ABSTRACT
A particular contribution to theatrical modernism in Britain was made by the workers theatre. In 1928 the Communist International called for a renewal of the revolution: ‘class against class’ was the new slogan, and the British Communist Party turned against the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the TUC, calling them ‘social fascists’. It marked a turning point in workers’ theatre, which had been comparatively non-sectarian until then, and it gave a new edge to the theoretical arguments about the place of culture in revolutionary or progressive politics. Hackney People’s Players had themselves grown out of Hackney Labour Dramatic Group whose members had become disillusioned with pessimistic left-wing drama after the general strike. In 1932 the meeting of the Union of Revolutionary Theatres, again under the aegis of the Comintern, was much less ardent for agitprop, but the Workers Theatre Movement was undaunted until the following year’s Moscow Olympiad of Workers Theatres.
