Friends

Friends. Some come "with benefits", as in the euphemistically titled 2011 romantic comedy about casual relationships. They imply good times. Others are "on benefits", sometimes called unemployment benefit, job-seeker's allowance, universal credit or formerly "the dole" They imply hard times. In the UK right now, over 700,000 university graduates are out of work and claiming benefits - that's 46% more than was the case pre-Covid. Unemployment nationally is now more than 5% of the adult population. That's a worrying statistic, but it's nothing like the 25% unemployment rate that crippled the working people of the country in the 1930s. 

Walter Greenwood wrote his first novel 'Love on the Dole' in 1932. It was about life in Hanky Park in Salford, an area and a life he knew intimately, for he was born and grew up there. Greenwood's parents belonged to the radical working classes. His mother came from a family with a strong tradition of socialism and union membership, and she inherited her father’s book-case complete with its socialist book collection. 

His father died when he was nine years old, and his mother provided for him by working as a waitress. This was pre-welfare state, pre-NHS, pre-workers' rights, pre-contraceptive pill, pre-WWII Britain. Hanky Park was a grimy slum and its inhabitants were the exploited workers and their families of Manchester's industrial heart, the cotton mills and foundries.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

Greenwood was educated at the local council school and left at the age of 13 after taking the Board of Education Labour Exam, which was only "open to fatherless boys" so that they could go to work to help support their family. His first job was as a pawnbroker's clerk. A succession of low paid jobs followed, while he continued to educate himself at Salford Public Library. During periods of unemployment Greenwood worked for the local Labour Party, after no longer qualifying for the dole, having exhausted his entitlement under the rules of the time. 

After being owed three months wages from his last job as a typist, he took home the office typewriter in lieu of his back pay, and began to write about the people of Hanky Park, to earn a living. 'Love on the Dole', was about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town, written while he was jobless. After several rejections, it was published in 1933. It was a critical and commercial success, and a great influence on the British public's opinion about the issue of unemployment. The novel even prompted parliament to investigate, resulting in reforms.

In 1935, Greenwood collaborated with Ronald Gow on a stage adaptation of the novel. The critic of The Times wrote:
"Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience in January 1935 ... it has the supreme virtue in a piece of this kind of saying what it has to say in plain narrative, stripped of oration."

The play had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, which meant that Greenwood would not have to worry about unemployment again.

programme from a1939 stage production

A film adaptation was proposed in 1936, but the British Board of Film censors made strong objections to the possibility of a film about industrial unrest, which might prove socially divisive. In 1940, however, when unemployment could be presented as "a thing of the past", a film adaptation was permitted. I watched it earlier this evening (it's on YouTube if you care to find it.)

The story centres around the Hardcastle family, mother and father, daughter Sally and son Harry. The son began working as a pawnbroker's clerk (as Greenwood himself  had done) before joining a local factory as an apprentice engineer. He dated a local girl, Helen Harkin. Harry won a sizeable amount of money on an accumulator, gave some to his parents and sister and took Helen on holiday to the seaside with the rest (Blackpool in the film, but not in the novel). Sally was pursued by half the men in Hanky Park, including Sam Grundy the prosperous bookie, but she favoured Larry Meath, an engineer and Labour Party aide (again, as Greenwood had been).

Life in Hanky Park was difficult and hand-to-mouth (except for the bookies, the factory owners and the pawnbrokers). The General Strike was a recent memory and the economy was sluggish. Inevitably, Helen became pregnant and she and Harry planned to marry but when his apprenticeship ended he was made redundant as the economy nosedived. The dole was there as a safety-net for some but it was means tested on a household basis. Harry didn't qualify as his father and sister were still in employment. With no jobs to be had and a baby on the way the future looked very bleak.

Love on the Dole (still, 1941)

As economic conditions worsened and more men were placed on short time or laid off all together, the Labour Party's attempts to educate and work for change through the ballot box were overtaken locally by angry men wanting change. Protest became violent and Sally Hardcastle's friend Larry Meath was fatally injured in a police baton charge. With her future husband dead and her father and brother unemployed, Sally eventually abandoned her principles and capitulated to advances of Sam Grundy on the promise that he would find work for her brother and father on the local buses, which he did. Tough love. 

It's a powerful but chilling tale of grinding poverty, squalid lives, painful compromises and hope thwarted and it pulls no punches. I first taught it as a set text in the 1970s, only forty-five years on from its inception. We're only a few years short of its centenary and its relevance seems undiminished. It's still well worth reading today, up there with the likes of 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist'.

Hanky Park Blues

"It isn't where you live, it's who you live with. Isn't it?"

It came, it swore, it conquered.

"You can see the sea if you stand on the chair."

It mocked, it rocked, it unseated.

"If only everybody would lend a hand..."

It snorted, it derided, it divided.

"They can take away our jobs, but they can't take away our love.

Can they?"

It lured, it whored, it corrupted.

"It's not what it is, but how it's used, capital"

Thanks for reading, S ;-)