Backlisted - Love On The Dole by Walter Greenwood

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

We are joined by the writer Andrew Hankinson to discuss Walter Greenwood’s classic novel of Northern working-class life. First published in 1933, Love on the Dole, revolves explores the fortunes of the Hardcastle family, who live in industrial Salford in the 1930s, just as the Depression is beginning to bite. Greenwood’s authentic portrayal of the corrosive effects of mass unemployment and poverty was well received by critics, but it wasn’t until the 1934 stage version had become a hit, that the book became a bestseller. It is estimated that a million people has seen the play by the end of 1935 and the book has remained in print ever since. However, it had to wait until 1941 before being made into a classic film which featured Deborah Kerr in her first starring role. We discuss the books connections to other working-class novels, its wider cultural impact and its influence on the gritty social dramas of the 1960s, the interesting differences between the book and the film adaptation, and we ask why, despite the classic status accorded to Love on the Dole, Greenwood himself and his nine other novels have faded into obscurity.  * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here http://bit.ly/backlistednewsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show, we can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today you find us on a cold morning in Salford in the early 1930s.

A cobbled street stretches down towards gates of a huge engineering plant. Three towering chimneys belch forth black smoke. Six smaller ones spit flames into the freezing air. Down the road, a crowd of men walk towards the gate. Grey mist of tobacco smoke rising above them, their hobnail boots ringing out on the cobbles. Behind them, a teenage boy lurks, his baggy breeches and stiff collar

mark him out as an office worker, out of place amid the working men and their overalls. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher on Bound, where people crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And making his backlisted debut, we welcome the writer, podcaster, and professional northerner, Andrew Hankinson. Hello, Andrew.

Hello. Thank you very much for having me. Well, thank you for coming. Yes. I'm going to tell you who you are now, Andrew. Andrew Hankinson is a journalist and author in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He has written two books, Don't Applaud, Either Laugh or Don't, at the Comedy Cellar.

And You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life, You Are Raoul Moat. Don't applaud, either laugh or don't at the Comedy Cellar. And you could do something amazing with your life. You are Raoul Moat. And back in the days where we used to talk on this show about what we've been reading this week, which, brackets, we now do on Locklisted, close brackets. But back on the days when we did that publicly, both of Andrew's books were raved about by me

and John Mitchinson. And indeed, Andrew, today a listener said on disgraced former platform Twitter that they – or was it on idyllic new platform Blue Sky? I'm not sure. It was one of them anyway. Andrew, they said, I didn't like the look of this round moat book when it was published, but I was

persuaded by Batlisted and it's absolutely brilliant. There you go. No, I appreciated that. You kind of gave a lot of fuel to that book. Well, it was easy to do because both your books are magnificent books

which mix what would we say journalism and narrative non-fiction and oral history and experimental work yeah a bit of memoir thrown in for good measure i'm asking on behalf of myself and John and many of our listeners, are you working on anything at the moment? For about two weeks, I've been working on something. I hadn't worked on anything for a long, long time. And then in the last few weeks, I sort of started to gather myself. I love that. Gather.

It's a great word. Took a while. Last two weeks? Yeah. I understand why you deeply resent me asking the question well you know it's two weeks in and you could easily lose faith in it it's something that i've had in mind for you know five years or so or something like that but um and then you start gathering yourself a little bit and start making the proper notes and then you you know and then

on with the projects let's get cracking yeah And you also are the host of an excellent podcast, which I think many of our listeners, if they're not already familiar with it, would enjoy very much. It's called Log Roll, which is quite funny. And it's a podcast, and I've been on it, and now you're on this, so it's well-named. Brilliant. It's a podcast specifically about non-fiction,

and actually I think the mechanics and craft of non-fiction writing are not discussed enough. So Log Roll performs a very valuable and fascinating function. Do you feel you've learnt much from doing that in terms of feeding into your own work? Oh, yeah, a huge amount. I mean, that's kind of... I lost faith in kind of my writing for Goodwill

and it was doing those interviews kind of picked me back up a little bit and you start to see the way people do things, the techniques people use. The main thing is finding a story, like finding something to write about. You know, it's so hard when you're scrabbling. I'm a non-fiction writer, not a fiction writer, so trying to scrabble around to think of what to write about is really hard. Speaking to all

those people helped me a great deal. Do you feel it's the story you're looking for from a journalism point of view, or is it that it's a story you feel you want to tell? That was what it was waiting for, for the thing that you really, really want to get out there, really, really want to get on the page. And do you think you will be thanking each of your guests individually in the acknowledgement of your next book? I think I should, yeah, definitely. I think that seems only polite,

given what you've just admitted. I think my last acknowledgements went on for about five pages so there's plenty of room in them so yeah yeah. Okay good well that's good to hear. Well the novel that Andrew has chosen for us to discuss is Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood first published by Jonathan Cape in 1933 and widely acclaimed as one of the finest portraits of northern working-class life into war years. The plot revolves around the Hardcastle family, who live in a terraced house in Salford in the 1930s. Harry Hardcastle is a bright teenager who gets a job in the engineering works, only to discover the deep iniquities of

the apprenticeship system. Worse is to follow as he gets a local girl pregnant, and as the Great Depression deepens, he's first laid off and then refused the dole through the dreaded means test. At the same time, his sister Sally falls in love with Larry Meath, a socialist intellectual and activist, but is forced by poverty and misfortune to reject him in favour of the sleazy bookmaker Sam Grundy. Broadly that's what happens. Don't want to give too much away about the plot but there you go. Walter Greenwood's authentic portrayal of working class life and the corrosive effects of massive unemployment fresh in minds from the late 1920s and early 1930s and the poverty it brought in

its wake, was well received by critics. But it wasn't until the 1934 theatrical version had become a hit that the book was to take off as a bestseller. It's estimated that a million people had seen the play of Love on the Dole by the end of 1935. And Greenwood himself was quoted as saying, I believe, at the end of the 1930s that it had been either been seen or read by three million people around the world because it was a big hit not just in the in the uk but elsewhere it's remained in print ever since however it had to wait until 1941 before being made into a classic film directed by John Baxter and which featured Deborah Carr in her first starring role. We will discuss in the course of this podcast why it had to wait

until 1941. The novel, in Greenwood's words, presents the tragedy of a lost generation who are denied consummation in decency of the natural hopes and desires of youth. And it's seen by many to prefigure the gritty social dramas of the 1960s. Andrew and I were saying when we were talking about doing this book, if it wasn't for Love on the Dole, you wouldn't have a kitchen sink drama, Coronation Street, or the career of Alan Bleasdale to name but three. It's a profoundly influential book and fascinating that its author is so little known.

And in that sense, it's a brilliant choice for Backlisted. It's probably not as widely known or read as it once was. And that's one of the things we're here to explore. So, Andrew, when did you first read Love on the Dole or become aware of the phenomenon of Love on the Dole or of Walter Greenwood? Well, it's definitely the book that I became aware of rather than the author. I kind of, when I knew I was going to be doing this, I started trying to piece it together. And I went back and looked at when I bought the book was in February 2009. And in 2009, I was a journalist working in London

and I was on the dole for a bit of that year. So I think it must have appealed to me. And we got married. It's a great title. Yeah, I got title yeah i got married as well in february 2010 so like a year after i got the book and we we we actually did a reading like madly in hindsight like people must have been not not not having a clue what on earth we were doing but we had a reading from this book at my wedding as well um because i fell in love with it so much which is just embarrassing now nobody it's because it's wedding day nobody mentions it do they but um so we thought it was great i'm sure everyone else thought it was mad

would it be right to say that you were in love with love on the doll on the doll yes i was yes and um and my wife loved it as well the book so it's basically quickly fell in love with it but what i couldn't remember was how i found out about the book and i thought it must have been from my dad so this book's set in hanky park which which is an area of sulfur which no longer exists and it's named hanky park after this um a street called hankinson street yes that's a coincidence that's a funny coincidence you've chosen a book it's outrageous isn't it around your own name yeah anyway god please go on and i'm getting away with it so far yeah

yeah so basically my dad's from this area lots of his family lived in hanky park but my dad didn't he lived about a mile away from hank Park, but also in Salford. I knew he hadn't read the book, but I thought he must have told me about the book. But I think I sent him a copy at some point. And in 2021, he emailed me to tell me that he'd had to go to it like three or four. My dad wasn't much of a reader. He'd had to go to it three or four times, struggled with reading the dialect in particular. He didn't particularly like that.

But in 2021, he sent me an email and said he'd finally read it and he thought it was a great book but then I was looking back through his emails and I was realizing actually he he thinks I told him about the book rather than him telling me about it so I'm not sure I'm not sure it was him who told me about it and then so the other option the other option was that not that my dad told me about it but that the dad from the BBC comedy series, The Royal Family, is where I got it from. Because there's an episode of The Royal Family where Jim Royal, Anthony's on the dole, I think. He's got a new girlfriend.

And Jim Royal, on Christmas Day, decides to do charades. And a charade is... Ricky Tomlinson. Yeah, Ricky Tomlinson. So Jim Royal, he does a charade is um ricky tomlinson series two yeah yeah ricky tomlinson so uh jim roll in t he does the charade which is you know he goes film book stage play first word and he points at his heart love and then he goes on you know second word on third word there and then fourth word and he goes and he points at his bum and goes dole and. And it's like, you know, love on the dole. And I think that might actually be where I first heard of this love on the dole.

And I must have looked it up and then gone from there, you know, and then told my dad about it and stuff, because it had Hankinson in it, I guess, yeah. We don't know, but that may well have come from Ricky Tomlinson himself, because my copy of Robert Trestle's The Ragged Trouser Philanthropists has a quote of recommendation on the cover from Ricky Tomlinson. Oh, really? So like the great trade unionist and socialist that he is, he gives his imprimatur to the most rigorously left-wing texts available.

Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was great. Yeah, so basically I either heard about it from my dad or from the dad in the royal family. Oh, it's a good answer. John, had you read this before? No, I hadn't.

No, me neither. And I'm really disappointed in myself because I like to think that I'm quite good on novels with a broadly socialist kind of background and working-class writing, of which this is a, I have to say, supreme example. It is. And we'll talk about why in more detail. But yeah, no, I was vaguely aware of the film

and I was vaguely aware of the book as a title. But it's funny when you suggested it, you're dead right. Walter Greenwood has very little resonance. And I think it's kind of, well we obviously will talk about why that might be.

But it's been a fabulous experience reading the book. Does it not put you off a little bit that it's so bleak as well though? You know what I and love on the dole the title i think that's i was worried about suggesting it because off okay well you've heard this show right you're right you're right put us off put quite the reverse if it was called i don't know love on the beach i wouldn't be interested in it i think one of the things i admire hugely about it is its willingness to not let, you know, not to give you a spoiler alert. There is no happy ending.

If you don't know that, you do know it now. But it's not a tragic ending either, but it is just it feels like life. Feels like life. Yeah, I mean, we ought to issue a warning, not merely of spoilers in the discussion of this book, but also the likelihood of terrible northern accents from at least two of the people you're going to be hearing today. You said about your dad, Andrew, not liking dialect in books. And it is really hard to dialect in books.

Let's be honest, it's really difficult to do. But I found that once I'd got the kind of rhythm of the dialect, it was really interesting. It's got to be one of the earliest and most extreme uses of dialect in an English novel. And I think aesthetically, in the end, I applaud him for doing that because I think you do get a real sense of the slang and the rhythm of working-class speech in the 30s in Salford.

Well, I think this would actually be a very good time for exactly that reason, for giving us a sense of place. So we have a clip here from near the end of his life of Walter Greenwood being interviewed on Look North, or the equivalent thereof, about the redevelopment of Salford and how his bit of Hankey Park had been bulldozed and was about to be redeveloped. And so they took him to the site and they interviewed him. And we're going to listen to a couple of minutes for it, because I just think it's so evocative of the world that he was coming from, which was disappearing by the time you hear this.

Do you think it should be destroyed? Do you think it's a good thing? Well, it's so, it was so incendiary, you know, and not that I like the high-rise flats so much, because that, again, is poor people when they're stuck down on the top. It's not the neighbourliness. That's the thing that's been destroyed. And I notice that they're bringing back the terraced houses now in Manchester, which is an excellent thing,

because you're on the ground level, and everybody knows everybody else. And the conditions of life are so much improved now. You can't, well, you shouldn't compare anyway, anyway, but oh, it's such a change. I mean, this was our typical playground. We call this a croft. What sort of games would you play on an area like this then?

Well, anything that was going, football, fights, any fight, any grudge fight, on here. Do you think lads were better fighters in those days? Do you think lads fought more? Again, I wouldn't like to compare, but there were some tough lads there. Every street had the cock of the street. And the five lads from another street would come along and say, You, Walter Greenwood? Aye. Just to answer the chances.

What, five on you? Right. He's got five on you? It means five fighting one. Ah. But the rule was, if the lad who was on his own, the cock of our street, knocked anybody down on their knees, on the backside, that was finished. They got up and walked away. But they usually kept their knees, on the backside, that was finished.

They got up and walked away. But they usually kept their good lad to about the fourth down the line, hoping one would get a good clout in. Then you get a bit of an easy job. And I saw Bert had him go through the five of them. They kicked off the clogs in stocking feet, you know, no kicking. And he lined them up and it went right down, bang, bang, bang. Wonderful job. Of course, we were cheering him like mad. You would not think that Walter Greenwood had had a 40-year literary career and had travelled the world and had been a scriptwriter and lived in Hollywood and had an international reputation, would you?

He's somebody who has not forgotten where he comes from. Hackey Park lad. Yeah, yeah. I'd never actually heard him speak before, so it's really interesting. Lots of his lingo there just sounded like my dad. It's quite interesting what he's saying. It's good that the sanitary conditions have changed, but it's also what did you lose by knocking down all

those places you know and if you look at like Salford shopping centre which got built in its place it's like you know is that really an upgrade I'm not sure that interview was conducted outside the Salford lads club which is the location extremely famous photograph of the Smiths as pictured on the gatefold sleeve of their album, The Queen is Dead. Yes, that is the Salford House Club where people now flock from over the world to have their photograph taken. I'm just going to read the blurb and then I would like to ask you both as publishing professionals and writers whether you think this blurb

is an adequate blurb for love on the dull. In Hankey Park near Salford, Harry and Sally Hardcastle, brother and sister, grow up in a society preoccupied with grinding poverty, exploited by bookies and pawnbrokers, bullied by petty officials and living in constant fear of the dole queue and the means test. His love affair with a local girl ends in a shotgun marriage and disowned by his family, Harry is tempted by crime. Sally, meanwhile, falls in love with Larry Meath, a self-educated Marxist. But Larry is a sick man and there are other more powerful rivals

for her affection and then there's a quote from the TLS as a novel it stands very high but it is in its qualities as a social document that its great value lies how do we feel about that

as a blurb? that seems reasonable to me what's wrong with it? I get you implying that it's off. Well, just from the look on my face, you can see. Well, let me ask John. John, what do you think? I don't like the way that this book gets characterised

as being a kind of a... I think it's a really good novel. Yes. And I think this idea that it's some sort of... a good i think it's a really good novel yes and i think this idea something socially important but yes it is that but but i think what's interesting about it is that it's it's a it's aesthetically much more interesting than i think it's often given credit for um it gets knocked for two reasons it gets knocked slightly put down in that kind of way of it's not really a great novel, but it is rather important because what it's writing about is important. And then politically, people say, oh, well, of course, Greenwood was classic. He was the centrist dad of his time. He should have been much more politically condemnatory.

his time you know he should have been much more politically kind of condemnatory but actually he's he's not he's a bloody novelist and that's what makes this book really resonate for me is he he doesn't refuse the the moral complications that all the characters face yeah that tls bit the tls quote where it's saying yes you know it's qualities as a social document that's a bit yeah that's making it sound a bit dull isn't't it? And it's not dull at all. It's also making it sound like it's a dispatch from some wilderness. I must mention there's a wonderful book by Chris Hopkins called Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole Novel Play Film. And Hopkins says in that it does him a huge disservice, Greenwood,

to say the think he's only worth hearing from when he's reporting back on the world he knows. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of inherently class-based, that criticism of him. And I agree with John. This feeds into a debate that we're always having on this programme, and others are too, about the middle brow, right?

Yeah. Middle brow being a term which has been somewhat reclaimed over the last few years. But the idea that it's kind of, because it doesn't have the intellectual or experimental nature of high literature, it is therefore not worthy of serious consideration. I didn't find that with this novel at all. I found it fascinating. And several of his other books seem to me to be doing a similar thing, which is using a kind of middle brow form to explore quite advanced political ideas. So do you revise your view of the blurb in the light that you've just had it explained to you by me and Joe? I think the blurb was kind of fine.

I think the TLS quote is a bit what the one makes it sound dull. But yeah, it's, you know, what you're saying, I think he's just a great storyteller like you know this is the character this is going to happen to them takes you on the ups and downs ups and downs but it's also get the way he gets in and out of the each character's points of view like so many different characters and he goes into their point of view yeah and you're like oh wow i'm in here now and then i'm in here now and i'm in here and he just does it straight from the off from the beginning of each each chapter and I just thought that was absolutely fantastic and when I reread it for this I was just like oh this is why I loved it because it does it it doesn't dwell on anything too long you do a couple of pages of this person and then you're right I'm

off to this person again now so yeah I think he's a great storyteller you know much more than a social document which is a bit like patronizing you know I think he's a great storyteller, you know, much more than a social document, which is a bit, like, patronising, you know. I think you're right, Andrew. I also think what we were saying about the use of dialect in it, this is one of those things that was probably much more challenging and experimental in 1934 than it appears

to us now, that a novel would, and this novel was published by Cape, wasn't it? Cape, yeah, it's fascinating. You know, so it's not being shilled by a mid-market publisher. It's an up-market publisher presenting something with both artistic and documentary merit. Yes.

The book, oddly enough, that this reminds me most of, which I've just had cause to just reread, it was completely by accident, is an amazing book called The Grass Arena by John Healy, who lived on the streets. Yes, I remember it well. Who lived as a wino. And it has the similar kind of quality,

the best of the of walter greenwood is that he is not he's not making these people into emblems of class kind of class he's making them proper complicated characters who are somewhat damaged by the poverty their capacity to feel and feel for other people and to think and reflect positively on their experiences are damaged by the the horror of their lives that they're having to live even even larry the self-educated marxist did he work at all times there were points where i was like oh this is walter greenwood delivering his lecture on you know the money and what money really means and stuff. I'm going to read you a section from one of his other novels in which another self-educated Marxist makes an appearance.

I think that Walter, that's one of Walter's stock characters, but it's probably based on himself, you see. So that's OK. Andrew, would you please read us a little? Have you chosen a bit there? Andrew would you please read us a little uh have you chosen a bit there sure one of the kind of big themes of the book is is trying to get together money to buy clothes to buy nice clothes to buy clothes that you need to work in as well and there's a bit where um Harry so he's from this he's got poor family and they haven't got very much money at all but Harry's coming of age where he wants a nice suit. And this is where this kicks in. So his querulous complaints began to wear his father's nerves. The boys seemed absolutely impervious to reason.

Weren't they in debt enough without contracting more for such inessential things as new suits? Such a suit as the lad desired would cost three pounds easily. That meant three shillings interest to be found before Grumpole would issue an order to the outfitter. Then would follow 20 weeks installments of three shillings. Three shillings a week though. This kind of thing not being able to provide adequately for one's family made a man feel an irresponsible fool, humbled him, haunted him to the point of driving him to frantic foolhardy expedience. Money, money, money.

The temptation to go drown worry and misery and drink was, at times, almost irresistible. Walking abroad he would find himself brooding, muttering to himself, worked every hour God sent, every day of me life, and whatever got to see for it, every bloody day, every bloody hour, and worse off, and I must be fest-wed. Harry was unaware that his father's absences from home were contrived. Every time he caught the boy's gaze,

it said mutely, when am I to have a suit, father? He couldn't bear to look. Better to keep out of the lad's way as much as possible. His cause was just. The poor little devil wasn't fit to be seen. He was the only one in the house working full time, and he gave up every penny of his wages. Oh, Hardcastle felt an urgent desire to be able to take out his brains and plunge them in cold water. To Harry, his father's stern visage was the perfect mask. Had he known, he would have been astounded that his father should be afraid of meeting him he persisted until one sunday evening hardcastle in desperation exclaimed oh missus for god's sake get him that blasted suit blimey sick of it all i am victorious harry's hungry joy amounted to hysteria in his excitement the haggard relaxed expression on his father's face meant nothing to him brilliant very very

very good i'm not sure if anyone else thought this at all but that thing with the suit where you know that it's going to lead to problems there's so much in this book where something happens and you're like and it's just the inevitability and it's just something minor it kind of reminded me of like um view from a bridge just one of those things where you're just like something's gone wrong here and then these characters have no way to correct it they've got no way to be a happy ending and that's what i love about it so much is you're just watching these characters just march to the inevitable unhappy ending as it were if it is an unhappy ending i guess we can discuss that as well yeah i think i i totally agree with that i. I think that's what gives it such a powerful, that sense of the inevitable grinding quality. You know that the depression's on the horizon. wins. He gets a three-way bet at Sam Grundy's and he wins £22. And there's this astonishing scene

where Sam Grundy drops £22 notes at this theatrical way. And Sam Grundy is, of course, the kind of spivvy guy who's running the bets, who ends up pursuing Sal, Harry's sister. But you can tell, even with that money money that it's not going to be enough he's not going to get the life with holidays and and and hopes and and happiness that he deserves they go blow it all on a holiday don't they which is like you you kind of think like you go oh you shouldn't do that you know save it keep it but but at the same time it's like throughout the book it's this thing of life is nothing unless you have nice holidays, if you don't have all the nice things in life

that make life worthwhile, as Larry says. If you don't have those, life's meaningless. So spend it on a holiday. They go to Blackpool, don't they? Yeah. So it's in the tradition. Alan Sillitoe picks that up, exactly that same beat for The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner,

up exactly that same beat for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which is certainly in the film, in Tony Richardson's film, where they take the two girls off to Blackpool just for the fun of, if there's any fun available to them, blow all the money, and then that leads them into robbery subsequently. I'd like to read a little bit, if I may, from the beginning of the second section. And this is slightly different. You know, we've been talking about the interiority of the characters

and we've been talking about how he does interesting things with narrative and psychological perspective. But here's a bit of writing that I thought was really brilliant. You could almost imagine this being written by somebody like Ilya Ehrenberg or a Soviet writer of the revolutionary era because it's a sort of paradigmatic account of what happens in the age of mechanisation to the working man. And it's done so lightly and so efficiently and so forcefully.

So I'd just like to read you this. These new experiences, compatible work, money to spend, Saturday night's entertainment, brought with them a calm serenity which gradually assumed an air of permanency as though it had come to stay forevermore. Memories of Price and Joneses receded, were forgotten. The human nature in him though found errand running become stale and uninteresting. He fretted for promotion, never allowed an opportunity pass without pestering Joe Ridge, the foreman who often has not answered snappily. Oh, for God's sake, give up the mithering me, son.

You'll be shoved on a bloody machine when it's your turn. Take things easy while you've a chance. When you work again, a stopwatch should you'll be bloody sick of sight of machines. Blimey, some of you kids don't know when you're cushy. Up it now, I'm busy. Sorry, though. Sorry to be entrusted with a lathe, a machine. Machines.

Machines. Lovely, beautiful word. He would stand staring unblinkingly at the elder apprentices at work on the machines. Imagine it. They all were under 21 years of age. Sudden doubts clutched his heart. Had he their intelligence? Would he ever be as proficient as they? Suppose when opportunity came his way, he proved to be a miserable failure, but he wouldn't fail. Hey, hard castle, go to the stars for this. Come on, man, look alive, don't stand dreaming there. Errand boy, roll on time, come the day when some other boy would take his place. He became an assiduous student of the others working, flattered them,

cunningly, that they might be induced to impart scraps of knowledge, was ever ready to watch a man's work who wished to absent himself from the machine for a short spell. Then, when wanting a few months of his 16th birthday, promotion came. Strange movements were afoot, change taking place everywhere. A great deal of the old machinery was taken away and replaced by new, beautiful, marvellous, wonderful contraptions that filled the eye with pride to look upon. Hundreds of the old faces were missing one Monday morning. A batch of new boys came into the machine shops, and strange to relate, none of the indentured apprentices. Nobody knew why. Nobody cared. Rumour said that trade was bad, but how could it be with all this new machinery, this general upset, reshuffling and reorganisation? All this was more suggestive of busy times.

Anyway, they couldn't sack him. He was bound apprentice for seven years, only two of which had elapsed. I was minded of that process today, everybody, when I was stood at the self-service till that didn't work in Sainsbury's thinking, oh yeah, there used to be a person here who did this job and knew what they were doing. And now they've got rid of all those people and they've got all these lovely machines that don't work. We'll take a little break and we'll be right back after this. So we've talked about Love on the Dole as a historical novel and I suppose mostly

it's treated as such because it was such a phenomenon in the 1930s and 40s and in fact, through many subsequent decades. But do you think it feels like a contemporary novel still or is it stuck in the past?

The whole time I was reading, I was thinking about, because it's so in the news at the moment, ai you know ai is done for this it's done for that and just you know i'm a journalist yeah and i'm a journalist and like over the past you know 2023 there were just thousands of people getting laid off in journalism and you know the older people get laid off lose their jobs can't get work and and they bring in people who've never worked in the industry before to just churn you know stuff out and all the same structures are there aren't they basically just reducing the cost of labor and using machines to replace people and and you know you sound you sound like kind of larry from

the book sort of saying this stuff but you could see the patterns all around us are exactly the same. The patterns haven't changed whatsoever, I don't think, you know. We've got inside toilets now instead and, you know, nicer shops and things like this. But actually, the patterns of employment are still the same. And there's also, I think, you know, there's the same descriptions of the same. There's a brilliant, I might just read this little piece where he is finally, when Harry is put on the dole, and this is as relevant to today as anything.

He's on the dole and it's called the chapter six, it's called The Man of Leisure. It got you slowly with the slippered stealth of an unsuspected malignant disease. You fell into the habit of slouching, of putting your hands into your pockets and keeping them there, of glancing at people furtively, ashamed of your secret, until you fancied that everybody eyed you with suspicion. You knew that your shabbiness betrayed you.

It was apparent for all to see. You prayed for the winter evenings and the kindly darkness. Darkness. Poverty's cloak. Breaches backside patched and repatched. Patches on knees, on elbows. Jesus. All bloody patches.

God blimey. Remember, dear, when Ma bought me new pair of overalls? He murmured to himself. He halted unconsciously by a street corner stood staring at nothing seeing himself on that occasion stalking the streets a beaming smile on his lips rejuvenated full of confidence and daring unashamed hopeful just think he's really good on poverty and what poverty does to people and that sense of feeling it's somehow your fault and the shame and the and all of that stuff is is still feels to me like incredibly contemporary and one of the things I kept picking up on was this this feeling like you

get one life yeah and you know all of us speaking of this podcast we're lucky like we we kind of getting to live these quite lucky lives, but there's loads of people out there. You just kind of, well, there are. You make your own luck in this game, Andrew, I have to say. But that's what seems to just ring through the book. It's like some people are just bored into these unlucky circumstances, difficult circumstances.

And how on earth do you get your way out of that? And there's a line that one of the characters says when they say, I wish I could have my time over again, you know, just that thing of, is this it? And you just see Harry come into that realisation all the way through it where it's like, oh my God, this is just going to be, it's just going to get more difficult.

I'm not going to be able to have that lovely house somewhere lovely, you know? The thing about this novel i found fascinating is you know the thing is um the fear of losing income of falling into poverty underpins so much fiction uh the history of the novel that's one of the recurring themes of it right the way through the victorian era into early 20th century, really until after the Second World War, does that abate? But it's a plot point you find repeatedly. What will happen if, say, my daughter doesn't get married? What will happen if I lose this job at the blacking factory? What I think is really fascinating about Love on the Dole is it extends that idea

to demonstrate how, A, it affects a whole stratum of society in their relations to one another, and also how difficult it is to get back, to claw your way back. You only have to fall once, as it were. It seems nearly impossible to work your way back up. You can only get back there through gambling or robbery or prostitution. The only people who are doing all right there are the people who cheat the system somehow, don't you know what i mean and you it's like that terrible that terrible sense of the the you know that everything was the the futility of having to

pawn all your possessions um you know and the the guy in the pawn shop sort of basically owns your life it says it interest on interest they sit until they were so deep in the m shop sort of basically owns your life. It says it, interest on interest. They were so deep in the mire of debts that not only did Mr. Price own their and their family's clothes, but also the family income as well. They could not have both at the same time. If they had the family income in their purses, then Mr. Price had the family raiment and bedding. If they had the family raiment and bedding,

then Mr. Price had the family income. It's that sort of cycle of futility, which I think he captures brilliantly. We've got a clip here from the 1941 film adaptation, which ties in with that, which we ought to say, Love on the Dole was a huge success as both a novel and a play.

And as a result of that success, it was blocked. The Lord Chamberlain's office or the censor's office, one or both, refused to allow the British Board of Film Censors, in fact, refused to allow a film to be made of Love on the Dole in the 1930s because it was feared, effectively, it was rabble-rousing and seditionary. And it's permitted in 1941 because of the war. It can be used suddenly as propaganda.

It can be held up as what life used to be like, but after this war we're fighting, we're fighting for a country that won't be like this anymore. So that's how it gets under the wire and out into the world. It was on Chris Hopkins' website, wasn't it, where I think he said the Ministry of Information actually asked for the film to be made. They contacted Walter Greenwood and said, will you make this film now? Now we're ready for you.

Yes, as you say, the Britain we don't want. So this is a little clip from the film. We mentioned earlier Coronation Street. little clip from the film um we mentioned earlier coronation street and um here are several of the of the um habitués of uh the pawn shop who have uh having done their day's business uh have have come together just to have a little nip of something to uh to see off the cold um we mentioned coronation street earlier this will remind those of a certain age very forcefully of Ina Sharples and Minnie Caldwell in the snug of The Rover's Return. But here we go.

Who's that? It's only me. And me. Come in. Having a quick night? Couldn't wait for us, could you? Sit down. What let be?

Three penneth. By, somebody's been doing themselves well. Bottle was nearly full yesterday. So was my old man. I don't know where he gets his money from. Now, Mrs. Ball, three penneth, you said? Aye, looks sharp about it. My throat's nearly cut.

You can make it six penneth if you'll trust me for the other thruttons. Can't afford it, Mrs. Ball. Yeah, where were you? Some folks know to make money. Aging for good Samaritan, fawning for neighbours. Neighbours obliged, did we? Two lines under it.

And selling nips. Threepens, please, Mrs. Ball. Now, what about you, Alice? Same for me, dearie. Well, girls, how are we all this morning, eh? Here, have a pinch of bird's eye. What? I don't know what's coming over folks these days.

Why, what's up now? Well, I remember when there's hardly a day passed without a confinement or a laying out to be done. Ah, young'uns aren't having children as they ought. And folks that die is being laid out by them as they belong to, which weren't considered respectably the old days. I tell you, if me poor old mother was alive to see the goons on in the world today, she'd turn in her grave so she would.

Ah, the world's never been the same since the old queen died. Which queen do you mean, Mrs. Jike? Queen Victoria, of course. Oh, yeah. The film is terrific and actually surprisingly unflinching don't you think guys i mean it's it's sort of they didn't they didn't pull their punches when they finally got to make it it focused a lot more on sally i think didn't it who's the sister which i think was kind of a wise choice like when i was watching the film, I was like,

oh, Harry is probably the less interesting of the two aspects in it, I think, you know? And also it has the benefit of Deborah Carr, the young and incredibly beautiful Deborah Carr. Who's brilliant in it. She is, yeah. And there is a slight, you know, there's a sort of, there's a bit of propaganda creeps in at the end

where they're sort of looking at the uh the the grimy streets of hanky park and say you know there never needs to be another one day you know people will will start listening and there will never need to be a hanky park anymore which the book doesn't give you that kind of easy easy way out but i was also intrigued by greenwood and we mentioned to Andy earlier about why Greenwood, Orwell's sort of road to Wigan Pier became the kind of the preferred, this is how we like to read about our working class people. Greenwood's book was really successful, but Greenwood himself never really seemed to have the profile of. It's fascinating. And yet he wrote a lot of novels and his books were well known.

He wrote 10 novels altogether. Volume of short stories, three volumes of nonfiction, a dozen plays, half a dozen screenplays. And he tends to write about Australian miners battling for their rights or workers who take over a factory or a day in the life of a pub. That's a good one. That's very good. Saturday Night at the Crown. That's a play.

I got the script out of the library. One of his plays made into a film called No Cure for Love by Robert Donat, famous, of course, from Goodbye, Mr. Chips. And that film featured the young Dora Bryan and is set in Salford. Of course, in the early 60s, she returns to Salford because she's in A Taste of Honey, written by Sheila Delaney, another great Salford-based writer and another great Salford-based text.

And another author who struggled very much to then escape from their own success and the image that the world of literature wanted to foist onto them. I do find this sometimes as a writer from the North, a Newcastle writer, that sometimes it's hard to not be considered. I've just written something about Gordon Byrne, actually, which just sort of said this sort of thing which is gordon burns did seem to escape it gordon burn was considered a writer as opposed to in your castle writer i found um but but i think oftentimes it is difficult to escape the place that you're from so when george orwell goes around places visiting them he's observing them as an outsider and then go away

you know, write some journalism about it. But everyone's always got to think of Walter Greenwood as he's from the place that he wrote about rather than being the observer dropping in. I think that's a difficult thing to escape from. I referred to you in inverted commas at the start of this podcast as a professional northerner. And I did so that in the full knowledge that I myself am a professional southerner. But yet you never hear that phrase, do you? He am a professional southerner. But yet you never hear that phrase, do you? He is a professional southerner. Anyway, I really wanted to talk about this book on the podcast while there's still time.

Walter Greenwood wrote, as we said, 10 novels and a volume of short stories. And as far as I can tell, nothing of his is in print except Love on the Dole. And it may even be, I'm not sure, Chris Hopkins, if you're listening to this, you could probably tell us, that certainly the copyright on some of these books is now, that's how obscure Walter Greenwood has become. Nobody quite knows who owns the copyright of quite a lot of his work. Anyway, from the library, I was able to get a copy of his third novel,

which is called Standing Room Only. And much as I enjoyed reading Love on the Dole, Standing Room Only is absolutely wonderful. It's so sad that this book is hard to come by. I mean, you can probably get one secondhand or you can find it in your own library, I hope, perhaps. it in your own library, I hope, perhaps. It's a book that he wrote reflecting on his experience of becoming suddenly very famous and very rich as a result of writing Love on the Dole. And Standing Room Only is about a character called Henry Ormerod, who writes a play called A Laugh in Every Line. When he writes it, he's a shop assistant in the north of England, and he becomes an overnight success on the London stage. And it's a book incredibly ahead of its time about what success brings him, which is a great deal of cash and very little satisfaction. It's very funny. It's really fantastic on the subject of what it was like to be in the theatre world in the 1930s.

If you're at all interested in drama or the theatre or showbiz agents or people drinking pints of mild while doing deals behind one another's backs. It's really, really good and really funny. So that's called Standing Rumoni. And I'm going to read you the stock character of the troubled Marxist from this one. Okay. His name is Morden and he's a theatre producer. He's currently discussing producing the play A Laugh in Every Line

with Henry Ormerod and his new agent, whose name is Ellis. Morden frowned. What a fool he was. Wouldn't he ever learn from experience? He ought to know the theatre crowd by this time and his knowledge ought to tell the theatre crowd by this time, and his knowledge ought to tell him that, from a political point of view, theatrical folk were generally bored by his or anybody's political opinions. Which was maddening. Was he a misanthrope? No. He believed in collective humanity, particularly when he analysed his motives.

Why need he be as he was? Why didn't he do as the others? Justify selfishness by the universal defence, oh, every man's got to be out for himself. If he doesn't, somebody else will step in and do him one. Beastly, contemptible outlook. This profession, this acting game. Why, there wasn't a newcomer to it but who eternally cherished the thought and desire to be the star. And what did that mean? Ah, attention everybody, look up at me. Am I not wonderful? Don't you all envy me? Wouldn't you all give much to occupy my position? Bow down and worship and wish yourselves were wearing my pretty clothes. Oh, how few were in the profession for the love of it. Oh, why didn't he keep his mouth shut? Why need he be

continually revealing himself? What was wrong with him? These singular ideas, outlook and opinions, they were Roger Morden, all right, and so was that sense of loneliness that forever shadowed him. Keep his mouth shut? He couldn't. He opened it in the hope that by advertising his persuasions he might encounter kindred spirits. But he moved in the wrong company. Individualists encompassed him in his profession. His ideas might have been expressed in a foreign tongue. He was treated indulgently by such as Ellis, as though he were an extravagant practical joke. I think that's utterly brilliant myself.

That kind of the self-loathing that's coming out of um roger morden and by extension i think you could read that very easily as walter greenwood's comment on what it was like to suddenly move among the literati i think that's um that's really fascinating so what what library did you get that out for andy uh i got it from um incredible Liverpool Central Library. Liverpool Central Library. Okay. Because you try and buy that book online and, yeah, there's some secondhand editions, but they're really expensive.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just doing what a good capitalist would do, Andrew, which is pump the market up, having bought up all the copies of Standing Room only. But if any of you want to read, no, I've only got this one, and this is going back to the library tomorrow. That is a very, very interesting and powerful kind of bit of writing. And I think everything I've read about Greenwood makes me feel

that he kind of ended up on the Isle of Man as a sort of tax exile, didn't he? That's right, yeah. It's strange. He was not welcomed into the club. You know, he had friends in high places, Graham Greeney, Liz Sitwell, what have you, but he couldn't stay there. And Chris Hopkins' conclusion is from studying his career that he faced that barrier we've been talking about, that it was fine as long as he was writing about the thing people thought he knew about. But as soon as he stepped out of what they thought was his familiar zone,

you know, it's interesting, isn't it? It's not something that we would criticise necessarily or would have been criticised in that time. You know, an upper-class person like George Orwell looking down the classes. Yeah. But Greenwood looking up, you know, he should know his place. That seems to be the message there, as it is so often with class. You should know your place.

Chris Hopkins has got, I think, an absolutely exemplary website. Oh, it's amazing. Which is called Walter Greenwood, not just love on the dole.com. It's great, isn't it? As John said, this website is exemplary. If you like Walter Greenwood, you can't read any of his books, but you can look at Chris's website. Amazing. And it contains things like articles such as Walter Greenwood, vegetarian messenger. Yeah. That's very good. And there's a brilliant bit called Walter Greenwood's tie. Did you look at that? I love that. It's really terrific. That website is great. It is. It's a treasure trove and done with great love and a kind of a degree of that sort of zeal.

He doesn't want Walter Greenwood to slip under the kind of the waves of the great unknowing. And it's necessary because, like you say, it's really hard to find out anything else. All his books are hard to get a hold of and he's not been written about so much recently and stuff. I'm really surprised well i'm not really surprised if the copyright of these things is indeed difficult to come by or find out i suppose that does partly explain why given nearly every other old book is reappearing in some form or

another at the moment greenwood remains completely unavailable it It's very strange. But anyway. He seems ripe for rediscovery. He does indeed. He does indeed. Andrew, do you have another little bit you would like to read us? Sure. Well, I wanted to read out a little bit from Sally, actually, because I don't think, I think the first time I read her, like I said, I was kind of on the dole in the year that I read it.

And it was all about Harry to me then. And then when I was rereading it, it kind of like, you know, Sally just seems like the dominant character now, like the most interesting thing going on with her towards the end particularly. So yeah, this is her where she's considering her future with Larry, who she intends to marry. At one time, not very long ago, she had found pleasure in dancers and the picture theatres. What had come over her? Those diversions gave only a transitory pleasure. She saw herself returning home when pictures or dance were done, returning to the dreariness of number 17 North Street. It wasn't that kind of life she wanted. She wanted something real and permanent, not the mere whiling away of time watching flickering shadows on a screen or the trumpery gaiety of a dance room.

She wanted Larry in a home of her own. Dreariness of number 17 North Street, a stupendous suspicion pounced upon her. The dreariness of her home represented marriage, to her father and mother, both of whom, before their marriage, must surely have been, as she was now, desirous of homes of their own. They now had obtained it, and, to her, it represented something that filled her with overwhelming dreariness. Could it be possible that Larry, in his condemnation of marriage, was really suggesting that her mother's and father's married life, with all its scratchings and scrapings, was only removed from a newly married couple's experiences by the matter of a few years. Her mother and father had never been far away from North Street on even a day's holiday since their honeymoon.

Hardcastle, who's her father, himself was a smouldering volcano ready to erupt the moment she or Harry suggested expenditure on clothes. Do you think bloody money grows with trees? He was worried eternally over money, and Larry had said, it isn't this marriage business that matters. It's this damned poverty. Doing without the things that make life worthwhile. Was this understanding?

She crushed all her thoughts. I want Larry. I want Larry, she defied herself. Yeah. Well, whether or not she gets Larry is something you'll have to discover for yourself. You'll have to read on. You'll have to read the book or listen to the play

or watch the film. I think the factory whistle has blown, Mitch. The factory whistle has indeed blown. It's time for us to punch our cards and say farewell to the 1930s. Huge thank you to Andrew for this great choice of book and to Nicky for making a sound as clear as the work siren. If you would like show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 203 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm.

If you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And we're still keen to hear from you on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and genuinely postcard because we received a communication this week from fresno california from um and i apologize gray or mary if you're listening to this from gray or mary taylor we can't quite read your writing but thanks so much john what does the what does the postcard say it's well it's a postcard i should say of a rather fetching uh looking uh gary snyder the american poet posing in japanese clothes in his garden in 1963 in japan and it says uh it was

dates 15th of december 2023 and it says dear andy and Nicky, at the end of the Basil Bunting episode, Andy said we could get in touch via postcard. So I am calling his bluff. Best regards, Gray or Mary Taylor, Fresno, California. So isn't that brilliant? There you go. Thank you.

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For those of you who are enjoyed our What Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you'll now find it. It's an hour of tunes, musings and superior book chat. Plus, a lot of listeners get their names read out, accompanied by lashings of praise and gratitude like this. Isabel Morland, thank you. Christian Powers, thank you.abel Morland, thank you. Christian Powers, thank you. Julie Sternberg, thank you.

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Andrew, Dan, the one thing I wanted to ask you, it's been really bugging me through the whole podcast, is what did you read at your wedding? Can't have been the bit where they say, come on, we might as well get it over and done with. It was a bit between Harry and Helen. And I mean, God, I just wanted to read anything from this book at the wedding and you're going through it you're going well that's nothing to do with weddings that's nothing to do with it and it was just some bit I think they've gone on the hill and and she starts and they talk about their future or something like that I mean it honestly John it did not fit a wedding at all it was terrible and everyone must have been sat there just going, these people are just mad.

Andrew, what's your wife called? Kat. Kat. If you're listening to this, send us a postcard and see if it matches what Andrew just said. Brilliant.

Thanks, everybody. Bye. See you, everyone. Bye. © BF-WATCH TV 2021