People in Places
Potbank, By Mervyn Jones. (Seeker and Warburg, 12s. 6d.) The East-Enders. By Ashley Smith. (Seeker and Warburg, 12s. 6d.) WRITING about places, like other kinds of writ- ing, is susceptible to fashion change, and the present trend is for the palimpest, the multi-di- mensional synthesis of an entire ecology. It has little in common with the single-minded, single- stranded explorations of, say, Ruskin in Venice and Florence or Hilaire Belloc on the Old Road or, at a more popular level, Lady Fortescue bringing to the delight of her. English readers only those perfumes of Provence which had a sweet smell. If we were to look for literary progenitors of present-day place-books, these would rather be Mrs. Trollope and Dickens in their journeys through America, but resemb- lances in manner are, I think, rather fortuitous than deliberate. What we are probably seeing, in the new books about places, is—so far as England is concerned—the haute vulgarisation of Bethnal Green sociology and the New Left Review. So much at least is indicated by the range of subjects so far announced for a new series called 'Britain Alive': the first nine books will deal with the Potteries, the East End, the Forest (presumably of Dean, since the author is Dennis Potter), scientists, schools, trade union leaders, housing estates and a seaside resort. It is only in a local and contemporary context of the kind I have indicated that this group could be considered as forming a class.
The first two books are now published, Mervyn Jones's Potbank (a long-existing local name for a pottery works) and Ashley Smith's The East-Enders. And immediately an important question of approach is raised, one that was also relevant to another recent series on places, the Vista Books on countries: are places, when presentation in this total manner is sought, better written about by natives or by strangers? In the Vista series the right answer was unques- tionably the second. Strangers were less likely to be emotionally involved to the point of dis- tortion, better able to make illuminating com- parisons; natives tended to present an unattached and unidentifiable Ding an Sich, and to fall into emotionalism, chauvinism and PR tactics.
This general observation is so far borne out by the new series. Mervyn Jones, the stranger, visited the potteries and worked for a time in a potbank. Ashley Smith, an East-Ender by birth and upbringing, went back to balance his memory with the present. This difference in ap- proach does seem to be part of the reason why Mr. Jones has written an .excellent book and Mr. Smith rather a poor one.
Mr. Jones's account of an industrial town and the people living there, of the work they do and of their attitudes. is so interesting and so illuminating that it makes one avid for more books written in this way about other industrial agglomerations. His task was not easy. It de- manded an exceptionally good choice of method if the reader was not to be bogged down in the technicalities of the pottery trade or to ramble endlessly among significant remarks by putatively prototypical residents. All such diffi- culties Mr. Jones has unobtrusively avoided.
When he first went to the Potteries, it was to citizens furious at a BBC programme which had indicated that the district might be considered ugly and some of its work methods old- fashioned. Though Mr. Jones hopes he will not offend the friends he made and, indeed, writes with affection and respect, nothing he says can modify this picture in directions which Stoke would consider more 'fair.' Inside the city boun- daries there is no 'single building, new or old, of any architectural distinction.' Even the more decent houses • lack 'space, light and beauty.' There is a fine park of which citizens boast, but to which they hardly ever go. And it is hard to believe that the gentle BBC made any such scathing comments on the machinery or the ap- prenticeship system or the designs or the uses of people as Mr. Jones finds himself forced. albeit with tact and moderation, to make.
Yet even more interesting than the usual background are the unusual people, seeming, in odd and perhaps surprising ways, different from others. Sexual morality in the Potteries, Mr. Jones found, was unusually high for these times, in speech as in practice. People seldom swear. They dislike sunlight. Though top wages in the industry are about the- same as the national average. this is not resented. Loyalty to manage- ment is commended, not sneered at. (Lack of information about management is the only im- portant fault of this book.) One difference between potbank workers and others has imme- diate interest :
The management . . had celebrated the in- troduction of the live-day week by abolishing the afternoon tea break of ten minutes. 'A mean trick' was the general verdict, but nobody had any hope that anything could be done about it, the tea break not being an important enough matter to be the subject of negotiations between the union and the employers.
The whole picture is a sad one and Mr. Jones, though he leaves most emotional comments to us, obviously found it so. The foreigners working in the town all loathe it.
This measured, well-written and sympathetic account of a district and the people who work in it is a model of how to present some current sociological approaches to a wider audience. As compared with it—or even taken alone— Ashley Smith's book is ill-arrang€d, not well written and conceived in a spirit of embarrassing romanticism. 'Here the wholeness of a man swells to grand proportions within him. It may be said there is nothing here to love: but there is something to worship.' Thus Mr. Smith in the very paragraph he has used to assure us that no romantic slush will drip from his pen. From -.among the mystical turgidities one can extract points of interest. Mr. Smith believes, as many before him, that East-Enders used to have spon- taneously neighbourly lives to be commended above the self-isolation of the suburbs; and that this may be lost for loneliness in the new tall blocks of flats. A suggestion new to me is that loneliness is enhanced by private bathrooms— 'Going to the baths across the road . . . was a recognised social gesture.'
Some of the reported conversations are in- teresting, some of the memories moving. But Mr. Smith is too deeply involved in his subject, and his literary ability is insufficient for him to be able to transmute this into art. The general readers will still do best to turn to the surveys of the Institute of Community Studies or to some of the writers Mr. Smith refers to, like Dickens, Zangwill, London and, more recently, Millicent Rose.
MAROHANITA LASKI
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