This year Shelagh Delaney is definitely back in vogue. There's been a recent production of A Taste of Honey at the National Theatre and there's another one planned for The Lowry in June.
Meanwhile, November 25th has been designated as the city's official Shelagh Delaney Day, announced and backed by Salford's Mayor last month…which, as the Salford Star pointed out, was all a bit strange because Salford's most iconic playwright despised Salford Council and its Mayor from when, back in the day, they tried to destroy her for `tarnishing' the city's image.
This was all brought back into focus by John Harding's excellent biography of Shelagh Delaney's early creative years – Sweetly Sings Delaney: A Study of Shelagh Delaney's Work 1958-68 (Greenwich Exchange).
The book recalls the horror expressed by Salford Council, the Mayor and Salford City Reporter when A Taste of Honey hit the headlines in the late Fifties and early Sixties - and the Salford Star called for the current Mayor, Ian Stewart, to make a full public apology on behalf of the Council before he tries to culturally cash in on the new found Delaney sparkle (see previous Salford Star article – click here).
Ironically, John Harding is launching Sweetly Sings Delaney in Salford this Wednesday afternoon as part of the Mayor's `bread and circuses' Spirit of Salford festival – still with no apology in sight from the Mayor or the Council.
Harding's book, however, is a lot more than an attempt to document the war between Salford Council, the city's media and Shelagh Delaney. The first chapter lays out the sheer ill health and poverty that blanketed Salford at the time the newly born Delaney was brought home to Pendleton from Hope Hospital in 1938 – when the Dirty Old Town was Lowryesque, the Second World War was breaking, and pollution and rats were the norm.
At age 11, Sheila (as she was spelt then) was sent to a children's convalescent home in Lytham St Anne's, "a common experience for children from deprived areas whose physical state had been blighted by poor diet and unhealthy housing", writes Harding. There, in her first piece of writing – published later as Sweetly Sings The Donkey – Delaney recalls how she went on strike against the nuns who were forcing her to read the Bible. And it's that bright, radical streak which permeates the writer's life.
Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey was sent, not to local theatres but to the left wing Theatre Workshop in London, founded by Salford legend Ewan MacColl and Joan Littlewood. The Theatre Workshop subsequently produced the writer's first play, after the country's censors had relaxed their views on how homosexuality was depicted on stage.
Harding's biography goes into great detail about the background to the production and the critical reaction, which ranged from "shines with the beauty of truth" (Plays and Players) to "I found it fairly dull" (Noel Coward) to "a sordid tale" (Salford City Reporter). The biography also documents how the media went big on the rags to riches real life Delaney tale. Her response? "It's all been wonderful - in a nauseating sort of way…"
`Nauseating' is the only word to describe how Hollywood handled A Taste of Honey, Harding revealing that studios would only touch a screen version of the film if it had a happy ending. In the event, the profits from Saturday Night Sunday Morning actually financed the classic British film.
Meanwhile, we learn how, had she been alive today, Shelagh Delaney would probably have been on the front line of the anti-fracking Barton Moss protests. She was arrested on a CND march alongside Vanessa Redgrave the day after the film premiere of A Taste of Honey, and the secret service had files on her activities. Harding writes: "Shelagh remained a keen supporter of all things radical, a stance that would not endear her to the establishment in her home city…"
He adds that this was nowhere more apparent than in the Council's reaction to her trying to set up a community theatre in Salford at the Salford Hippodrome, also known as the Windsor Theatre…
While planning and discussions were taking place about the building, Harding writes that "with no prior warning, the council bought the Windsor for £10,000 – not with a view to restoring it but in order to knock it down…[even though] the theatre didn't feature in any of the current development schemes…the latent animosity towards the `Delaney plan' was clear…"
Councillor Jack Goldberg, who had backed Delaney, wrote "I have been surprised in the last few months to find out how much prejudice there is amongst members of the council against Sheila (sic) on the grounds that her plays have brought Salford into disrepute."
Meanwhile, Alderman Hamburger, said in a speech that the "persistent denigration of Salford by all sorts of people for all sorts of motives" made him "want to vomit…playwrights drawing royalties from plays on subjects which seek to rub our noses in the muck…"
And then there were the bus tours round Salford put on by the Council to show the city in a better light, and Delaney's retort, The White Bus film, exposing what Harding calls the "philistism", "pomposity" and "hypocrisy" of local Salford dignitaries (see previous Salford Star feature – click here).
As well as some top insights into Shelagh Delaney and those in the radical cultural movement in London at the time (including Sean Connery), Harding's biography is also an essential insight into how Salford Council runs its business – 1950s? 1960s? Present day? The more things change the more they stay the same…
Sweetly Sings Delaney, while only covering the first decade of Shelagh's writing, is absolutely vital reading for anyone with an interest in Salford's cultural, radical and social history.
That the book is being launched at the Working Class Movement Library is very apt. That it's part of the Mayor's `Spirit of Salford' festival is just plain ironic. A point that wouldn't be lost on Shelagh Delaney herself…
John Harding on Shelagh Delaney
Working Class Movement Library
51 The Crescent M54WX
Wednesday 28th May 2pm free
For further details see www.wcml.org.uk and the event Facebook page - click here
Sweetly Sings Delaney: A Study of Shelagh Delaney's Work 1958-68 (Greenwich Exchange).
See also the Shelagh Delaney Day page on Facebook created the Day's instigator Louise Woodward-Styles – click here
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