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Poetry with purpose and the journey to Kes
Billyâs Last Stand, The Blinder, A Kestrel for a Knave and Kes
In this chapter, we trace the roots of Barry Hinesâs literary mode of poetic realism in those works of the 1960s that preceded A Kestrel for a Knave (1968). These include the 1965 play Billyâs Last Stand, which gives an absurdist form to its social-realist content, and Hinesâs first novel The Blinder (1966), its title invoking the concept of a sporting move characterised by its excellence â ironically so, given the introduction this novel offers to Hinesâs consistent theme of the stand-off between sporting and intellectual pursuits in an individualâs life story. The literary promise Hines showed in The Blinder led to the filming of his novel A Kestrel for a Knave as Kes (Ken Loach, 1969). We argue that the roots of this novelâs cinematic realisation are already apparent in Hinesâs prose, meaning that the film, so significant in British cultural history, is more of a writerly and collaborative venture than has yet been acknowledged.
Billyâs Last Stand (1965, 1970, 1971)
Billyâs Last Stand was first broadcast as a radio play on the BBCâs âThird Programmeâ in 1965. The play is a sparse duologue in which a coal-shoveller, Billy (Arthur Lowe), has his simple but impoverished life interrupted by a manipulative outsider, Darkly (Ronald Baddiley). Darkly becomes Billyâs business partner, forcing him to adopt increasingly laborious and almost literally âback-breakingâ working practices; Billy then persuades Darkly to join him in violently assaulting and leaving for dead Starky, a competing worker who threatens their trade. At the playâs end Billy himself murders Darkly, in a desperate attempt to return to the simplicity of his past. The play thus presents an allegorical critique of enterprise and consumer culture, a familiar concern of course to working-class writers of the period, yet, as we will see, its minimalism distances it from the social realism of Hinesâs contemporaries. To approach Billyâs Last Stand as a âlost playâ â on the basis that no recording of the TV play exists â therefore is to begin to develop a fuller and multi-dimensional understanding of both Hinesâs complex creative agency and the traditions of post-war working-class writing in which his work is included.
The play was written while Barry Hines was a PE teacher at the St Helenâs Secondary Modern School in the Athersley area of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, where he worked between 1963 and 1968. It was Hinesâs first broadcast work and was developed alongside his debut novel The Blinder in his spare time. Like almost all of his plays, films and novels, it was inspired by his class background and the community in which he lived and worked, as Hines put it in an interview to support the broadcast: âThere is a man in this village who gets in coal for a few shillings. I just happened to think of him when I started writing ⊠Billy has a coal shifting business and this other man tries to get into the business and eventually takes it over. The man represents society and Billy, the outsider.â1 Even in the infancy of his writing career, we can begin to identify in Hinesâs own interpretation of his work the development of central themes and emphases that would underpin his later, more widely known novels and screenplays, namely the relationship between marginalised individuals and the social and economic forces beyond their control. It is therefore significant that, following the broadcast, the playâs producer, Alfred Bradley, persuaded the BBCâs Northern Region to award the then 25-year-old Hines a bursary to develop his writing, giving him the time and space to write A Kestrel for a Knave.
While learning more about the context of Billyâs Last Stand and its origins helps us to gain a greater sense of Hinesâs development as a young writer, a consideration of the playâs diverse modality offers a way to understand the authorâs ambiguous status within discourses about working-class and regional post-war writing. After its beginning as a radio play, Hines adapted Billyâs Last Stand as a theatre production, first for regional theatre in Bolton, and then âupstairsâ at the Royal Court, directed by Michael Wearing in 1970, where Darkly was played by Ian McKellen. The play was received extremely well by critics, so that Hines was praised for his âconsiderable literary touchâ2 by Milton Shulman; his mastery of the âsmall, closely observed subjectâ3 by Pearson Phillips; and for producing âa story told with the intensity and detail of D.H. Lawrence at his bestâ4 by Rosemary Say. The near-universal acclaim for the play is telling: this was to be Hinesâs only theatrical production, although Kes/Kestrel for a Knave has repeatedly been adapted for the stage, as have The Price of Coal and Two Men from Derby, but with a range of different writers and never with Hines taking the lead. Knowledge of Hinesâs brief but successful career as a playwright â the play was also performed in Germany and reproduced for publication in the United States â further reveals the complex and multi-layered nature of his authorship. In chronological terms, Hines was first a radio writer, then a novelist, before adapting Kes as a screenplay, and then working on Billyâs Last Stand for the theatre, and finally for his first television play in 1971. While Hines shifted between mediums during this frenetic early period of writing, Billyâs Last Stand also shows a new willingness to experiment with genre. Indeed, the BBC Play for Today production, directed by John Glenister, who would collaborate again with Hines five years later on Two Men from Derby, differs very little from the radio play and theatre versions, although, predictably, the violence appears to have been toned down. Thus the play maintains the earlier versionâs stark aesthetic and formal structure, its minimal use of location and its symbolic rather than multi-dimensional or realist characterisation.
In Billyâs Last Stand, Hines can be seen to work outside the generic tropes that would characterise his work with Loach. For example, Darkly and Billy are avowedly unrepresentative figures: Billy is a self-confessed ârag manâ5 who lives in a shed, and Darkly, we are told, used to âget bad heads and have dos ⊠a kind of mental strainâ (32). Both men are thus at the very margins of society and while familiar thematic interests of Hinesâs characterise the narrative, including the emphasis on coal and a wider meditation on labour, and the effects of the market on the dignity of individuals and communities, there can be little doubt that Billyâs Last Standâs allegorical nature and stark focus on just two characters constitute an experimental dimension within Hinesâs oeuvre.
The playâs moral, and by extension socioeconomic, themes are communicated through Billyâs worsening physical condition and increasingly uncertain mental state as his relationship with Darkly develops. He begins the play happy with the simplicity and freedom of his working pattern, but Darkly tells him âitâs getting harder working on and off like tha does, things are changingâ (11). Billy, despite his suspicions of Darklyâs intentions, seems grudgingly to accept his new acquaintanceâs view of the world: âAr, things are closing in as tha says, tha closing in on meâ (11). Billyâs personal sense of wellbeing is thus inextricably linked to the socioeconomic determinism represented by Darkly. As the second act begins, three months have passed and we are told that:
BILLY IS SHOVELLING COAL AS AT THE BEGINNING OF ACT I, ONLY THIS TIME SLOWLY, MAKING HARD WORK OF IT. HE TAKES FREQUENT RESTS, STRAIGHTENENING UP AND RUBBING THE SMALL OF HIS BACK. (29)
Billyâs body thus itself becomes a symbol of his exploitation and subordination to the demands of the market: the more he works, the more money he makes, and the more his body (and soul) decays:
DARKLY: Thi moneyâs building thi security for thi.
BILLY: Anâ itâs building my worries anâ all.
DARKLY: Tha talks tâopposite way round to everybody else.
BILLY: But I act same. I never used to, but I do now.
DARKLY: Nowt wrong wiâ that, is there?
BILLY: There is! There is! It means that Iâm not tâsame bloke anymore.
Iâm nowt but a bloody fool now. What do I do first time I get a bit oâmoney in my pocket? I rush out anâ buy myself a few extras. Luxuries they call âem, but before I know where I am theyâve become necessities anâ Iâm on tâscrounge for summat else.
DARKLY: Itâs all part of modern living, Billy lad.
BILLY: What, being in a turmoil all along? Worrying about growing old, about saving, thi mind sharpened to a razorâs edge through constant contact wiâ cash, cash! Cash! (Bangs his fist into his own palm three times). (23â4)
Billyâs anger is not just because of his self-recognition as a capitalist subject but it also enables Hines to explore, in a broader sense, the very nature of labour. Billy, we learn, used to be a miner (a byword for masculine virtue in many narratives of working-class lives, but for Hines something altogether more ambivalent), and this memory of collective working life enables Billy to philosophise on the distinction between fulfilling, autonomous labour and employment as exploitation:
BILLY: I canât remember my back ever being as bad as this in all my years on this job.
DARKLY: Thatâll be some, wonât it? When did tha start?
BILLY: I donât know, but I can remember sweatinâ cobs ontâ face one day, and thinking, if King donât work why should I?
DARKLY: You daft bugger.
BILLY: Whatâs daft about that?
DARKLY: Weâ whatâs getting coals in if itâs not working?
BILLY: Ar, but I waâ employed before. And thereâs a big difference in work and being employed ⊠I enjoyed getting coals in, whereas before I waâ employed anâ thatâs different, itâs just different.
DARKLY: I donât know what tha on about.
BILLY: I canât explain it right, itâs just tâway I feel. (Pause) Looking back Iâve had some good times getting coals in. (33)
This reminiscence of simpler times, itself contributing to the playâs elegiac tone, leads Billy to describe his treasured collection of coals: âEveryone oâ them lumps brings back a memory. I spend hours looking oâer rememberingâ (34); in contrast, Darkly is incapable of understanding the symbolic, affective meaning of Billyâs emotional investment in coal: âIâve never heard owt as bloody ridiculous in my lifeâ (34), as he puts it. After the murder of Starky, Billy is provoked to kill Darkly by the latterâs threat to destroy the coals and by extension Billyâs attachment to memory and place. As the row escalates, another moment of self-recognition and clarity hits Billy: âInside me, itâs all gone. Thereâs nowt left but a shattered crumbling shell, Iâm no good to man nor beast nowâ (46).
Billyâs âlast standâ (to kill Darkly) is a destructive act which confirms his acceptance of, and his adherence to, an inevitable and ruthless capitalist reality. To reorder Hinesâs statement, Billy has now come to represent âsocietyâ and he is no longer the âoutsiderâ. The playâs allegorical tone, undoubtedly increased by its original conception as a radio play, invites further such readings of the representative rather than multi-dimensional facets of the characters. Thus, we might see Darkly as a reflection of Billyâs own divided self, as a wholly symbolic entity representing his anxiety about the changing world. It is also possible to see Starky as a doubled version of Darkly (the linguistic similarity is clearly intentional) or indeed as the inverse of Billy, as Darkly describes him: âHe belongs to that breed oâ men outside oâ things. (Pause) Summat like thee, only nasty wiâ itâ (42).
The television broadcast of Billyâs Last Stand was met with acclaim equal to that which had greeted Hinesâs stage version. Nancy Banks-Smith identified its allegorical ten...