that’s really had an effect on me and it’s one of the most important Viragos I’ve read.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 10:12:56
Virago a month coincided with my finding Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood and abook of short stories by Grace Paley.In a TBR pile untouched for maybe ten years.Treasures underneath my nose!
Aug 30, 2018 @ 10:38:19
Treasures indeed! That’s one of Atwood’s books I’ve not read in decades and I’d love to revisit!
Aug 30, 2018 @ 11:04:44
This does make me want to find it. I wonder if Bookmarks (the radical bookshop in Bloomsbury that was attacked by right-wingers recently) stocks it…
Aug 30, 2018 @ 12:58:32
They certainly should do, as I believe there is a modern reprint available. Scarily, I was in Bookmarks not long before the attack…. 😦
Aug 30, 2018 @ 13:04:23
It’s so awful. I’m glad that people are rallying round.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 13:08:47
Definitely – attacking books is scary!
Aug 30, 2018 @ 11:43:46
Thank you so much. Have you read Catherine Riley’s The Virago Story: it’s a wonderful history of this press. You could not have read this book but for this press and the women who made it happen. The first book they ever published was Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain. The first “modern classic” (that is not repeating the 19th century Victorian classics from classrooms and men’s lists, like say Middlemarch endlessly) was Antonia White’s Frost in May. I shall share your blog with my WomenWriters@groups.io
Aug 30, 2018 @ 11:57:07
I’ll add a second thought: There is another country where class barriers are as high and it’s insisted we don’t have a class system or it’s ignored: the US. More: the Trump regime is a class war and it is hardly ever discussed this way.
Kaggsby says “the story is more nuanced than you think.” In the US today it is assumed all leftist talk is not nuanced — that’s a stigma that has worked.
She says Wilkinson also shows the 1926 strike failed because the middle classes sided with the upper classes.I am reminded of how Thatcher destroyed the coal unions in 1982 and that she could not have gotten away with all she did if the middle classes had not remained complicit and acquiescent. One reason Hilary Clinton lost is she is identified with the upper class and she shares in middle class’s peoples’ fear of working class people. No plan for providing university education in a way that does not depend on banks because somewhere in her she believes if you don’t force working class people to work very hard they will “take advantage” and will try to take power the middle class doesn’t want them to have.
One aspect of Virago books Riley has seemed to stay away from is its class politics; the bookstore which stocked this book was attacked by a overtly violent rightist group in the UK. So Riley is not brave enough: she says that Virago moved away from the “extreme libertarian position of feminism of the 1970s:” she means those books for sexual liberation, but she does not say how they stayed with leftist politics: so which is the more important? In Woolf’s Three Guineas that’s a problem since her emphasis on daughters of educated men puts her book with middle and upper class women.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 13:07:27
What you have to say about the US is very interesting, and I probably hadn’t taken on board the class element – it seems to us over here to be very driven by race a lot of the time, but I can see that the disadvantaged of all sorts are the ones at the receiving end all the time at the moment. The middle class element is definitely a problem but oddly the working class can be too – I can remember arguing with my late father about politics as he/we were most definitely working class and yet he would vote for the Conservative party. Even now I see hard working people who have most to lose under the Conservatives still voting for them and it baffles me.
I confess that the current Virago set-up does in a certain sense seem to me a shadow of what it originally was (but I suppose this is a reflection of the changing world). The choices of books seem more conservative (with a small c) and ones that would never have been published by the original Virago; and the political element has gone which is a shame. Left-wing beliefs and feminist beliefs seem to me to go hand in hand, and that emphasis has perhaps been lost.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 13:00:38
I haven’t read Riley’s book, though I really should, given my long love of Virago books (I bought Frost in May when it first came out!) And I applaud them for all they published at the time because some of my favourite books are their VMCs.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 15:28:44
Well I wonder if I will be able to find a copy. It is certainly high on my wishlist now. I love the sound of Wilkinson’s ‘nuanced approach’ (to use your phrase) and the subject itself is so fascinating. Great review.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 19:22:24
Thanks Ali! Yes, the subject matter is interesting, but Wilkinson avoids writing a didactic novel which could just be dull and instead mixes the personal and feminist elements in so it ends up being really fascinating.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 17:28:09
Startlingly relevant. You’ve definitely made me want to unearth this volume now. And I love all the quotes and the photographs. So inviting.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 19:21:36
It is *very* relevant and shockingly so. It’s worth tracking down if you can!
Aug 30, 2018 @ 18:24:50
It does sound very absorbing, and I can see how it fits with the Virago vision.
On the subject of Ellen Wilkinson and the Jarrow Marchers, have you read Stuart Maconie’s book Long Road from Jarrow? I mention it because I’ve seen it in a couple of bookshops recently, so it came to mind in the context of this review. (Apologies if you’ve already mentioned it as I do recall seeing a review somewhere!)
Aug 30, 2018 @ 19:20:33
Certainly it chimes in well with their original ethos – perhaps not so nowadays! But it really is a gripping read.
And I haven’t read the Maconie though I really should – I do find him an interesting commentator so I’ll have to keep an eye out for it! 🙂
Aug 30, 2018 @ 19:38:38
It sounds like both book and author are fascinating. The General Strike is the background to Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Grey Granite, the second book of A Scots Quair, but, like so much working class history, has not been much dealt with in fiction.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 22:22:59
They are – Division Bell is good too but different. And thanks for the heads up about A Scots Quair – I have that lurking somewhere! 😁
Aug 30, 2018 @ 20:36:58
This sounds really fascinating and the cover is really eye catching.
Aug 30, 2018 @ 22:21:25
It’s very striking (ha!) and the book is just marvellous!
Aug 30, 2018 @ 22:19:44
I’m delighted to know that this lived up to its promise, and I’m beginning to dream of a series of books that would be testaments from women of different ears that still resonate ….
Aug 30, 2018 @ 22:20:56
It certainly did Jane -such a powerful book. And what a good idea for a series!
Aug 31, 2018 @ 00:53:36
Wow! Clash sounds like something I’d like to read asap. I love reading reviews such as yours about a book that I had no idea existed, and when I finish the I feel like I can’t live without it. So I checked with bookstores here in Toronto and nothing. I checked amazon’s Canadian site and the Virago sells for $95.00! (I’m not sure what that is in pounds). Thankfully amazon also listed an edition published by Merlin Press in the UK for a reasonable price. Thanks for the review.
Aug 31, 2018 @ 20:55:22
Thank you for such a great review and another book I must read, there is so much to learn isn’t there?!
Sep 01, 2018 @ 05:52:48
Thank you! It’s so good and really shone a light on a period I didn’t know much about!
Sep 01, 2018 @ 19:01:58
I really should search for this. Many years ago, I did a lot of research on Wilkinson for a work related project. A fascinating and inspiring woman. But I had had no idea that she wrote novels. My research was very much about her parliamentary life, and particularly around Jarrow
Sep 02, 2018 @ 10:11:45
She was fascinating indeed, and quite a writing talent too. I think I may have to seek out a biography just to find out more about her life and work!
Sep 03, 2018 @ 20:52:20
This sounds absolutely compelling. It’s great to hear it balances politics with the demands of a novel so well (I enjoyed No Surrender by Constance Maud but I didn’t feel she managed the same so successfully). As to whether things change – depressingly, I think the quote from your title still rings true. In fact I was shouting at the news exactly along these lines earlier today, when Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared!
Sep 04, 2018 @ 10:04:55
Yes, the balance was good for me – and I was never bored or distracted by the politics! And frankly, shouting is the only thing to do when That Man appears (*shudders*)
Sep 04, 2018 @ 09:15:27
I feel I need to read this book! I wonder if you would lend it to me and Ali, perhaps, later on (reason for a meetup???). It sounds fascinating and very well-put and nuanced, so a good novel as well as a good history of the times.
Sep 04, 2018 @ 10:02:35
It is indeed a good novel and the ideological elements fit well and don’t get in the way. I’m sure something could be arranged…. 😉
Sep 05, 2018 @ 00:22:14
Sounds like a brilliant read, and, as so often, one that was never published in the U.S., at least in a Virago edition. Everything I know about the General Strike comes from fiction, so I should add this to my list.
Sep 05, 2018 @ 16:13:41
It’s worth tracking down – the perfect combination of entertaining and informative and inspirational! 🙂