1934: The Year that Oxford's Industrial Workers first made their mark
To help raise the profile of the fairly recently relaunched Museum of Oxford (MOX), three plays have been written to commemorate a key year in the development of Oxford's industrial working class: 1934. The first two had two showings last Saturday at MOX.
On 17th July that year over a hundred workers at the Pressed Steel body shop in Cowley staged a spontaneous walk-out in response to management's unending cycle of bullying, threats and wage theft that had gone on unopposed for years. A disparate bunch of ex-unemployed industrial workers from South Wales and the North-East, together with Home Counties' rural workers with no tradition of struggle or organisation found the strength to stand up to the arrogant boss of a highly profitable company and win. A small number of women in the factory led by Betty Read (Jess Worth) played a disproportionate role in rallying the doubters who had to be prodded into supporting the strikers. However, it came as no surprise that their hopes of equal pay were dashed in the final settlement. All this was portrayed in a lively production of Oxford Inferno which nonetheless ended on a downbeat note as the women's sense of betrayal was palpable.
Success owed much to Communist Party organisers on the ground. They contacted Abe Lazarus, a young CP militant, who had recently won his spurs during the Firestone Tyre strike in West London. His enthusiasm and firebrand qualities made him the heartthrob of the masses. In this production his legacy is bittersweet as he does not escape accusations of betrayal from the women militants.
Later the same year builder-speculator, Clive Saxton, completed his housing development by building infamous 9-foot brick walls to separate his owner-occupied houses from the adjacent council houses of Cutteslowe Village. Council tenants faced the obstacle of a half-hour's walk around the walls to get to the shops, aside from the stigma of segregation. It unleashed a 25-year struggle to get rid of them. The Cutteslowe Walls production takes the audience through to 1945, the year of Labour's great victory, but somewhat fudges the ending by not saying that the walls endured another 14 years! Still, the anger of Sam and June Singer (Milo Kahn and Pia Saunders-Patel) and other protestors at the injustice of it all was deeply moving.
The final play about the Florence Park Rent Strike (first produced in 2023), Little Edens, is on December 7 (2.30pm and 7.30pm) at MOX. One can only hope that resources are found to refine and extend the run: a regular slot on Saturdays to show the plays in rotation and a filmed version for MOX when the theatre production has run its course would surely be a fitting testament? It would encourage spectators to realise that class struggle in Oxford continues as long as the profit system itself exists!