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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 177 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 177, July/August 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Rutherford and Son
by Githa Sowerby
This play was written in 1912, midway through the Great Unrest – the longest and one of the most militant periods of working class struggle in British history. Long and bitter disputes swept through the coal mines, the railways and the docks, with striking dock workers in London in running gun battles with scab labour.
Rutherford and Son gives a feel for how this social upheaval affected personal lives. The play is set in John Rutherford’s living room. He is the owner of the local glass factory, the main employer in this corner of the north east, and his presence, and behind him the presence of his factory churning out the profits he pockets, broods over every scene.
Rutherford subordinates everything to the pursuit of profit, including family ties, friendship and any sense of morality – he is the archetypal boss. His family engage in a constant battle against him. One son joins the clergy but this effort to make a principled stand is immediately compromised when his father secures his first job for him. Another tries to get rich quick through his inventions but is defeated by his father’s cut throat methods. His daughter tries to escape through love and ends up heart-broken.
It’s melodramatic stuff but entertaining nonetheless. Writer Githa Sowerby was the daughter of a glass manufacturer in Gateshead and it’s highly likely that the play is influenced by her own unhappy past. It wasn’t until 1912, after she had moved to London, that she felt confident enough to reflect critically on the capitalist principle of enrichment at all costs that had dominated her earlier life. By this time the working class was on the rampage, the Suffragette movement was in full swing and Githa had joined the Fabian Society. The heightened level of class struggle enabled her to generalise from her own experience to produce a play which gives a tangible feel for how the pursuit of profit affects every aspect of life.
But when it was first performed in 1912 the play received almost unanimous critical acclaim, despite the awful picture it paints of the boss class. Why? Because it is a play without hope, a play that encourages you to feel sad, maybe even angry at the way John Rutherford abuses people, but ultimately a play that says nothing can be done, struggle is useless. This must have been pretty reassuring to the middle class audiences of the time.
So, instead of a play of hope and excitement at the possibilities raised by working people trying to change the world, we get one full of fear and despair, a partial view of the world, its possibilities and its people – melodrama, not drama.
Rutherford and Son plays at the National Theatre London until September
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