Adapting Fact into Fiction

The Play: We’re Not Going Back

We’re Not Going Back tackles the resilience of working communities, the make-and-mend fabric of family and the power of sticking two fingers up to a government hell-bent on destruction… with humour, song and a six pack of Babycham.

The Director/Theatre Company: Rod Dixon & Red Ladder

Rod Dixon is Artistic Director of Red Ladder, a radical theatre company with 45 years of history. The company is acknowledged as one of Britain’s leading national touring companies producing new theatre, contributing to social change and global justice.

The Writer: Boff Whalley

Writer, singer, songwriter and founder of the band Chumbawamba, Boff has also written drama for theatre and radio, and composed soundtrack music for films by Ken Loach and Alex Cox.

  

Interview with Boff Whalley

Why did you choose these particular events to dramatise?

Boff Whalley

Because it's the 30th anniversary of the strike; and because Unite the union wanted to fund and promote a play about the miners with Red Ladder. On top of this, the subject still has so much resonance, especially around Leeds/Yorkshire where Red Ladder is based. The wounds opened during the strike aren't healed, and the current government are constantly reminding people of Thatcherism and its legacy. What happened to the miners and the NUM is directly affecting the union movement now.

What were the dangers in using real events as part of your fiction/play/film?

That people who were involved in the strike may think they 'own' the truth. "Oh, it wasn't like that…". I'm always keen to tell people that even when I write about history for theatre the fiction is an important part of it. I don't want to write documentaries, I want to write stories. And storytelling is about elaborating, drawing out crucial parts of a narrative, making it entertaining.

How did you go about researching the reality?

Well, memory was good research since I was around the strike when it happened – definitely one of the advantages of writing history that isn't in the far-distance. I read books and watched footage that related directly to Women Against Pit Closures. Together with Rod we met a group of miners' wives and their supporters, who were gathering for an annual reunion – that was pretty inspiring, and even though I'd written the basic first draft by then it informed how I saw the characters and subsequently what changes I made to the script. I think it also probably had a big effect on how Rod and me saw the general feel of the play – unashamedly funny and upbeat, despite the subject matter. We also saw Jean Gittins from the WAPC speaking – she reiterated that idea, calling the strike "the best year of my life."

Why tell the story via these particular characters/voices?

I like telling stories about events that have huge resonance and meaning, but tell the story from the point of view of just three or four (or less) people, families, friends, how the bigger story affects them personally, affects their relationships, how it changes them as people. The historic events become almost just a backdrop, something happening outside the front door. I love setting plays in living rooms whilst political upheaval is going on outside the house. I think you can tell stories effectively from the living room, without having to portray the cops beating up miners (for instance). That's a problem with a lot of modern theatre for me – there's so much emphasis on drama that we lose the macro view of history, how it resonates personally with people. Too often historical drama becomes just a series of 'incidents' strung together with a fictional narrative. I didn't want that. I'm happier writing three sisters standing talking at a funeral than I am showing the death of a young lad while picking coal from a slag heap.

What you you hope the readers/viewers/audience will take away from the experience?

Firstly, the sense that they were entertained, they enjoyed it. Secondly, questions – arguments, disagreements, talking points, whatever. Thirdly, I want them to go away with a least one of the songs stuck in their heads for a few days! I want people to see our stuff and find things out about history that they didn't already know; especially things they assumed they knew. But that mustn't make the play into a history lecture.


The Book: Ghost Town

Ghost Town is set in Coventry in 1981, when the city of Two Tone and Ska was riven with battles between skinheads and young Asians.

The author: Catriona Troth

After more than twenty years spent writing technical reports at work and fiction on the commuter train, Catriona made the shift into freelance writing. She now writes a regular column for this very literary magazine, researches and writes articles for Quakers in the World and tweets as @L1bCat. Her writing explores themes of identity and childhood memory.

Interview with Catriona Troth

Why did you choose these particular events to fictionalise?

I was living in Coventry at a time when there was a lot of tension between skinheads and Asian youths. But I was a student, very much at the fringes of what was going on. Years later, when I went back the research that time as a possible backdrop for a story, I discovered things had been much worse than I'd suspected at the time. And yet somehow the city pulled back from the brink and sent the racists packing. I became obsessed with telling the story of what happened that summer - something that is really very little known outside of Coventry.

What were the dangers in using real events as part of your fiction?

I felt a huge responsibility to the people who experienced those events to get it right - to be factually accurate but also emotionally honest. On top of that, I was writing about a community that was not my own. When I finally finished the book, it was very important to me that it was read by by someone who came from that world before I ventured to publish it. That gave me the confidence that I wasn't simply being crass. I am still conscious of the risk that someone who actually lived through the events could say, 'You got that wrong.'

How did you go about researching the reality? 

Catriona Troth

 Even today, there is very little on the web about what happened in Coventry that summer. I spent time in the Coventry City Library going through newspaper archives from the period, and I read the small section at the back of the Scarman report that refers to Coventry. Apart from that, I read a lot of books - factual and fiction - that involved to comparable events. And now, Social Media has given me the opportunity to talk to a few people who were there at the time - something I couldn't easily do when I started out.

Why tell the story via these particular characters/voices?

I chose as my main point of view characters two people who were, in their different ways, outsiders to the conflict, but caught up in it. This was partly because of the perspective it gave me on what was happening. But it was also because, as an outsider myself, it was easier to get inside that perspective. I didn't feel confident that - as a white middle class woman - I could authentically inhabit the point of view of a working class skinhead or a British Asian kid from East Africa. But having moved back and forth between two continents most of my childhood, and having grown up monolingual in a bilingual household, I did have the glimmering of an idea what it was like to be caught between two cultures.

What you you hope the readers/viewers/audience will take away from the experience?

I hope they learn how easy it is for those with malign intent to manipulate vulnerable people into scapegoating others - and that it's always worth making a stand against the politics of hate. And I hope they'd think it was a damn good story too.


The Book: Feral Youth

A hard-hitting look at the real causes of the summer riots, written from the perspective of a 15-year old girl in south London. As a south Londoner by birth and now a resident of Ealing, one of the affected areas, Courtney wrote Feral Youth because she believes that the real causes of the uprising have not gone away and another riot may well be imminent.

The Author: Polly Courtney
In late 2011, Polly famously walked out on her publisher, HarperCollins, for the ‘girly’ titles and covers assigned to her books – most notably, It’s a Man’s World, the hard-hitting take on the lads’ mag industry and its impact on society. Footballer, violinist, commentator and passionate champion of the underdog, Polly is keen advocate of self-publishing and doing things her own way.

Interview with Polly Courtney 

Why did you choose these events to write about?

The London Riots had a profound effect on me. I remember lying in bed, scrolling through Twitter and smelling the burning rubber of police cars on fire. I thought: Wow, this is big. Something is seriously wrong here. It was around this time that I started mentoring a child with Kids Company, so I was seeing depravation first-hand. I was glued to the news in the following days and weeks, waiting for explanations, but they never came. Politicians were quick to write off the events as 'pure criminality caused by a feral underclass' and the mainstream media focused on the long prison sentences, as though jailing young people would solve the problems. No, I thought. It's more complicated. When I started to dig into it, I realised that the events of August 2011 were just the tip of a very large, ugly iceberg and I wanted to expose the whole thing with Feral Youth - but also to show that change is possible.

What were the dangers in using real events as part of your fiction?

On the plus side, it's a 'hook' to hang the book off; if somebody asks me what Feral Youth is about, I say: It's the story of the London Riots through the eyes of a 15-year-old girl. But while that appeals to some people, it also puts others off. The riots were very divisive, just like the benefits cuts we're seeing now. A lot of people would like to pretend they weren't a big deal - they want to forget all about what happened. So I guess in a way, I'm reducing my potential readership for the book by setting it in such a contentious part of history. But I'm fine with that. I know that Feral Youth will only appeal to the open-minded. Not everybody can put themselves in the shoes of a deprived, angry, vulnerable teenager for 100,000 words!

How did you go about researching the reality?

Polly Courtney

I made life difficult for myself by opting to write the whole novel in the dialect and inner monologue of Alesha, street slang and all. So not only did I have to understand the events of what happened, I also had to get inside the head of a disenfranchised 15-year-old and work out her attitude, her voice and her issues. I did this by running mini-brainstorms and workshops with young people in schools, youth clubs and charities. I also talked to youth workers, teachers, social workers and youth club volunteers to get a sense of how it was to work closely with disenfranchised teenagers. I supplemented this first-hand research with a lot of reading - reports on the riots, statistics and views on youth issues and so on - but for me, the most valuable part was talking directly with young people. They had strong views on everything from the cost of Nike creps to austerity cuts. Oh - and I did a lot of riding buses. You can learn a lot by eavesdropping.

Why tell the story via these particular characters/voices?

I wanted to put the reader right in the shoes of Alesha, so that they saw things through her eyes, felt her frustrations and lived her life for a summer. She's from a deprived background and lives her life in such a different way to me and probably to most of my readers, but that was the point. Too many people write off the Aleshas of this world, as though they're beyond hope, they don't matter and their problems aren't our problems. But they're not beyond hope. They matter, and the problems are very much ours. Feral Youth is not always an easy read, but I wanted to make people think. We can't always judge using our own frameworks and experiences. We have to try and see things from another point of view.

What do you hope the readers will take away from the experience?

A sense of hope and a better understanding of a part of society that's too often ignored, stigmatised and punished. There are deep-rooted problems, but there are also solutions. Over the course of one summer, Alesha's life changes track many times. I hope that people will come away thinking that change is possible, if we open our minds and empathise. I'd love to think that reading Feral Youth inspired someone to mentor a child.



The Book: Until Our Blood Is Dry In March 1984, when miners across the country begin the long strike, trouble is brewing in Ystrad. It is time to defend jobs, the pits and a way of life that has formed both the life of valley and the nation.
What matters most: to be right, to be loved or to belong?

 The Author: Kit Habianic

Kit grew up in Caerphilly, Colwyn Bay and Cardiff. Her journalism has appeared, amongst others, in The Guardian, The Daily Mirror, The Times, Marie Claire (US), and Time Out and in trade titles in Europe and the Middle East. Now based in London, she processes copy for a business daily, all the while plotting new stories to write.

Interview with Kit Habianic

Why did you choose these particular events to fictionalise?

The miners’ strike was the defining event of my youth; the dispute tore the country apart, set neighbours against neighbours, even fathers against sons. I grew up in villages on the South Wales coalfield and the events of that year remain vivid and real.

It doesn’t feel as though I chose to write a novel about the miners’ strike – more that the events of that year demanded to be sifted and considered again.

High-stakes conflict is fascinating material to mine. The strike raised complex issues about loyalty versus self-preservation, principles versus politics, right versus wrong. The men and women who did or didn’t get involved felt their survival was at stake, made choices from hope or from despair. Plot and characters sprang out of that conflict.

What were the dangers in using real events as part of your fiction?

The dispute happened within living memory and has left a bitter legacy. The miners lost and paid a heavy price as the government shut pit after pit. At the beginning of the strike, the mining industry employed around quarter of a million people. All those people, whether they supported the strike or opposed it, lost their jobs in the UK’s pits.

So many people lost so much and a ravine of bitterness divides those who supported the strike and those who opposed it. As a writer, you ask yourself, do I have the right to dig into this, to risk reopening old wounds. A novel is a version of the truth as its characters see it but with recent, real-life events there are always many other deeply held truths.

How did you go about researching the reality?

I visited Big Pit, once a working mine now a museum, to get a sense of what it must have been like to work below ground and met former colliers who talked about their experiences. Swansea University holds the South Wales miners’ library at Hendrefoelan. It was fascinating to listen to crackly taped interviews recorded during and just after the strike and to read through all the poems and stories and pamphlets.

I also spent a lot of time at the British Library and in Colindale at the newspaper library, which sadly closed last year. The British Library has a vast stash of non-fiction books about the strike, as well as pamphlets and magazines. And reading microfiche of old newspapers was fascinating. I’d forgotten the extent to which much of the media demonised striking miners at the time.

Why tell the story via these particular characters/voices?

Because the strike is so divisive, I decided early on to explore it through three opposing viewpoints.

Gwyn, the overman, has been promoted to a lowly management role and promised better if he toes the Coal Board line. He has every reason to oppose the strike and to resent the NUM activists who stand in his way. He believes it’s his duty to better himself, to look after his own and to encourage his daughter to do the same.

Scrapper, the young collier, has spent his life in a tiny mining village that offers no job prospects beyond the pit. He comes from a long line of union activists but also believes passionately that the only way to save Blackthorn pit is to come out on strike.

As the strike progresses Helen, Gwyn’s daughter and Scrapper’s lover, finds herself torn between the two sides and trapped by what her family, her school friends and her neighbours expect of her.

The political becomes ever more personal to all three characters. The choices they make will cost them everything.

What you hope the readers will take away from the experience?

Kit Habianic

Reading has always been an escape and an adventure. How else do we get to step into someone else’s skin, and feel what someone else would feel and wonder what decision we’d make, in their shoes? That’s what makes writing so compelling, too.

I hope the book transports the reader to the coalfields of the Eighties and leads them to question what decisions and choices they’d make in the same circumstances as Gwyn, or Scrapper, or Helen.

But maybe the novel has something to say about the way we live now, too. There’s very little UK fiction set in working-class communities today. At a time when the rich seem richer yet the poor so much poorer, there are many stories that deserve to be told but never seem to get heard.


By JJ Marsh – author, reader, Triskelite, journalist, Nuancer, reviewer and blogger. Likes: pugs, Werner Herzog and anchovies. Dislikes: meat, chocolate and first drafts.

Indie vs Trade Publishing: A Clash of the Titans?

By Catriona Troth

“This has all got brilliantly competitive...” Polly Courtney tweeted the night before her scheduled debate with Richard Charkin, CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing.

Billed as “What’s The Future for Publishers in the Digital Age?”, November’s Byte the Book event was a head to head discussion between best-selling self-published author, Courtney and Charkin, recently appointed Vice President of the International Publishers Association.

Byte the Book is a membership organisation that aims to bring together publishers, authors, agents and others in the publishing industry to educate them on the latest developments in technology and to help authors to get published – whether independently or through the trade. To that end, they run monthly events in the luxurious surroundings of The Club at the Ivy in London’s West End.

This month, they challenged Charkin and Courtney to answer the question: 

“Do authors need publishers or are they better off to go it alone? What do we think will happen to publishing houses in the future as the self-publishing movement gathers momentum?”

Plenty of potential for sparks to fly, you might think – though Courtney somewhat deflated the combative atmosphere by admitting the two had met before – over a bad college dinner – and had found more than a little to agree on.

Charkin began by talking about his early experience of publishing, with Harrap and Co in the 1970s. His description reminded me of the world PD James describes in her book Original Sin, which captures a publishing house on the cusp of the change from the old world to the new commercial realities.

Courtney’s experience is much more recent.  She self-published her first book, Golden Handcuffs, with Matador in 2006.  Her success as a self-publisher led to her being picked up by Harper Collins but her experience there was not a happy one.  Shoe-horned into a ‘chick-lit’ box she felt she did not fit, Courtney famously ditched her publisher shortly after the launch of It’s a Man’s World, and her latest and boldest book, Feral Youth has again been self-published through Matador.

It’s true that they did find much to common ground.  Courtney admitted that self-publishing was ‘too easy to do badly.’ And Charkin agreed that the best promotional tool for fiction was word of mouth.

However, Charkin strongly refuted Courtney’s accusation that the industry was becoming too risk averse.  “If you sat through an editors’ meeting, you would never say that these people don’t take risks.”

And when Courtney posed the question of how readers can filter the vast number of titles published each year to find the titles they really want to read, Charkin replied, “We have filters and they are very highly paid – they are called editors.” (Which rather begs the question of what happens if a reader finds their taste doesn’t match that of the majority of editors.)

So had the debate been combative enough?  Afterwards, Courtney regretted not tackling Charkin on what publishers can actually offer authors. “One of the major things aspiring authors want from a trade publishing deal is marketing support – and that is one thing they almost certainly won’t get.”

The next Byte the Book event will be on Thursday 9^th January at The Club at The Ivy, 18:30-19:30, theme tba. Events are free to Byte the Book members and cost £15/£20 for non-members.  Sign up here to be kept up to date with the latest events. 

Catriona Troth is the author of the novella, Gift of the Raven and the novel Ghost Town. She is a former researcher turned freelance writer and a proud member of the Triskele Books author collective. Find her on Twitter as @L1bCat and on her blog/webpage at CatrionaTroth.com, or on Facebook at Books by Catriona Troth.

Summers of Riot

by Catriona Troth

Riots, thankfully, are as rare on the streets of Britain as a long hot summer. But just occasionally, the two go hand in hand. The combination heat and frustration brews trouble. Warmth brings people onto the streets, where anger and discontent can be shared. Riots rarely start in cold weather.

In the summer of 1981, a wave of riots fanned out across Britain’s cities. The flashpoint was Brixton, in South London, where a young Alex Wheatle was living. Twenty years after Wheatle was jailed for his part in those riots, he wrote East of Acre Lane, the story of Biscuit, Brixtonian youth, unemployed and out of options, making a little money selling ganja and dodging police and gangstas alike.


Thirty years later, in August 2011, a new wave of riots hit Britain. Motivated by her own anger at the ill-informed responses she heard, ex-investment banker turned writer, Polly Courtney, wrote Feral Youth: the story of Alesha, a fifteen year old from Peckham who, in the course of a few short weeks, loses the roof over her head, the friend she owes everything to, the youth centre that provides an occasional refuge, and the ‘rep’ that provides her with some flimsy protection on the streets.

Both books take you under the skin of a youngster living in desperate circumstances. Both open your eyes to the pressures and frustrations that can lead to an explosion of violence and destruction.

Two very different authors, writing about events thirty years apart. The parallels are striking. The differences are shocking.

East of Acre Lane is written partly in the Jamaican patois that was current on the streets of Brixton in 1981. The language of Reggae. The language of performance poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson. Feral Youth is written in a vivid South London street slang that is recognisably its descendant.

Both Biscuit and Alesha are young, black and disaffected. Both are making money from petty thieving and selling drugs, which brings them into conflict not only with the police but with those higher up the drug-dealing food chain. But Biscuit at least has a home and a family – a mother and a sister and a place to live. And Biscuit is eighteen. Thirty years on, and Alesha is only fifteen. Her poverty, and the extent to which she is living under the radar, make Biscuit’s life look sheltered by comparison.

Despite what you might think from reading the tabloids, for most of us living in Britain today, the chances of being the victim of violent crime are lower today than they were thirty years ago. But for kids like Biscuit and Alesha, in a few forgotten pockets of our cities, the level of violence they live with has escalated terrifyingly.

When Biscuit falls out with the drugs baron, Nunchaks, in the opening scene of East of Acre Lane, he is taken to the top of a high rise apartment building, threatened with a beating and left to imagine the possibility of being thrown from the roof.

The red-lit circle indicated that the lift had reached the 25^th floor.  The two flunkies shunted Biscuit through a wire-meshed door that led the way to the balcony. Biscuit ran the scene through his mind in trepidation. This was the end; he could see his eighteen-year-old body crumpled on the concrete forecourt below, as lifeless as a black bag of rubbish.  He felt an asthma attack gathering force in his chest and his fear rendered him speechless.  Nunchaks was still fiddling with his lighter.

‘Wha’ yard number did you raid the uder day?’ Nunchaks demanded.

Feral Youth opens with one gang member being knifed and left to bleed to death.

Reggie Bell is dead. He was seventeen.  JJ says we saw him got shanked last night, but really and truly, I didn’t see nothing. It was all just a blur of hoods – a mad whoosh in the darkness.

I heard it though.  Reckon half of South London heard Reggie Bell die.  It was the kind of noise a cat would make if it was stretched and stretched ’til it snapped. Then nothing.  JJ says that’s when he died. He says the blood was leaking out of his body from the slit in his neck and when there was two pints of it all over the road, that’s when he died

Gang rivalry leaves Biscuit ‘trodding carefully,’ but for Alesha, those rivalries have sucked in whole neighbourhoods, affecting who she can talk to, which side of the street she can walk on. Carrying a knife and affiliating to a gang are just part of what she has to do to keep herself safe.

Nunchaks’ weapon of choice, as his name suggests, is the two-sticks-on-a-chain favoured by kung fu fighter, Bruce Lee. But he relies mostly on the threat of violence to maintain his power. Tremaine, the leader of the gang Alesha affiliates to, carries a gun and exercises that threat on a daily basis.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the sexual exploitation of women by gang members. In East of Acre Lane, Biscuit’s sister, Denise, is lured into prostitution through dates with the glamorous-seeming Nunchaks, mirroring the fate of the ‘skets’ Alesha despises.

They get all dolled up, hair and nails and underwear, then they drop their knickers for the first man that comes along. Most of them do it for the p’s. Some of think they’re going to hook a gangsta and get all the latest threads and ice and champagne on tap. Some of them do it to get knocked up.

But as Alesha learns, sexual violence can also be used as a form of punishment and control.

Into this world desperation and extremes comes the spark that detonates an explosion. In Brixton in 1981, it was the rumour that the police had stabbed a black youth they had tried to arrest. In Tottenham in 2011, it was the police shooting of Mark Duggan. In Courtney’s fictionalised version, it’s the courts’ ignoring audio evidence that the police beat up a black kid.

As the word of the injustice spreads, anger spills over. People gather on the streets. In Biscuit’s world, it’s word of mouth. In Alesha’s world, Blackberry Messenger speeds the flow of information. But the result is the same. What was a targeted response becomes an eruption of scattergun violence. Police lose control.

A roar goes up in the crowd and we bust our way up the street, pushing the fedz further and further back.  They’re running scared now.  There’s a steady stream of ammo:  wheelie bins,hubcaps, doorframes, bits of twisted metal from burning shops.  It’s all lying there in the street as we roll through, so we use it again and again as we go.  I pick up all sorts and hurl it, not even bothering to see where it lands.  Chuck, chuck, chuck.  I’m so hyped up now I don’t care what happens.  I don’t care if I kill someone.

When the 2011 riots happened, a common response was, “These yobs don’t have the reasons to riot they had back in 1981.” Reading these two books, comparing Biscuit’s life to Alesha’s, I see a frightening poverty of understanding in that comment. If Biscuit’s story lays bare the reasons for Brixtonian anger in 1981, Alesha’s story takes a hefty slice of those reasons and multiplies them by a factor of ten.

Alesha’s life has more in common Fagin’s boys in Oliver Twist, or Jo the crossing sweeper in Bleak House, than anything I can relate to in modern life. But Alesha is not a phantom from Victorian London. Polly Courtney worked with Kids’ Company when she was writing Feral Youth, and Kids’ Company works with kids like this every day. So how the hell did we allow that to happen, when sixty years ago we built the safety nets that were supposed to prevent it ever happening again?

Books like East of Acre Lane and Feral Youth can show us better than any study full of facts and figures how riots start and what drives young people to those levels of desperation. If as many people read them as once read Dickens, we might again start to change the way we think about lives in our inner cities.

If you’re interested in a non-fiction, but still personal, account of riots, then I’d recommend Tales from Two Cities, by Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy. In September 1985, Murphy was living in Birmingham, in a bedsit across the road from the Villa Cross pub, when the Handsworth riots kicked off. The book contains a first-hand account of the days before, during and after, and serves to underline what a predictable pattern such events take.

 Catriona Troth’s forthcoming novel, Ghost Town, is set in 1981; the Brixton riots and the events leading up to it, form part of its background.

You can read Catriona's extended review of Feral Youth on her blog: http://catrionatroth.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/going-feral.html