Seven Scripts from Seven Struggles
Edited by Doug Nicholls

There is a rich tradition of theatre dealing with workers’ and trade union struggles through the centuries that can go unacknowledged by the literary mainstream. Often, such plays are staged in alternative venues and too often their scripts are not gathered in any archive and are in danger of being lost.

Workers’ Play Time is an anthology of seven such scripts, many of which are appearing in print for the first time:

Bolton Rising, by Neil Duffield
Luddite protests and savage repression of workers in Lancashire
We Will Be Free! by Neil Gore
The story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs told by George and Betsy Loveless
Hannah, by Eileen Murphy
A dramatic monologue by labour activist Hannah Mitchell
A Splotch of Red, by James Kenworth
Labour Party founder Keir Hardie campaigning in West Ham
Dare to Be Free, by Jane McNulty
How Mary Quaile organized café workers in the 1920s
Out! on the Costa del Trico, by Women’s Theatre Group
The Trico women’s strike of 1976
The Chambermaids, by Kathleen McCreery
Inspired by the Grosvenor House Hotel strike in the 1980s