Andy Fenwick, Worcester Labour Party, reviews JB Priestley’s most famous play
An Inspector Calls is a set play used by GCSE courses in English Literature, at least in schools in England. Few students, however, will be given insights into the elements of class politics than run through it.
The playwright, JB Priestley, was a socialist and was already well enough known during the Second World War to be allowed to broadcast on the BBC and the political ideas he expressed – hopes of a new Britain after the War – are considered to have been a factor in Labour’s landslide victory in 1945.
An Inspector calls was actually written in the 1940s, but it is set in 1912 at a time of increased labour movement activity, and this is a key element in the play. Although the structure of the play mirrors the style of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, with all the suspects gathered together in one large house, this is more than a run-of-the-mill ‘Who Done it’.
Public servant submissiveness
As the play’s story unfolds, we are shown a variance on the traditional deferential submissiveness of the inspector as a public servant, as he challenges the representatives of a privileged ruling class, in essence questioning them, not so much on the crime, as on their right to lord it over the rest of us.
The family being questioned were in the process of celebrating an engagement which is treated by the head of the household as more of ‘merger’ of two successful companies than a love-match, like a medieval political marriage arrangement. But the celebration is disrupted by the arrival of a police inspector, making enquiries into the suicide of young woman, Eva Smith, and he is not at all intimidated by the family’s connections with the chief constable, nor with the wealth at their disposal.
What Priestley records in this play are the attitudes of the ruling class to those who work and strive to make ends meet. As one of the characters says, “We employers at last are coming together to see that our interests – and the interests of capital – are properly protected” from labour troubles. Eva Smith had organised her fellow millworkers and led a strike for better conditions and increase in pay and after the strike the boss had his revenge and dismissed her.
The power to act on impulse
Others in line for Priestley’s contempt were the offspring of the rich who could also destroy the lives of others on a whim. The power of the boss’s daughter to act on any impulse and extinguish the hopes of someone else, without any regards to the consequences, were laid bare. It had been in a spiteful rage that she had demanded Eva’s dismissal from her post in the dress shop, not for organising the workers, but for being prettier and looking better in a dress.
The morality of the ruling class is challenged in this play by Priestley, who examines the power of wealth over poverty. Following her dismissal, Eva had been forced to resort to the only option left, prostitution and it was then that she was noticed by the fiance of the boss’s daughter, becoming his mistress for a while before he tires of her and she falls back into poverty.
It is the ambiguity to morals that Priestley hints at: any rich man can ‘sow his wild oats’ with a woman of the streets, but to take her a mistress was beyond the pale it was with ‘outrage’ that the daughter of the household was to hear such things
Local women’s charity organisation
Priestley also confronts the instruments with which the ruling class have surrounded themselves to keep the poor in check. He aims at their ‘charity’ and the idea of the ‘deserving poor’ as the boss’s wife is chair of a local Women’s Charity Organization. That doesn’t stop her wielding her prejudices at the unfortunate Eva who presents herself to the committee as an unmarried pregnant woman. She is ‘not deserving’ of their help and is sent away with the demand that she marries the father of her child.
This lady bountiful view of the poor as the lowest of the low is a throwback to the workhouse ideology: the poor are at fault for their own condition. It is this action of denying charity that drives a rift in the family with the daughter realising that the inspector has more to reveal but the mother continued to justify her decision.
Now the inspector turns his attention to the boss’s young son, a spoilt child who would not amount to much and would not be able to take over the business. In one of his drunken evenings, he had come across Eva as just a pretty girl in a bar and had forced himself on her. He saw more of her over a period, until she became pregnant.
Moral outrage at stealing money
The son admitted he did not love her, but he could not see her destitute with a child, so he stole fifty pounds from the firm. On hearing this, the moral outrage of his father was not due to the fact that he had fathered a child, but that he had stolen money. It was at this point also, that the son understands that it was the actions of his mother that killed his child.
On soliciting this last of a long line of confessions, the inspector prepares to leave, but reminds each person of their role in the demise of the young girl. He leaves with a warning for the ruling class.
“But just remember this. One Eva Smith has gone – but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us, with their lives, their hopes and fears, their suffering and chance of happiness, all intertwined with our lives, and what we think and say and do. We don’t live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they well be taught it in fire and bloody and anguish. Good night.”
After the policeman has left, the family hold a post-mortem on the events of the night and the biggest consequence we learn is that the father will not now receive his expected knighthood. But after a while, it is the behaviour of the police inspector which is analysed. “Well, I must say his manner was quite extraordinary; so – so rude – and assertive” and he was denounced as “probably a socialist or some sort of crank”.
Rich and privileged
But was this a fake police inspector, a hoax? After calling the Chief Constable and finding that no such inspector existed and another call to the infirmary proved that no such suicide has occurred, the family slip back into their role as the rich and privileged, laughing and joking about the events of the night. In the final twist, the telephone bell cuts into the night air. “That was the police. A girl has just died – on her way to the Infirmary – after swallowing some disinfectant. And a police inspector is on his way here – to ask some – questions.“
Priestley’s use of the supernatural is a device to allow us to see the ruling class for what there are. This is a story that still has a resonance today and it could be retold with much the same venomous characters as exist in our lives: bosses who blacklist union activists, lady bountifuls who lords it over the poor, sexual predators exempt from prosecution, the Etonian Bullingdon Club vandals who buy their way out of trouble and the rich and famous offspring who can make us suffer just on a whim.
In this tale Priestley has used his skill as a writer to emphasise the nature of capitalism and also this bit of literature is often a part of standard GCSE curricula, its political implications are rarely taught.
The BBC has produced a version of this play, from which the pictures above are taken, and is available on i-Player here.
