Review - The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff - Northern Stage

The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff     

Northern Stage 

Sept 2021

The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff at the Northern Stage

Old tunes, new words: workers history then and now

Coming back to the theatre after two years absence does focus the mind on: what is theatre for? What have I been missing? You might think theatricality, big casts, lavish sets and costumes, a sense of occasion, being taken out of the ordinary. I did dress up and had a sense of a ‘proper night out’, but a few moments into this performance, I realised it was something else entirely – live human interaction.

The Ballad of Johnny Longstaff is not big on that sort of theatricality: three musicians on stage, a minimal set, just songs interwoven with narrative and the recorded voice of Johnny Langstaff himself. But it was riveting precisely because that enabled an undistracted focus on the words and music and story. 

And what a story! I thought, erroneously, that Johnny was a composite character created to showcase all the high points of working class activism in the 1930s: the hunger marches, strikes, mass trespass, the Battle of Cable Street and the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. No, Johnny was there for all of them, and it is his actual voice, recorded in 1984-6, that we hear.

The set is minimal but canny, in the shape of flags or banners onto which are projected images, like the voice, from the archive of the Imperial War Museum. I watched it at the Northern Stage, a proper institutional theatre, but it could have been a pub theatre or community centre (if such still exist). Specifically, it reminded me of a watching a production of ‘Waiting for Lefty’ at the Unity Theatre, 50 years ago.

Bear with me, this is not just the rambling reminiscence of a doddery old-timer. There is a thread that runs through the show of ‘old tunes, new words’: ‘Carrying the Coffin’, the Hunger March song is set to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’, an American Civil War hymn; ‘the Great Tomorrow’ of the Spanish Civil War is to the tune of the Internationale. Working class history needs to be retold and popular tunes and popular theatre are a way of keeping alive the memory. Unity Theatre was set up in the 1930’s precisely to bring their own stories to working class audiences.

At a time when history is once again highly disputed, it’s good to remember we’ve been here before. As I left the house for the theatre, the news carried the story of Home Secretary Priti Patel threatening to turn back refugee boats in the Channel, arguably in breach of international law. In the show, Johnny meets Basque refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War and it is their plight which prompts him to enlist in the International Brigades to fight in Spain.

The National government’s strict neutrality in the face of the rise of fascism in Europe and their criminalisation of the volunteers like Johnny reminded me of the treatment of those who went to fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Or our government’s hobnobbing with fascist leaders in Europe and beyond. Plus ça change.

Johnny Longstaff was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1919, and in 1934 when an injury left him unemployed in the midst of the Great Depression, he joined the Hunger March to London. Once there, initially sleeping rough, he found work in Tooting and joined the Labour League of Youth. Much like today, the tops of the Labour Party were indistinguishable from the Tories; but the youth wing was full of Communists and Trotskyists and were heavily involved in fighting fascism. 

At Cable Street, Oswald Moseley’s Blackshirts, the British Union of Fascists, threatened to march through the working-class Jewish area of London’s East End. Trade unionists, Labour Youth and Communists massed to defend these streets, with the slogan borrowed from the Spanish anti-fascists: No Pasaran – they shall not pass. Moseley’s fascists were stopped in a bloody street skirmish that became known as the Battle of Cable Street.

Through the Labour League of Youth, Johnny met refugees from Franco’s fascists and enlisted, lying about his age, in the British Battalion of the International Brigades to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Many of the songs from the show are based on his memories of those bloody battles and commemorate his fallen comrades, including Lewis Clive, an Olympian swimmer and David Guest, a world-class mathematician who said, “It has required an incredible effort to concentrate on pure mathematics when the world seems on fire.”

With the world again on fire, we need to remember our anti-fascist heroes. The Young ‘Uns, a Teeside-based trio, have brought us a magnificent tribute to Johnny Longstaff, his comrades and that generation of brave anti-fascists. No Pasaran.

Gerry Byrne