Out of the People

J. B. Priestley

Of all the giants of the 20^th century, and there are many of them, I would like to choose J. B. Priestley as exceptional.

He was a Bradford man, worked in a textile factory like most Bradford people. He served in the First World War, was injured and shell shocked, and lucky to have survived.

After leaving the army Priestley made a decision, that instead of working in the textile trade, he would be a writer. His attitude to this was that it was a job which brought in an income. Every working day he had a writing routine which he stuck to. To him this was a job. He did not only write when he was inspired. But his writing was exceptional, and so popular that his novels, stories, plays and non-fiction brought him a good income.

Such were his good humoured, enjoyable and humane stories, and so popular were they that it has been said, and I agree, that he played a significant part in the culture change in Britain which eventually brought us the National Health Service, the Welfare State and a social consensus which the 1945 Labour Government enacted and which held even through Conservative administrations until the 1980s.

During the Second World War, the Sunday evening broadcasts by Priestley on the BBC were listened to by the great majority of the British public. This was broadcasting that people could identify with.

With Bertrand Russell and others, he founded the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Michael Foot also became a big supporter of the CND.

J. B. Priestley had a love and fascination with the theatre, not surprisingly as he was a playwright. This enthusiasm was focussed particularly on popular entertainment, the music halls, concert parties and all the occasions where people came together to be entertained and to join in with the fun. The Empire Music Halls have now gone, but the City Varieties in Leeds used to host a televised ‘Old time Music Hall’. The culture of this kind of entertainment is the theme of some of his novels, e.g. ‘Lost Empires’ ‘Let the People Sing’ ‘The Good Companions’.

Steve Thompson

J. B. Priestley

Novels

1927 Benighted (filmed as The Old Dark House)

1929 The Good Companions

1930 Angel Pavement

1946 Bright Day

1962 The Shapes of Sleep

1965 Lost Empires

1966 Salt is Leaving

1927 Adam in Moonshine
1929 Farthing Hall (with Hugh Walpole)
1930 The Town Major of Miraucourt
1933 Wonder Hero
1933 Albert Goes Through
1933 I’ll Tell You Everything (with Gerald Bullett)
1936 They Walk in the City
1938 The Doomsday Men
1939 Let the People Sing
1942 Blackout in Gretley
1943 Daylight on Saturday
1945 Three Men in New Suits
1947 Jenny Villiers
1951 Festival at Farbridge
1953 The Other Place
1954 The Magicians
1954 Low Notes on a High Level
1961 Saturn Over the Water
1961 The Thirty First of June
1964 Sir Michael and Sir George
1967 It’s an Old Country
1968 The Image Men : vol.1 Out of Town, vol.2 London End
1971 Snoggle
1975 The Carfitt Crisis
1976 Found Lost Found

Plays

1932 Dangerous Corner

1947 An Inspector Calls

1937 Time and the Conways

1931 The Good Companions (adaption with Edward Knoblock)
1933 The Roundabout
1934 Laburnum Grove
1934 Eden End
1935 Duet in Floodlight
1936 Cornelius
1936 Spring Tide (with George Billam)
1936 Bees on the Boatdeck
1937 Mystery at Greenfingers
1937 I Have Been Here Before
1937 People at Sea
1938 Music at Night (published 1947)
1938 When We Are Married
1939 Johnson Over Jordan
1940 The Long Mirror (published 1947)
1942 Good Night Children
1944 They Came to a City
1944 Desert Highway
1945 How Are They at Home?
1946 Ever Since Paradise
1947 The Rose and Crown
1948 The Linden Tree
1948 The Golden Fleece
1948 The High Toby (for Toy Theatre)
1949 The Olympians (opera, music by Arthur Bliss)
1949 Home is Tomorrow
1950 Summer Day’s Dream
1950 Bright Shadow
1952 Dragon’s Mouth (with Jacquetta Hawkes)
1953 Treasure on Pelican
1953 Try It Again
1953 Private Rooms
1953 Mother’s Day
1954 A Glass of Bitter
1955 Mr Kettle and Mrs Moon
1956 Take the Fool Away
1958 The Glass Cage
1963 The Pavilion of Masks
1964 A Severed Head (with Iris Murdoch)
1974 The White Countess (with Jacquetta Hawkes)

Non Fiction

1934 English Journey

1918 The Chapman of Rhymes (later withdrawn)
1922 Brief Diversions
1922 Papers from Lilliput
1923 I for One
1924 Figures in Modern Literature
1925 The English Comic Characters
1926 George Meredith
1926 Essays of Today and Yesterday
1926 Talking
1927 Open House (essays)
1927 Thomas Love Peacock
1927 The English Novel
1928 Apes and Angels
1929 English Humour
1929 The Balconinny & Other Essays
1932 Self-selected Essays
1936 Charles Dickens
1937 Midnight on the Desert,A Chapter in Autobiography
1939 Rain Upon Godshill, A Further Chapter in Autobiography
1940 Postscripts
1940 Britain Speaks
1941 Out of the People (copy in Principle 5 library)
1942 Britain at War
1943 British Women Go to War
1944 Manpower
1944 Here Are Your Answers
1945 Letter to a Returning Serviceman
1946 Russian Journey
1946 The Secret Dream
1947 Arts Under Socialism
1947 Theatre Outlook
1949 Delight (essays)
1951 The Priestley Companion
1955 Journey Down a Rainbow (with Jacquetta Hawkes)
1956 The Writer in Changing Society
1956 All About Ourselves & Other Essays
1957 The Art of the Dramatist
1957 Thoughts in the Wilderness (essays)
1958 Topside or the Future of England
1959 The Story of Theatre
1960 William Hazlitt
1960 Literature and Western Man
1961 Charles Dickens – A Pictorial Biography
1962 Margin Released
1964 Man and Time
1966 The Moments & Other Pieces
1967 The World of J.B.Priestley
1968 Trumpets Over the Sea
1969 Essays of Five Decades (selected by Susan Cooper)
1969 The Prince of Pleasure
1969 Charles Dickens & His World
1970 Anton Chekhov
1970 The Edwardians
1972 Victoria’s Heyday
1972 Over the Long High Wall (essays)
1973 The English
1974 A Visit to New Zealand
1974 Outcries & Asides (essays)
1975Particular Pleasures
1976 English Humour
1977 Instead of the Trees – A Final Chapter of Autobiography

The Common Wealth Manifesto of 1943

Priestley’s active involvement with Sir Richard Ackland’s radical Common Wealth Party was very short-lived, just two months from late June to late September 1942 according to his biographer Vincent Brome. Priestley had already been a leading light and Chairman of the 1941 Committee, a ginger group of writers and intellectuals whose preliminary statement called ‘We Must Win’ had called for a declaration of national ‘ideas and objectives after the war’. That for Priestley these ideas and objectives would involve a radical transformation of society was already clear from his radio Postscripts and his 1941 volume Out of the People would elaborate them much more fully. Ackland’s idea was that the new party would bring together his own Forward March movement and the 1941 Committee.

Acland was already an independent MP, and Common Wealth would have some success during the war, backing independent candidates who would go on to win by-elections. Its programme of libertarian socialism (as opposed to the state-dominated socialisms of the Webbs or the Soviets) must have been attractive to Priestley who had written of himself before the war as a liberal socialist. But it was perhaps not surprising that two such strong personalities as Acland and Priestley could not work in harness for long: both were idealists, but Priestley did not allow himself to float free of human reality, as when he asked whether Acland’s plan for common ownership would involve dictatorship.

However, that the two men remained linked by their common belief that there existed a radical way between the discredited policies of the Depression years and a stifling state apparatus (in short, the positive ideal of libertarian socialism) was shown by Priestley’s writing an introduction to Acland’s 1943 book How It Can Be Done, stressing that planning would be necessary but planning by and for the people rather than by and for bureaucrats. Priestley disliked the word ‘control’ but liked the expression ‘public enterprise’. Given this continued friendly rivalry between Acland and Priestley it may not be inappropriate to cite Common Wealth’s brief 1943 manifesto, some of whose ethical ideals would not perhaps have been out of place in Priestley’s play They Came to a City of that same year 1943 (filmed the following year).

Its emphasis on common ownership ‘of the great productive resources’ tones down Acland’s earlier universalism to which Priestley had objected on libertarian grounds, and roughly equates to the post – 1945 Labour government’s nationalisation programme, though it still smacks of a top – down philosophy which is arguably unPriestleyan. In fairness one may note that it also envisages a ‘democracy in industry’ not obvious in post war Britain which sounds much more Priestleyan.

K. E. Smith

editor of the Journal of the J. B. Priestley Society

Volume 25. Winter 2024/ Spring 2025

The Manifesto

The age that is ending is based on competition between men and nations. It was the age of capitalism and monopoly, nationalism and imperialism. It has greatly increased the productive capacity of the world: built railways, grown cotton; dug coal. It has also built slums; grown hatred; dug graves for two generations of youth. It was not without value in its growth and flowering, but it is now outgrown and decayed. The beliefs and forms of authority that shaped it are today shackles on humanity.

Our proposals, we gladly admit, do not make sense in terms of the ideas of the City or the Foreign Office. They cannot be understood by those who think that if all men and nations pursue their own interests, universal prosperity and good will must result. Our programme is based on completely different ideas. We say that it is no use patching up a way of living that has changed into a way of death. We believe the British people will not turn back towards the old order; they will pioneer towards an new social order.

In this new social order:

Fellowship will replace competition as the driving force in our community.

Co-operation with our fellows, not the pursuit of self-interest, will be the driving force in the lives of men and women.

Life will come before property.

A society built on these principles will be inspired by vital democracy, a democracy which is a living freedom, not dead, formal, or buried in red tape.

Work, responsibility and wealth will have to be shared according to the needs and abilities of all men, women and children. Today this means the common ownership of the great productive resources, with democracy in industry as well as in politics.

There will have to be security and equality for all citizens. There will have to be colonial freedom and an advance toward world unity.

Author: J.B. Priestley