5 4 p Constructing Connections: Fiction, Art and Life

Responding to Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at Hall,

artists: Nev ille Gabie Patricia Mackinnon-Day Paul Rooney

texts: Tessa Jackson Jessica Holtaway Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile

% AP IX 5 Visibility

Tessa Jackson Independent curator and writer

Robert Tressell describes his characters vividly – in pose mirror each other, and the commemorative humorous but jolts the visitor into realising who is The four minute video uses images of found drain- you can picture them and hear their voices in your plates are intended to place current day workers on absent. The title is taken from one of the grander inspection footage laid over still and moving images head. Along with Philpot and Harlow, we spend time an equal status with previous owners. Current staff, paintings at Croxteth Hall but mimics more generally of gents with bowler hats, umbrellas and a certain with Crass, Misery and Slyme. There’s even a brief some over many decades, have maintained not just the portrait painter and his sitter, with the action of swagger. There is even footage of gentlemen and their reference made to a Lady Slumrent. The author uses the fabric of the house and estate, but its history, and literally painting out the individual. By doing so he game shooting exploits. The work’s presentation names to illustrate his only novel. visitors undoubtedly benefit from their loyalty to, and alludes to the anonymity and lack of acknowledgement in the bathroom captures the frightening idea of Artists Neville Gabie, Patricia Mackinnon-Day sense of ownership of, Croxteth Hall. Yet curiously of those who worked to sustain the life-style of the the worker’s lost soul and his vengeful control of a and Paul Rooney, in their recent collaboration, the staff, employed by , seem named faces that surround the piece. gentleman, in the most private of spaces. decided to respond to Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered to have become, to some extent, servants. With the Gabie’s final work Experiments in Black and White All three artists choose, not just in this project Philanthropists, not from a point of illustration but building’s future now under discussion and likely XXIV, two accompanying short videos shown in Lady but across their work, to present in and interact with rather to reflect on the book’s premise of the to become an up-market hotel, their future remains Sefton’s Dressing Room, trace two further actions. places that are less to do with art and more to do “fundamental need to replace the entire capitalist uncertain. Similar to the relationship of Tressell’s We see a tapestry chair being taken from the Dressing with contemporary society. Here their works, shaped system with a new and more radical society” (Tony workmen and their employers, the Hall’s current Room up a narrow stair and through the Hall’s attic by very different thinking, connect past and present Benn, 2012), and how its message remains relevant employees have provided a lot of time and hard rooms of the former servants’ quarters. The second politics and cultural mores, contextualising Tressell’s today. The classic text triggered, for each of them, work for their masters but remain little better off. shows a discarded chair found in the backstreets of Philanthropists with Croxteth Hall and how we responses and imaginings that in some ways bare Mackinnon-Day seems to conclude that they appear being carried ceremoniously through a grand continue to obscure and disregard people through little relation to each other. Instead the well-known to take on the role of current day ‘Philanthropists’. corridor and up the main staircase of the Hall. Two lack of acknowledgement. Mackinnon-Day always Patricia Mackinnon-Day: The Air Monopolist (detail) 2017 volume of ‘working class literature’ provided a The Air Monopolist, also by MacKinnon-Day and very different pieces of furniture occupy contrasting likes to immerse herself within where she works, and 1973 Auction catalogue (edited) resonant context and a spur to make new work. installed on the grand staircase, is connected to Owen’s areas of the house, disrupting the idea of who would interaction with people is part of that immersion. Her Choosing Croxteth Hall, north of Liverpool, explanation that poverty is in part caused by “Private usually occupy which space, and emphasising the two other works, The Leftovers sited in the kitchens as the site for presenting the finished works, was Monopoly”. Angered by the workers’ acceptance of the stark realities of different classes. Gabie is interested and Tracing Shadows on the windows of a long as much pragmatic as particular. Formerly the wealthy owning the world’s resources, he proposes: in materiality and what materials signify - in all three corridor, both make visible the lives of others – the country estate and ancestral home since 1575 of “If it were possible to construct huge gasometers works he both manipulates and connects them to latter simply notes information she found in census the Molyneau family or Earls of Sefton, the Hall’s and to draw together and compress within them the associations, past and present. records of those who worked at the Hall. Gabie for more recent history has several possible touching whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done Paul Rooney is an artist and a musician, more some time has been interested to explore the nature points to Tressell and his text. Said to have been long ago, and we should have been compelled to work recently focusing on sound work. His work for of manual labour, its repetitiveness and how it is re-decorated at about the same time as the book was for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe.” the project was triggered by a feeling he had when regarded in current society. Here, by performing in written, Croxteth Hall perhaps parallels The Cave, The artwork consists of bags of air, collected from reading Tressell’s book – of Mr Hunter the foreman each of his own works, he not only puts himself in the Neville Gabie: Experiments in Black and White XXII [Royal Realm] 2017 the property or ‘job’ that Tressell’s characters are the Hall’s rooms, listed and labelled as sold lots in who is forever lurking. For him this fleeting image shoes of the invisible but returns their presence with installation detail renovating, and the setting for Frank Owen, his hero’s an auction. This is a direct reference to the auction was reminiscent of a ghost (Hunter’s looming face is a certain lyricism and dignity. Rooney literally works discussions on labour, the shortage of work and the held in 1973, when no heir could be found, and the described by Owen as an ‘apparition’ in one passage), with the concept of invisibility, and through sound precarious nature of earning a living. The author was executors of the late Earl of Sefton put up for sale with Rooney’s sense of ghosts in history being and collaged images, recreates the long history of himself a journeyman painter and decorator and just the contents of the house. The amount of air the disruptive and the opposite of benign. Expressing absurdity and injustice that surrounds English class a few years later was buried in a pauper’s grave five artist sold, in a re-staging of the auction, enables the something of the difficulties of representing history, relationships. miles away, now known as Walton Park Cemetery. visitor to consider the difference in living conditions he started to work with material like music hall Mackinnon-Day responded directly to Croxteth The Hall was the Edwardian home of the final Earl between aristocrat and servant. The Hall’s archives lyrics that would have been performed at the time of Hall and its current community. Gabie and Rooney and the Countess of Sefton, and as a set of interiors hold an original copy of the auction book and its list Tressell’s book, such as The Ghost of Benjamin Binns, reflected more generally on Tressell’s themes, it reaffirms the status of life above and below stairs. of contents help to bring to life the style in which and My Father’s Grave, after which his single work disrupting our fascination for the stylish and wealthy For the artists, it offered both specific and conceptual occupants across the classes lived. is titled. This latter song also picks up on the brief lifestyle still propagated by stories such as Downton possibilities. For Mackinnon-Day the Hall gave rise to Neville Gabie’s three works form part of an on-going mention in the book of the unpleasant task of laying Abbey. Yet all three, in their different ways, consider her process and forms the narrative for her works, for exploration entitled Experiments in Black and White. new drains to replace old leaking ones. Siting the the role and the responsibility of the artist, and Gabie it offered a context for actions that were triggered A short video entitled XXI (Status Quo), installed on work in what is known at the Hall as the ‘Gentleman’s what this means in today’s society. By responding by associative ideas and for Rooney it provided a a monitor in the ‘Breakfast Room’, disrupted the quiet Bathroom’, his video has a soundtrack that reworks to Tressell, they have taken a text that still resonates notional framing and a evocative setting. Yet all three referential air of the formal rooms. Heard in other the Edwardian variety song about a worker’s grave and maintained the discussion on the relationship responded – with a process of making visible – to what rooms of the Hall before it was seen, the piece shows a being moved so that new drains can be laid to between labour, livelihood and lifestyle, with a had become obscured, both in terms of the book and man holding a large pile of plates, who after minutes of upgrade a rich gent’s residence. In one version the motivation that Frank Owen describes: their chosen setting for exhibiting the works. trying precariously to bear their weight, drops them. song goes on to say: “Every man who is not helping to bring about Patricia Mackinnon-Day’s Chain of Gold, the The inevitable crash is intended as a metaphor for “Now father in his life was not a quitter, a better state of affairs for the future is helping to first of four works, is inspired by Owen’s description the failure to sustain an impossible economic system. I don’t suppose he’ll be a quitter now. perpetuate the present misery, and is therefore the of society’s “Money System”, in which workers are XXII (Royal Realm), a video of just over an hour and And in his winding sheet, he’ll haunt that toilet seat enemy of his own children. There is no such thing as “bound and fettered with a chain of gold” to the presented on a monitor between imposing columns And only let them go when he’ll allow. being neutral: we must either help or hinder.” wealthy. She made ten gilt-edged bone china plates, on the staircase, follows a man dressed in a dark suit Oh won’t there be some bleedin’ consternation; juxtaposing a photographic portrait of an aristocrat painting himself as well as the backdrop behind, with And won’t them city toffs begin to rave! from the Hall’s past with that of a contemporary white paint. This work, surrounded by portraits of It’s more than they deserve: worker, who is now engaged in maintaining or the aristocracy – Lord and Lady Seftons and their They had the bloody nerve opening the historic house to the public. The figures relatives and friends over the centuries, appears almost To muck about a British workman’s grave.”

% II 5 % III 5 Labour and Life

Jessica Holtaway

“…[A] connotation of heroic deeds requiring great Historic records of Croxteth Hall evoke beautiful in 1927, and he worked alongside his father, who was strength and courage and performed in a fighting images of generations of families, along with their most a blacksmith’s striker and boilerman. Frank recalls spirit is manifest in the medieval use of the word: loved horses and dogs. “Who lived at Croxteth in 1919?” his father’s typical day at work: labour, travail, arebeit. However, the daily fight you might ask. The answer would be “the Molyneux “He used to be here for quarter past five every in which the human body is engaged to keep family, the Earls of Sefton”. But in reality many, many morning. He used to cycle from Netherton, which is the world clean and prevent its decay bears little more individuals lived at the Hall at this time, as six miles from here. He cycled in all weathers, even resemblance to heroic deeds; the endurance servants. Some people spent the best part of their life when it was snowing. He would walk when he could it needs to repair every day anew the waste of living there, but records of their experiences are rare, not cycle and he would still get here for quarter past yesterday is not courage, and what makes the effort if they exist at all. Last month, Croxteth Hall shared five. I’ve seen him leaving home at 3 o’clock in the painful is not danger but its relentless repetition.” some of their archival research with me, which included morning, when there’s been a heavy snow storm, to Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition a number of interviews with retired members of staff. get here, so he would not fail them with their boilers.” These first-hand accounts provided clear descriptions After making sure the boilers were working In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert of the daily labours that went into sustaining the efficiently, Frank’s father would assist with the Tressell, each worker needs to demonstrate a fighting building and the lifestyle of the Molyneux family. laundry, collect fresh bread from the village and spirit, along with physical and emotional strength, Here are some extracts from the interviews: then iron the Earl of Sefton’s newspapers. After to cope with the constant struggle to care for his In 1981, Alison Oldershaw talked to Mrs. Fallows, this he would move 27 barrel loads of coke into the or her family. Although labour characterises the a scullery maid at Croxteth Hall from 1918 through boiler houses. If there was a party at the Hall, he human condition – we are all involved in some kind to 1973. Mrs Fallows remembers daily life in the would sometimes work through until 1 o’clock in the of labour to ensure the necessities of our existence kitchens and pastry larder at the Hall. Her day morning, and he would still need to be up again the – it constrains freedom. In The Human Condition typically started at 5am, when she would sweep the next day in time for work at quarter past five. political theorist Hannah Arendt writes of the kitchens and light the fire and coal stove: Mrs Unwin, a former cleaner at Croxteth Hall, cyclical nature of labour – the repetitive processes “It was like a fog when you’d finished [sweeping], began working there 1962. She did not live at the Hall, by which we try to sustain our health and wellbeing. open the doors if it was not too cold weather, you’d but she came in daily to assist the live-in staff. Her For Arendt, labour differs from work, because work open all the doors, then you had to let all the dust day started at 8am, when she would get the fire ready ends when its goal has been met (for example when settle. You had to come in here [pastry kitchen] for Lady Sefton and then clean the servant’s rooms. an object has been created). She understands labour perhaps you wouldn’t sweep there because it wouldn’t Each year she would help with the annual spring as something that produces impermanent solutions be so dirty, you’d just sweep down there and here. clean which involved: to human necessities. For this reason she considers Next place, the fire was burning all night in there. “Brushing all the walls down, washing all the labour to be the opposite of freedom, and believes You used to rake it out. You did not shovel coal like paintwork, cleaning the carpets. No cleaner, you had that it should not be glamorized through associating that, we had big cobs, big lumps and put them on to get on your hands and knees, we used to do it in it with ideas of heroism. and they would last all day. You had to use that fire strips each. A little rubber scrubbing brush, and after For many of us now, technology and consumer as well. When all that was done, when the dust was that, they got a machine to shampoo.” culture have reduced the amount of labour required settled, I had to go around and dust all the shelves, These narrative histories provide detailed insights to meet our basic needs. For example, I can easily not move anything because you hadn’t the time. I’d into the lives of the servants and the workings of buy a healthy meal that needs no preparation on my have to put staff dishes up for breakfast, we used to country estates over the last century. They also help part. The physical exertion and repetitive nature of keep them on the sides of the dressers. We used to put us understand the physical efforts that went into labour is diminished. For me, that is. If however, them on the top of the stove of put them in a screen sustaining the luxuries of aristocratic life. Although I trace these daily conveniences a little further – a in this room here. Then I used to have to get the lift, technologies have sped-up or eliminated some of hand-wrapped tortilla from the supermarket or send it upstairs, pull the lever, by the time I got up these processes, there is still a human cost to luxury the toaster in my kitchen – I find that they are still there it wasn’t there. When I got up there I had to put living. The exhibition Constructing Connections: produced through repetitive and exhausting labour the dining room china on the lift, by the time I got Fiction, Art and Life asks us to engage with the processes undertaken in factories both here in the down, it was half way down. I used to have to run and less visible histories of Croxteth and to reflect on UK and abroad – often in developing countries where put the dining room china there ready for when the contemporary issues around labour and freedom. the poor labour conditions lead to the same problems staff had gone up, and then put the china on the stove depicted in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. to get warm you see. It was like clockwork.” Responding to Croxteth Hall and Robert Tressell’s And this was all before 8 in the morning! Mrs novel, artist Neville Gabie made a series of artworks Fellows reflects: that address the repetitive and exhausting nature “[When it got busy] [w]e just had to cope. It was of labour. One piece shows Neville painting a hard work. I was up many a time, five o’clock in the black wall white, and then painting it black again. morning. You would not see your bed ’til eleven at In the process of painting, he covers himself with night, sometimes after. And you’d be on all day and paint, so that his identity becomes erased, lost in then you’d have to cope with the day and do part of Patricia Mackinnon-Day: Tracing Shadows 2017 the background. Shown near the portraits of the the next day, to help you on like. You had to work it to print on glass family – monuments to individual identities - the your own idea how you could manage.” individuality of the worker is painted out and he Frank Games, the plumber at Croxteth Hall, also becomes almost invisible. remembers long days such as these. Frank was born

% IV 5 % V 5 Patricia Mackinnon-Day: Chain of Gold 2017 photographic print on gold edged bone china

% VI 5 % VII 5 Against Capitalism and Empire: Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile Senior Lecturer in English Literature Liverpool John Moores University

A unique expression of working-class culture, Months in Hell, Told by One of the Damned, underlines praised its realism but also criticized what he Socialism access to leisure and culture. The prevention of these realism is key to how it has conveyed these problems Robert Tressell’s 1914 novel, The Ragged Trousered Tressell’s concern with the unremitting mobilisation regarded as its political naivety. Its relevance, he enjoyments produces the constant tension upon to generations of readers, and the conditions of Philanthropists, still occupies a marginal position of capital against the interests of the working poor. insisted, lay in the descriptive power of its compelling Informed by a combination of socialist and anti- which the novel hinges, ensuring that “the system working class poverty and desperation that it within the field of literary studies. A tale of painters Its infliction of physical, psychological and economic exploration of the proletariat’s bleak and – for middle colonial ideas, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists which produces luxury, refinement and culture describes continue to remain strikingly familiar. This and decorators who are forced, daily, to compete shocks against workers is integrated into the text and, class readers, at least – unimaginable working conveys the suffering endured by the marginalized for a few… condemns the majority to a lifelong novel still speaks to the exploited, to the unemployed with one another in an economic race to the bottom, in turn, this repeatedly disrupts the novel’s narrative, conditions. Its importance, he believed, lay in its working poor of . Upon its publication, it struggle with adversity, and many thousands to and to people working on zero-hour contracts. Its “the painters’ bible” as the novel became known, exposing the relationship between these pressures documentation of the “unhonoured” or forgotten articulated experiences that, as Orwell noted, were hunger and rags”. This reality for the majority, relevance is undiminished in a world in which the was quickly recognised as an important radical, and the system that generates them. Its disrupted and radicals whose efforts finally crystallized in the ignored in mainstream English fiction, explaining Tressell repeats throughout the novel, “has made monopolization of resources and their concentration even insurgent text. Circulated among workers in disruptive aesthetic captures a desolate, impoverished popular British socialism of the 1940s. to its readers how, in Britain, “the wolves (i.e., the world into a hell” and the challenge that he saw in the hands of wealthy and powerful élites intensifies Belfast, Dublin, Liverpool and Glasgow upon its world that is “falling to pieces and crumbling away” capitalists) have an easy prey.” Conveying the real, facing the left was its responsibility to radicalize the without pause. Now that imperialist governments first publication, it motivated and inspired labour around the working-class characters who inhabit it. The Colonial Context material consequences of life under capitalism, it working-class and convince it of the artificiality of have, since 2003, revived the practice of direct organization in these and other cities in Ireland, Its significance lies in its uncompromising realism portrays working class experience of modernity as a capitalism’s “fair outward appearance”. This problem military occupation, it also speaks to the colonized Scotland, England and Wales. Focussed on the because, unlike earlier ‘condition of England’ fictions Born Robert Croker in Dublin in 1870, Robert prolonged encounter with endless cycles of economic is directly confronted in his documentation of life and to those who have been dispossessed and exiled grinding misery of working-class existence, it (such as Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South [1855] Tressell adopted his mother’s , Noonan. crisis and stagnation. In doing so the novel fulfils in Mugsborough, the fictional town modelled on by neoliberal capitalism, like the immigrants and presents a troubling picture of the ruthlessness and Mary Barton [1848], and Charles Dickens’ Hard He became a transnational migrant in his teens, Raymond Williams’ categorization of progressive Hastings, in which the novel is set. Its very revealing economic refugees whom Tressell defended in his and relentlessness of capitalism. Read and re-read Times [1854]), it rejects the formal and long-standing leaving Ireland for Liverpool, which he left after art as that which reflects contemporary society’s name nods to the establishment’s duping of the novel. It speaks to the many people in this country by workers, many of whom were given copies conventions of the nineteenth-century novel. As serving six months’ imprisonment for theft in 1890. “structure of feeling”. working class, a feat that is achieved with the help today who are forced, like those who died in the by their trade unions at the beginning of their Gary Day has emphasized, The Ragged Trousered Emigrating to South Africa, he learned his trade In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, we find of the media, which circulates newspapers entitled, Grenfell fire, to live in unregulated and hazardously apprenticeships, it assumed a central position as a Philanthropists does not rely on sentimentalism or as a decorator, rising to foreman in Johannesburg. an expression of anticolonial politics in combination tellingly, The Obscurer and the Daily Chloroform. dangerous conditions in rented properties that foundational text of modern class struggle. With its romance, as Tressell denied the reassuring closures Here he became involved in trade unionism, writing with militant, revolutionary socialism. Through A self-reflexive work of political fiction, The Ragged mirror the dilapidated housing in which many of importance relayed to workers via these channels, that characterized bourgeois fiction – conclusions political pamphlets and joining the International this radical narrative, Tressell, or Noonan, counters Trousered Philanthropists relays the experience of the novel’s scenes are set. For these reasons, in our rather than through the conventional academic and that reflected these authors’ affiliation with liberal Independent Labour Party in 1899. His socialist bourgeois ‘normality’ and its assertion that such poverty, desperation, deprivation and hunger – age of austerity, inequality, imperial occupations, critical spheres that traditionally confer literary reformism. Instead, he deployed fiction as a means of beliefs were aligned to his anticolonial politics and, suffering, injustices and violence are normal, natural realities that these publications deny and conceal. It seemingly endless economic recession and ongoing works with status and authority, it became a classic confronting the economic violence lying beneath the as an Irish republican, he served on the Transvaal or inevitable phenomena. Rather than drawing on explains the material consequences of the operation economic exploitation, Robert Tressell’s tale remains of the socialist literary canon. With millions of surface of bourgeois normality. Executive of the Centennial of 1798 Committee, the leisured experiences of the inhabitants of Pimlico of the capitalist system and its effects upon those as relevant to readers today as it did to those who copies produced during 117 English-language Composed amid the uncertainty that marked a front organization of the clandestine and or Regent’s Park that qualified as Bloomsbury who are on the receiving end of the bourgeoisie’s encountered it upon its first publication in 1914. As printings between 1914 and the present, it has also working class experience at the beginning of the revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). modernism. In his presentation of the chaotic and “great money trick.” Countering the liberal calls for he concluded, people who are organized, even in been translated into Chinese, Farsi, Russian, Dutch, twentieth century, the novel is ideologically precise This body linked the Boers directly to militant traumatic experiences of working class life, Tressell a gradualist version of socialism voiced by Tressell’s what may appear to be hopeless situations, can work Bulgarian, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Slovak, and politically assertive in its descriptions and Irish anti-imperialism and Noonan sat on its concentrates on the resistant consciousness of his contemporaries, the Fabian socialists, with a series of together in solidarity to establish a new and better Czech and Spanish. analyses of class violence. Attempting to educate committee alongside the future president of Sinn protagonist, the alienated decorator and radical grimly descriptive episodes, the novel documented world. This, Tressell shows us in the final lines of his The novel’s graphic descriptions of poverty, English workers who, Tressell found, were either Féin, Arthur Griffith, and the chemist and mineral socialist, Frank Owen. Refusing to comply with the the direct violence of capitalism and the intensity novel, can be accomplished by establishing what he along with its searing portrayals of working-class thoroughly terrorized or desensitized by the assessor, John MacBride, who would be executed for violence that surrounds him and his fellow workers, of the misery that it instils in its victims – a form of described as “the glorious fabric of the Co-operative families enduring hunger and even starvation, are combined violence and authority of capitalism and his part in leading the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. Owen will not acquiesce in the dehumanizing structural violence from which, as Tressell reveals Commonwealth,” where “brotherhood, goodwill accompanied by Tressell’s repeated criticisms of the state, his novel has traditionally been regarded Upon the outbreak of the Boer War, the Transvaal structures and practices of power. The novel’s on many occasions throughout this story, not even and joy” will replace misery, greed and despair – the British imperialism: his narrative of working-class as a specifically English expression of working-class 1798 Committee organized the Irish Transvaal structural disjointedness and lack of pattern, children are spared. keynote realities of modern capitalism. distress opens by subverting James Thomson’s 1740 identity rather than the product of an internationalist, Brigade, which Mac Bride led into battle against therefore, are not aesthetic insufficiencies, but crucial In the novel’s preface, Tressell explained why he colonialist anthem, Rule Britannia, declaring, with anticolonial consciousness. In his introduction to the the British army. reflections of the chaos of working-class experience. decided to use fiction as a means of conveying the firm irony, that “Britons never shall be slaves”. 1965 edition, Alan Sillitoe described it as “the first Noonan left the organisation after hostilities Through these interruptions, Tressell worked the realities of poverty, suffering and class violence in Asking the reader to reflect upon the inherent great English novel about the class war” and in 1969 commenced and returned to England, but his literary structural violence of capitalism into a disordered early twentieth-century England: contradiction of imperialism’s claim to liberate its the Marxist critic, Jack Mitchell, praised it as “one of writing remained framed by this experience of but realistic and aesthetically productive fiction. “I designed to show the conditions relating from subjects, Tressell highlights the repressive fusion of the greatest tradition-breakers in the English novel”. imperialism. Living in Hastings from 1902, he joined Its directness draws from its repetitiveness, which poverty and unemployment: to expose the futility capitalist economics and imperialist expansion, both Tressell’s illustrations of unstable living the Social Democratic Federation, writing pamphlets Grant Allen excised from the original edition, yet it of the measures taken to deal with them and to at home and in the colonies. The novel is particularly conditions, the impact of poverty upon mental and election literature for his local branch, but his is precisely this fragmentary aesthetic that repeats indicate what I believe to be the only real remedy, scathing of British colonial policy in Ireland where health and the workers’ ceaseless struggles with daughter, Kathleen, recalled his increasing frustration the author’s (and his characters’) frustration, anger namely – Socialism. I intended to explain what he warns the reader that British policy deliberately the ever-present threat of starvation led its first with the conservatism of English workers. Five and despair. Socialists understand by the word ‘poverty’: to define “exterminated” four million peasants during the publisher, Grant Richards (who also published James years later, in 1907, amid acute unemployment and The novel opens with Owen explaining to his the Socialist theory of the causes of poverty, and to Irish Holocaust of the 1840s and 1850s (referred to, Joyce’s Dubliners in the same year), to describe it deprivation in the city, he began writing The Ragged fellow-decorators that the denial of pleasure is key to explain how Socialists propose to abolish poverty.” misleadingly, as the “potato famine”). Tressell warns as a “damnably subversive” work, but one that was Trousered Philanthropists in response to the Liberal the normalisation of repression: A unique text, a key example of radical, working- that the next logical step is for such genocidal policies “extraordinarily real”. Cautiously, Richards issued government’s application of conservative social “What I call poverty is when people are not able to class writing and a profoundly important work to be implemented in England, where the ruling class the novel in a very abridged form and the uncensored policies. The novel was completed in 1910, when his secure for themselves all the benefits of civilization; of insurgent literature, The Ragged Trousered has already convinced itself that “half of this country version was not published until it was issued by already ailing health quickly deteriorated and, in the necessaries, comforts, pleasures and refinements Philanthropists still amplifies socialism’s ought to be exterminated as well.” Lawrence and Wishart, the publishing house of the February 1911, three years before the publication of of life, leisure, books, theatres, pictures, music, revolutionary tendencies today. It successfully Thoroughly politicized and influenced by Karl Communist Party of Great Britain, in 1955. George his novel, Robert Noonan died in Liverpool from holidays, travel, good and beautiful homes, good popularized socialist doctrine by documenting Marx’s analyses of capitalism, the novel foregrounds Orwell, reviewing a new edition of the still-abridged tuberculosis while preparing to emigrate, once more, clothes, good and pleasant food.” capitalism’s harmful practices, its prolongation of the crises and traumas experienced by Edwardian work in 1946 (the novel had by now been reissued to Canada. Key to the containment of the proletariat is injustice and the violent ways in which it denies workers, and its subtitle, Being the Story of Twelve thirty-two times since its original publication), capitalism’s refusal to allow the working class any human potential. The novel’s intensive, class-focussed

% VIII 5 % IX 5 Neville Gabie: Experiments in Black and White XXII (Royal Realm) 2017 video 64 minutes 3 seconds household paint, buckets and suit

% X 5 % XI 5 Peace and War

Jessica Holtaway

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Wilkinson (a history teacher at Marlborough College) on August 15th reads: “no war news”). Some days Tressell was published in 1914, the year World states: “While these horrors were in the future – only later, on August 24th, she writes of the “first news of War 1 broke out. A number of political events had a very few visionaries guessed what war would be like our troops fighting” and we learn that she has begun taken place in the years leading up to 1914, but it either on land or sea”. The brutality of the war, the to attend ‘Ambulance Class’. Nevertheless, between is the incidents of that summer that are usually number of casualties, was unimaginable. these occasional references to the war, life carries on associated with the start of the war: the assassination The strangeness and abruptness of the war almost as normal: 3rd October 1914, “Shopped and of Archduke Ferdinand on June 28th, Germany’s is apparent in the diaries of Lady Helena Mary lunched at the Ritz…” declaration of war on and its invasion of Molyneux, Countess of Sefton. Helena Molyneux was Two years later, the war had painfully changed Belgium on August 3rd. Britain declared war on married to Osbert Molyneux, the 6th Earl of Sefton, the lives of the Molyneux family. Helena’s son Cecil Germany the following day, August 4th. The war and lived at Croxteth Hall until 1943. In 1914, she was was killed in the battle of Jutland in 1916, when he ended on November 11th 1918 but its social impact 39 years old and had three children. was only 16 years old. Just nine days after learning of continued to unfold. Helena’s diary accounts (which can be found in their son’s death, wounded soldiers began to arrive at One of the consequences of World War 1 was the Liverpool Central Library) are quite undemonstrative Croxteth. On June 9th, 1916, Helena writes: “Our first decline of the aristocracy in Britain. In October 1919, - there are few descriptions of her emotions or batch of soldiers patients came in to the hospital – 12 Country Life magazine commented: “People who feelings, no private confessions - they are records of from Alder Hey”. Helena’s daughter Evelyn died the formerly lived in very large houses are now getting out her daily life at Croxteth: the rats, rabbits and grouse following year, at the age of 14. Her eldest son, Hugh, of them. As to who goes in is another matter.” (October that her sons shot, horse-riding outings, walks, tennis became the 7th and last Earl of Sefton. 25th edition, quoted in The Long Weekend: Life in the matches and lunch engagements. Reading between After the war, Helena dedicated much of her time English Country House Between the Wars by Adrian the lines there is a sense of contentment and peace, a to charity work. During World War II, she worked as a Tinniswood). The Molyneux family stayed in Croxteth love for her family and an appreciation for luxuries. waitress at the S. Gordon Smith Institute for Seamen. Hall until 1972, but there were changes over this time, As the diary continues however, there are brief Throughout her life, she was a keen gardener, and even especially during World War 1, when the Hall was used mentions of the war. She carefully records specific after she moved from Croxteth in 1943, she visited as a hospital for wounded soldiers and officers. events and the deaths of individuals. On August 15th, regularly, spending time in the gardens. On August However, in 1914 few people could predict these she writes “our Expeditionary Force all safely landed 27th 1947, Helena died in the gardens at Croxteth. changes. In an article in History Today – ‘Germany, in France” (her husband’s uncle, Henry Hervey Britain & the Coming of War in 1914’ - Richard Molyneux also kept a diary at this time, and his entry

Patricia Mackinnon-Day: The Leftovers 2017 Patricia Mackinnon-Day: The Air Monopolist 2017 gelatine, glass Gobo projection, screenprint, air, polythene

% XII 5 % XIII 5 ‘Olde Tyme’ Music Halls

Jessica Holtaway

This summer, artist Paul Rooney developed a piece of singing, ventriloquism, magic acts and drag acts, culture – from contemporary drag acts and burlesque work that responded both to a short extract from The amongst many more. When The Ragged Trousered through to variety shows and talent shows, such as Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell Philanthropists was published, its readers would have Britain’s Got Talent. The Beatles’ Paul McCartney was (which describes the Raggeds digging trenches for likely been familiar with songs such as I Do Like to Be the son of music hall performer Jimmy McCartney, new drains) and an Edwardian music hall song, Beside the Seaside and It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. and this influenced some of the Beatles’ songs, for They’re Moving Father’s Grave to Build a Sewer. In Liverpool, The Star (now The Liverpool example When I’m 64. Music halls emerged in the mid 19th century and Playhouse) was a popular music hall that opened This summer, Paul Rooney installed an HD video were popular for over 100 years. They developed in 1866. Child actors Noël Coward and Gertrude work in the ‘Gentlemen’s Bathroom’ at Croxteth Hall: from public houses and saloons that featured Lawrence appeared there in 1912. Robert Tressell Father’s Grave. Paul used the lyrics of the anonymous entertainers. Over time the entertainers became the was also familiar with music hall culture, and his music hall song They’re Moving Father’s Grave to Build main attraction and some pubs were demolished characters reference a number of different songs – in a Sewer, but changed its tune. The still images from and replaced with music hall theatres, where people Chapter 29 ‘The Pandora’ Bert White creates a mini the video featured in this publication show footage of could eat, drink and smoke whilst watching a large theatre show for children at a birthday party, and the sewer drain inspections comically juxtaposed with variety of performances. Although saloons and children respond by singing music hall songs such as images of opulent Edwardian style interiors. pubs were places for men to meet and talk business, Two Lovely Black Eyes. the music halls also attracted women and children, As jazz, swing and the big band dance music of the so much so that Charles Dickens once described 40s gained popularity, the music halls became less them as “a virtual nursery”. Entertainment included fashionable. But they have had a lasting influence on

Paul Rooney: Father’s Grave 2017 Single screen video with six channel sound, 4 mins

% XIV 5 % XV 5 Neville Gabie: Experiments in Black and White XXIV 2017 Neville Gabie: Experiments in Black and White XXI 2017 two screen video 1 minute 56 seconds video 5 minutes 30 seconds domestic furniture, filmed Croxteth Hall, Liverpool domestic china, filmed Croxteth Hall Liverpool

% XVI 5 % XVII 5 Croxteth Hall: A Story of Ghosts

Jessica Holtaway

“If it - learning to live - remains to be done, it can diaries, I was introduced to a woman of wealth and and White XXII (Royal Realm) abruptly asks us to with the utter stillness and redundancy of the As I read through interviews with plumbers, This spirit of determination and hope in the face of happen only between life and death. Neither in status, with her specific joys and anxieties, hopes and think about the role of the worker and the erasure of chinaware in the dining room. cleaners and kitchen staff at Croxteth, I began to be uncertainty lingers on beyond the exhibition, beyond life nor in death alone. What happens between fears. Between lunches at the Ritz and tennis matches, workers’ identities in the historic narratives of houses Patricia MacKinnon-Day’s Chain of Gold, a series of haunted by their accounts of ‘normal’ life. Away from Croxteth Hall, and asks us to imagine and work two, and between all the ‘two’s’ one likes, such as World War I crept into her life. The war was to claim such as Croxteth Hall. china plates featuring portraits of members of the family Croxteth, I became increasingly aware of spectres of towards a better future. between life and death, can only maintain itself her son, and to turn her home into a hospital for Opposite, Patricia MacKinnon-Day’s piece The alongside portraits of the staff and volunteers who inequality. The systems of power, described in their This text opened with a passage from philosopher with some ghost, can only talk with or about soldiers. It was to change the social structures she had Air Monopolist features an artist-edited copy of an currently work at Croxteth Hall, is placed at the foot accounts – systems that necessitated low-income Jacques Derrida’s Spectres of Marx – a text that some ghost (s’entretenir de quelque fantome). built her life around. auction book from 1973 - the year that ownership of the main staircase in the house. Each design seems workers to fight as individuals in a social system discusses the spirits of communism and imagines So it would be necessary to learn spirits.” Reading between the lines of her dispassionate of Croxteth Hall and many of its belongings passed to re-contextualise the status of the family – no longer that favoured the rich – no longer seemed historic, political theorist Karl Marx as a ghost who “goes on Jacques Derrida: Spectres of Marx: Exordium: xvii accounts of daily life, a figure began to emerge of a to Liverpool council - along with a projection of the sole focus of Croxteth Hall’s history, they sit or they surrounded me wherever they went. But this speaking”. Derrida points out that the first noun of complex woman: a woman who loved her pets as if text from Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered stand alongside present day staff. These works become realisation was not wholly painful – rather I began the Manifesto of the Communist Party is “spectre” This is an account of absent people. Though it is they were people, but who once proudly shot a lion; Philanthropists and individual bags of air. Each of new monuments that elevate the staff from their role to sense disorder or ‘wrongness’ in the world around (“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of not an ordinary ghost story, it is a reflection on a woman who dedicated much of her time to charity the bags of air has been collected from the rooms of as servants of the house, to agents of its history. me, a feeling that brought with a sharper clarity. communism”). Similarly, Tressell’s closing image of the apparitions – the remarkable and unexpected work, and who put aside her privileges and worked as Croxteth Hall, and listed as lot numbers in the edited Both these pieces reveal an ‘outside’ that has The artworks at Croxteth Hall had evoked a similar the golden light reanimates the spectre of socialism appearances of people and things – encountered a waitress during World War II. version of the 1973 auction catalogue. The bags of air characterised the house for hundreds of years, feeling – the incongruity of the artworks in the house that awakens beings out of “the dust”. Tressell asks us at Croxteth Hall over the summer of 2017. Before Through these diaries, I also began to realise that physically block a large doorway, they seem to hover, something unfamiliar within the house that is generated an awareness of the new and unfamiliar, to imagine socialism as an other-worldly spirit. Here I visited Croxteth Hall, I was aware of its status as Croxteth Hall is haunted by the in-human forces of shining and transparent - another apparition of the fundamental to its history. In different ways they which re-contextualised the objects and characters of we can, like Derrida, begin to reflect on the necessity one of the most haunted houses in Liverpool, and capital. The fate of the house is still, as it has always forces of capital over the lives of those who lived and challenge the concept of the ‘status quo’ by pointing to Croxteth Hall’s history and provoked questions about of learning from spirits. And, just as Derrida as I explored the Hall and its attics, the images of a been, dictated by the cold, familiar and yet ultimately worked at the Hall. the unfamiliar at the heart of the familiar – a recurring what we consider to be ‘normal’ now. advocates a politics of responsibility characterised ‘man in a hood’ and of a glowing figure, lurked in the strange and unpredictable flows of wealth and power. In a nearby bathroom, Paul Rooney’s video eeriness at the heart of everyday life that renders any by an acknowledgement of the unknowable, we can corners of my imagination. To be ‘haunted’ not only means to be haunted by a Father’s Grave literally brings the ‘outside’ into the sense of a fixed state of affairs as an illusion. A lingering spirit begin to question the political ideologies of our time, Nevertheless, the ‘ghosts’ I chanced upon were not ghost, it refers to showing signs of suffering or severe Hall. Video footage of drain inspections is juxtaposed and regard traces and fragments of history as a fragile these. They were not threatening or frightening, as anxiety. Helena’s anxieties surrounding the war with images of British capitalists and city gents in Paranormal activities The artists re-introduced visitors to Robert Tressell’s inheritance that sustains the possibility of ethical I imagined ghosts to be. For psychologist Sigmund and its impact on British society are tied into and their bowlers and top hats, or occasionally in their socialist novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. engagement with others within and beyond the Freud the idea of the ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich), which contextualised by wider issues of inequality, poverty field sports tweeds. Father’s Grave is inspired by the The word ‘paranormal’ refers to anything that is The novel, insightful, witty but above all angry, complex systems of power that affect our lives today. often characterises ghost stories, appears when and suffering, brought about by systems of capitalism. old music hall song They’re moving Father’s grave to above, beyond or contrary to what is ‘normal’. If we became the spirit at the centre of the project. something that has been hidden or secret, becomes These systems still mould the unfolding history of the build a sewer – a song about the ghost of a working describe something as ‘paranormal’, we are indicating Presenting a critical lens on capitalism, Tressell calls visible. He believed that the uncanny brings with it building. Throughout the house there are traces of class man whose grave is moved to make way for a that the world around us is ‘normal’ or ordered for a socialist politics and to convince us, he asks us to horror and even disgust, and that it is a manifestation individuals forced by their economic circumstances sewer for a ‘city chap’. The spirit of the man haunts (‘normal’ is derived from the Latin ‘norma’ meaning follow the lives of a group of painters and decorators at of the subconscious fears and desires of an individual to do repetitive manual labour. Tiny handprints in the ‘privy seat’, preventing its owner from being carpenter’s square), but that this ‘something’ does the turn of the 20th century. They are ‘philanthropists’ when they encounter something ‘strange’. However, the red bricks of the house point to child labour – to a able to go to the toilet. Father’s Grave features the not conform, it is ‘para’. The weird and the eerie because their low cost hard labour lines the pockets the ghosts I write about here are not ‘uncanny’ in collective apparition that lingers in the very fabric of haunting sound of a child singing the core lyric make us aware of ‘the new’. The shock of the new of the rich, whilst they sacrifice their health, families this sense, although they were encountered through the building. ‘you’re dead’. Here, the viewer is drawn, trancelike, can bring a combination of pleasure and pain that, and stability. Despite their bleak living conditions and objects and stories concealed in archives or in towards an unknowable underworld - towards that as Fisher explains, “has something in common with the ridicule from their colleagues, the book’s socialists cordoned off areas of the house. Many of the absent Weird representations which lies beyond the familiar. what Lacan called jouissance”– it ties in with our have a cautious optimism. people who brushed through my consciousness were sensual enjoyment of the world. What we perceive to Since the publication of The Ragged Trousered the tired servants of the Hall, wanting to tell their In his book The Weird and the Eerie, theorist Mark An eerie calm be ‘paranormal’ can help us disengage from existing Philanthropists in 1914, the British state has founded story, to not be forgotten. But in many cases, I had to Fisher differentiates between these two concepts. attachments, and can be a catalyst for change, for and developed a number of public services that look for them, to rummage through dusty boxes, seek The ‘weird’ refers to something that “does not Unlike the ‘weird’, which appears suddenly as if from a new way of seeing and experiencing a place or a have helped low-income individuals and families. out century-old diaries and to carefully observe the belong” and that “brings to the familiar something outside, the ‘eerie’ reveals an outside that has existed situation. Nevertheless, as we see increasing privatisation and traces of the Hall’s history. which ordinarily lies beyond it”, whereas the ‘eerie’ serenely within the familiar all along. The attics at When I read though interviews with the staff inequality in the UK today, the book has importance gives us “access to the forces that govern mundane Croxteth Hall are ‘eerie’ – these abandoned spaces from Croxteth Hall - particularly the accounts of and significance for us now. Gabie, MacKinnon- A haunted house reality but which are ordinarily obscured” so as to evoke the absent presence of the staff, they provide Mrs. Fallows, a scullery maid who worked at the Day and Rooney have each responded to the main release us from the mundane. In other words, the access to the obscured experiences of the staff that house between 1918 and 1973 – my admiration for themes of the book – inequality, social divisions, On first entering the house, the most tangible absence weird refers to an encounter with the ‘outside’ and lived at the Hall. These empty spaces feel strange, and the luxury of Edwardian living began to dissipate. privatisation – in order to generate contemporary was that of the family who lived there until 1972. the eerie exposes the ‘outside’ that has always been yet they were fundamental to the daily workings of Mrs. Fallow’s accounts of the labour that went into perspectives on these issues and to prompt audiences Their belongings, so called, carefully dusted and within a familiar ‘inside’. the house. Perhaps they are strange because they feel maintaining class privilege illuminated patterns of to question the systems that they affirm or reject cleaned, lay still and unused. The house felt frozen This summer, three artists brought the ‘weird’ so obviously abandoned, in comparison to the main structural inequality, and raised questions around through their life choices. in time, a perfect capsule featuring photographs of into Croxteth Hall. Patricia Mackinnon-Day, Paul rooms of the house that are polished and preserved. exploitation: The novel concludes with an other-worldly vision children, pets and horses, portraits of the family. On Rooney and Neville Gabie each created site-specific But even these main rooms evoke a sense of the “[When it got busy] [w]e just had to cope. It was of socialism, a phantasm that is ‘weird’ but hopeful, my first visit to the hall, I found myself imagining works that interrupted the familiar narrative of eerie through their stillness. This feeling intensifies hard work. I was up many a time, five o’clock in the rather than fearful: them as as characters in a period drama, familiar glamorised wealth in Edwardian England. At the with the presence of the contemporary works, in morning. You would not see your bed ’til eleven at “Mankind, awaking from the long night of caricatures but lacking authenticity. top of the main stairs, amongst the portraits of particular Neville Gabie’s Experiments in Black and night, sometimes after. And you’d be on all day and bondage and mourning and arising from the dust Hoping to learn more about these individuals, I the absent, Nevillie Gabie’s video work of a man White XXI (Status Quo), in which the artist shakily then you’d have to cope with the day and do part of wherein they had lain prone so long, were at last visited Liverpool Central Library to read the diaries painting a wall and obscuring himself in the process, holds a stack of plates until he is no longer able to the next day, to help you on, like. You had to work looking upward to the light that was riving asunder of Lady Helena Molyneux. Here I encountered appears uncannily alive even as the artist conceals bear the weight and they all crash to the ground. it to your own idea how you could manage.” (Mrs. and dissolving the dark clouds which had so long my first apparition. Through the pages of Helena’s his identity through painting. Experiments in Black The chaotic fragmentation of the china contrasts Fallows, in an interview in 1981.) concealed from them the face of heaven.”

% XVIII 5 % XIX 5 4 p 4 5 5 4 p

A tale of painters and decorators who are forced, daily, to compete with one another in an economic race to the bottom, “the painters’ bible” as the novel became known, was quickly recognised as an important radical, Constructing even insurgent text. Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile Connections: Fiction, Art and Life

Responding to Robert Tressell’s Paul Rooney: Father’s Grave 2017 The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Single screen video with six channel sound, 4 mins at Croxteth Hall, Liverpool

Acknowledgements | Colophon

This project was delivered by Tressell Noonan Associates, a Community Interest Company Ltd by Guarantee established by artists Neville Gabie, Patricia MacKinnon-Day, Paul Rooney and Creative Producer Frances Downie. Thanks to Bryan Biggs, Stuart artists: Borthwick, Professor Gerry Smyth, and to Chris Leigh & fantastic staff at Croxteth Hall without whom this Nev ille Gabie project would not have been possible. Patricia Mackinnon-Day Contructing Connections: Fiction, Art and Life is published by Axis Projects Publishing on behalf of Paul Rooney Tressell Noonan Associates. Text and images © The artists and authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, texts: in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the Tessa Jackson prior written permission of Axis Projects Publishing. Design & Publishing: axisgraphicdesign.co.uk Jessica Holtaway Print: Sharman & Company Ltd Dr Deaglán Ó Donghaile

% ISBN 978-0-9554825-8-8 5 % AP IX 5