In possibly the most well-meaning blunder in British military history, the authorities had reasoned that lads who had been brought up together, worked and played together, would fight and look after each other like true pals. What the authorities had not foreseen was the mechanised slaughter by enemy artillery and the almost suicidal charges against machine guns and barbed wire.
Tideswell Community Players made a sterling job of presenting Peter Whelan’s very sobering play, The Accrington Pals, in the atmospheric “Cathedral of the Peak” at the end of May. The acting, sound effects and lighting sequences were excellent, but the logistics must have been very daunting.
The play began with the euphoria of three young men, representing the 700 from that district who had joined up with their mates. They were so elated because they had a regular task in front of them – not like the usual part-time working in the mills. Older men were said to plaster a mixture of soot and butter into their hair to kid the foreman into not sacking them. The lads were also elated because they were getting regular good food (back home on leave they always looked bigger and heavier). They were getting seven shillings a week and “everything provided” and had got away from the “lice and ring-worm” of their home surroundings. The play had them drunkenly singing bawdy songs and berating their wives for their apprehension.
However, as we all know, and those who watched the captivating B.B.C. series “37 Days” know only too well, the Great Powers of Europe had been engaged in nationalistic tub-thumping and jingoism for years. This, coupled with utterly stupid alliances and the never-ending agitation by the Kaiser over his lack of colonies (“We want our place in the sun”), resulted in ever more Dreadnought battleships being built by both sides, but for what?
In July 1916, after many months of practice manoeuvres and foreign postings, the 700 pals went over the top from the trenches on the Somme. In the first few minutes of the “Big Push,” 585 of them were mown down and of them, 235 were killed. This was a massive loss for any town or community to take – over 30 Pals Brigades had been formed from other towns and some of them suffered nearly as badly, a huge well-meaning blunder that has never been tried again since.
In the play, the ladies back home are reading the Accrington Observer which, due to official censorship is printing glowing accounts of Allied gains on the Somme, but slowly and steadily, reliable sources told the townspeople of the massacre. Some of the women-folk then organised a demonstration to the Town Hall until the Mayor had to come clean about the tragedy.
The epilogue portrayed the ladies laying a wreath of poppies in front of a memorial made up of three soldiers, heads bowed and with reversed rifles. We had eventually and finally come to realise the effect of mechanised warfare on the frail human body.
Very well done Tideswell Community Players!
Brian Woodall