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Working-Class Representation As a Literary and Political Practice from the General Strike to the Winter of Discontent

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Working-Class Representation As a Literary and Political Practice from the General Strike to the Winter of Discontent Representing revolt: working-class representation as a literary and political practice from the General Strike to the Winter of Discontent Matti Ron PhD English Literature University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing August 2020 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract Though the dual sense of representation—as an issue of both aesthetic or organisational forms—has long been noted within Marxist literary criticism and political theory, these differing uses of the term have generally been considered to be little more than semantically related. This thesis, then, seeks to address this gap in the discourse by looking at working- class representation as both a literary and political practice to show that their relationship is not just one of being merely similar or analogous, but rather that they are structurally homologous. To demonstrate this point, this thesis will perform close readings of clusters of texts to chart the development of working-class fiction between two high-points of class struggle in Britain—the 1926 General Strike and the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent—with the intention of exploring a variety of working-class representational practices. Through this, it will be shown that the homology between working-class literary and political representations manifests in the realist working-class fiction under discussion lending itself more readily to those political practices most closely adhering to representational political forms while the experiments of the—much neglected—working-class literary avant-garde, which challenged the boundaries of realism, would lend themselves to those movements similarly challenging representational political practices. In doing so, this thesis draws upon and intervenes in over a century of Marxist literary critical debate, in which the working class—as both a literary and political subject—has often remained curiously absent. 2 Contents Acknowledgements ...............................................................................5 Introduction ...........................................................................................6 Working-class representation as a literary practice ................................................................ 7 Working-class representation as a political practice ............................................................ 20 A homology of representations ............................................................................................ 29 Chapter One: Literature in an Age of Crisis .......................................49 Crisis of labour, crisis of capital .......................................................................................... 49 Writing the crisis .................................................................................................................. 56 Woolf, Lawrence and the circumvention of antagonism ..................................................... 67 Representing the class “as it is”: Greenwood, Brierley and Wilkinson ............................... 73 An uneasy avant-garde: Upward, Barke and Sommerfield .................................................. 92 Rupturing representations: Hanley and Gibbon ................................................................. 112 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 138 Chapter Two: Literature in an Age of Consensus ............................ 142 Consensus and its discontents ............................................................................................ 142 The aesthetics of consensus................................................................................................ 155 John Sommerfield: emblem of a paradigm shift ................................................................ 165 Angry young representations: Barstow and Braine............................................................ 168 Indicating fracture: Alan Sillitoe ........................................................................................ 182 At the margins of consensus............................................................................................... 195 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 222 Chapter Three: Literature in an Age of Revolt ................................ 226 The end of consensus ......................................................................................................... 226 Writing revolt ..................................................................................................................... 235 Not a vanguard, but an avant-garde: Johnson and Berger.................................................. 242 The feminist ‘counter-public sphere’: Fairbairns, Carter and Roberts............................... 264 3 Black British literature: Emecheta, Selvon and Lamming ................................................. 282 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 306 Conclusion: the homology of working-class representations .......... 309 Bibliography ..................................................................................... 321 4 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. Anshuman Mondal and Dr Matthew Taunton whose seemingly inexhaustible reserves of valuable advice, encouragement and belief in my research have been indispensable. Thanks must equally be extended to Dr Nick Hubble both for his help in the early stages of this project as well as his continued support for my wider academic work. You have all been instrumental to my intellectual development over the last few years and it is impossible to fully express how grateful for that I am. I wish to also thank the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at UEA for providing me with funding for two years, a decision which completely transformed my ability to carry out this research. Like all good Jewish boys, I also want to thank my mum who long encouraged me (despite my mulish resistance) to pursue postgraduate education, first for my master’s and then this PhD. Your lifetime of love and support means you often know me better than I know myself and without it this thesis would never have been possible. I also want to express my profound gratitude to my partner, Debora, and my children, Diego and Mia, who have all made countless sacrifices in order that I should complete this thesis. It was your love which drove me on through the most difficult periods of my research. E, infine, voglio ringraziare il nostro amico, Zambo; mancato ma sempre con noi. 5 Introduction Long a concept of crucial importance to scholars in both literature and politics, the dual sense of the word “representation”—as “depiction” or “portrayal” for literary critics and “speaking on behalf of” for political theorists—has seen the deployment of these diverse conceptualisations in their respective disciplines as only semantically or etymologically linked and, ultimately, theoretically unrelated. This theoretical bifurcation is perhaps most striking within Marxist thought, with its ample discussion of both political representation (for instance, around the role of the vanguard party, its relationship to social democracy, trade unions etc) and literary representation (perhaps most (in)famously around modernism, realism and their relationship to Marxism). Yet despite the centrality of such debates within the Marxist tradition, scant attention has been paid to the structural relationship between the practices of literary and political representation; that is, the structural function of representation—in both senses—and how representation itself structures the relationship between those represented and those representing, not to mention the practical and epistemological function that such structuring implies as distinct from the ideological positions of those inhabiting representational roles. This thesis, then, will attempt to illuminate this relationship by bringing these two seemingly distinct conceptualisations into direct contact, drawing upon structural analyses of working-class political representation in its investigation of the function of form in working-class literary representation. Charting the development of working-class fiction from the 1926 General Strike to the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent, this thesis will argue, through close reading clusters of working-class texts against their respective historical contexts, that the relationship between representational practices in these two fields goes beyond that of mere analogy and, in fact, is one of structural homology. This homology manifests in realist working-class fiction lending itself more 6 readily to those political practices most closely adhering to representational political forms. Meanwhile, the experiments of the (much-neglected) working-class literary avant-garde, which variously challenged, pushed at or ruptured with the boundaries of realism, would lend themselves to—or, otherwise, be more readily appropriated by—those movements similarly challenging, pushing at or
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