Issue 9 – Tuesday 8 August
Radio Global Swings into action!
Members of the Conflict & Peace team and other volunteers have been busy writing and rehearsing a play on workers' uprisings in rural Kent during the 19th Century, to be played on Radio Global today. Lawrence Miller caught up with Kit Jones, one of the actors involved in the play, shortly after he finished recording.
Q: So what is the basic premise of the play?
A: Well, it's set in rural Kent in the 19th Century when rich landowners bought up the common land and left people to have their time and labour drained by the farms.
This was also around the time as threshing machines were adopted, these were stiff competition for the workers causing widescale unemployment.
This marked the start of capitalism in the UK, when people stopped thinking about people and instead about profits.
The workers rebelled against the landowners by taking apart their threshing machines and petitioning for better wages.
Q: So where did the name come from?
A: Captain Swing was a fictional, and legendary, character which the workers used to sign threatening letters to the land owners, similar to the Luddites Ned Ludd
Q: But the story is not fictional?
A: No, what happens in the play is based on actual historical events.
Ed wrote the play, adapting it from books which he had read about the subject.
Q: Why do you think that the play is still relevant today?
A: In a way it seems like "Captain Swing" is a model for the international politics of today on a small scale: the exploitation of people via capitalism.
Q: When can we hear the play?
A: It will be on Radio Global at around 9am tomorrow and as usual will be repeated every 4 hours. In total it is around 30 minutes.