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Estd. 2020
Centenary
Project
2027
Approved by the Shaw Family
1965
Can religion and politics mix? How can they not, if you believe that politics is morality put into practice? Certainly the once notorious "Red Vicar of Thaxted," Conrad Noel, believed this when he hoisted the red flag of the workers in his church in the 1920s. And, as a parson in the established Church of England, sometimes referred to as "the Tory party at prayer," Noel's call to arms was all the more shocking.
Robert Shaw's novel The Flag, based on the Noel affair, made an indelible impression when it was published in 1965.
the flag
Obstensibly a comedy, this sharply observed novel deals with the effects of a religious (social) reformer on a small English town. John Calvin, an eccentric vicar in the best British tradition, brings his family to his new parish. The parish, family, local characters, et al, are described with a kind of non-sequitur, lunatic charm which is perhaps an exclusively English virtue.
However the period is 1925 when Communism and Fascism are both in their innocent infancy; and Calvin, an ex-miner, can in all good faith put up a Red Flag proclaiming a Christian brotherhood of man, and can argue that Christ, too, condemned the capitalists of his days. His serious religious intent is supported by an odd collection of tramps, ""religiouses,"" rich women, an aging General, a pregnant waif and some Boy Scouts.
The comic fable ends on a note of ambiguous, triumphant tragedy.
"The writing is so outstandingly good it rises to the level of poetry."
- The Spectator
"Shaw writes at all times with originality and emotional truthfulness." - The Times Literary Supplement
"Mr. Shaw has earned the right to be trusted."
- Punch
Retrospective written and researched by Haydn Wheeler
The novel “The Flag,” by Robert Shaw, originally planned as the first book in a trilogy titled “The Cure of Souls” (referring to a priest’s care for his parishioners), is loosely based on Noel Conrad, The Red Vicar of Thaxted, a Christian Socialist.
Reverend Conrad in September 1910, became the appointed vicar of Thaxted. In Shaw’s book, a reverend named John Calvin leaves the town of Houghton (Westhoughton, Shaw’s birthplace) and takes up an appointment set in Suffolk, at a church in Eastwood.
We can see the basis for Roberts’ initial idea of the naming of his trilogy in a report from the Essex Chronicle, 23rd September 1910. “On the evening of Wednesday, the Feast of S. Matthew, the Rev. Conrad Le Despenser Noel, the well-known Socialist publicist, was instituted by the Bishop of St Albans, to ‘the cure of souls’ in the parish of Thaxted.”
Frances Evelyn Maynard, Lady Warwick, a British socialite, philanthropist and campaigning socialist, requested that he take up the position of the parish vicar. Lady Warwick becomes the character Lady Cleeves in The Flag, who sees Reverend Calvin speak at a Christian Socialist gatthering in Manchester.
Shaw’s early childhood in Westhoughton, although only over a small amount of years, had a profound effect on him. Be that watching his father play for Bolton Rugby Union, his father’s connections with the Westhoughton Horticultural Society, where a cup named after Dr. Shaw is given to a winning flower. Being aware of his father attending patients at his surgery, at the family home Oaklea Bolton Road, which on one occasion involved 12 injured women from the Mill.
His Lancashire upbringing, his later socialist beliefs stem in part, from the immediate surroundings around him as a boy. Landscape, having a sense of a town’s people’s health, mood and wellbeing, as a boy, these are informative years. ‘The Flag’, sees Shaw not only write about a fictional account of the historical events in Thaxted in the 1920s, but also we see Robert, through unique characters in his book, write of himself.
For context, the times one grows up in and as we progress in age are absorbed. Where is the point of that most impressionable blue print making of oneself? ‘The Flag’, is an interesting case study in that question, and brings the philosopher Aristotle into the equation. Was he right?
"Give the boy of seven, and I’ll show you the man.”
In an insightful interview with Shaw in The Guardian, 14th January 1965, Shaw expands on where he intends to go in the trilogy when speaking to Norman Shrapnel. “He regards himself as “in a sense an old-fashioned novelist”-he means he believes in telling a story and creating “live” characters. “The Flag” is set in the twenties, and its successor will take us through the Spanish Civil War; though left-wing in his sympathies, he promises to express the right-wing point of view. He believes that by taking the story back in time he trains a sharper telescope on the present. “You see the issues as contemporary ones.”
Reverend Conrad made national headlines in the 1920s.
Titled in the newspapers, and also as a chapter in Conrad’s autobiography as ‘The Battle of the Flags’, the placing of the Red Flag, the Sinn Fein flag, and the George Cross in the church’s chancel, brought about tensions in the community and further afield, even reaching Parliament.
On Friday, May 26th, 1922, the Essex Chronicle covered the ‘Empire Day Protest.’ “On Wednesday, “ Empire Day, “all loyal citizens of Thaxted” were invited by posters exhibited in the town to fly the Union Jack (the flag of freedom), “as a protest against the continued display of the Red and Sinn Fein flags in Thaxted Parish Church.”
Again in the Essex Chronicle, at the earlier date of August 12th 1921, in an article written by Reverend Conrad, he explains his reason for the use of flags in the church.
“The red flag stands for revolution, by which I mean a root-and-branch change in the spirit and outlook of the nation, and a consequently new order, both industrial and political, to be achieved with-out bloodshed, if the rich will permit us, as against mere reformist, ameliorations within the system….. The Sinn Fein flag stands incidentally for the oppressed people of Ireland and for a responsibility towards them, our duty to evacuate Ireland, i.e., let them alone.”
On one occasion. One hour after Cambridge students had taken the flags from the church, two replacement flags appeared, but at a greater height.
An article titled in the Hull Mail on Friday, May 20th, ‘Down With The Empire’, Undergrads Remove Vicar Of Thaxted’s Flags,’ we have an account of this well-organised operation. “At 11.30 two motorcyclist scouts arrived in the village, and ten minutes later the main body entered two large cars. The flags were at once taken from the church and despatched by motorcyclists to the Bishop of Chelmsford with a suitable letter.”
Within the national sphere, the ideological battle between the community members, regardless of their political leanings, took place, with flags as a key symbol. In July 1922, we see through a decision by a Consistory Court at Chelmsford a petition granted to six laymen of Thaxted to have the flags removed from the church. On the 8th of July, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Chelmsford formally requested that Noel take down the flags that were causing such controversy.
Why did Robert want to tell the story, however loosely based on the Red Vicar of Thaxted? Where did his belief in the socialist cause stem from?
In an interview with Terry Philpott for the Guardian in August 1972, he addresses his politics. We can see why the events in Thaxted in the 1920s resonated with him.
“I am a political writer. I feel very radically about some things but only in a certain kind of way, not in a square-on political party. I would like to influence people to a hard tough radicalism. That is why I admire Orwell so much, and I admire him even at his worst.”
Shaw is open about his political opinions, but he also recognizes the contradictions in his lifestyle choices. Later in the interview, he comes clean about himself and the reality of having to exist in a capitalist-led economy.
“Here I am living like a capitalist, and yet I believe that if there were a real chance of equality of opportunity, of real socialism, then I would give up all the money. It would all go. Definitely, definitely, definitely. That I really feel.” Is Shaw being genuine? The admitting of the contradictions when related to equality and his current lifestyle suggests so.
The book itself, when published, brought a flurry of praise to the subjects it shone a light on. So much so that the publishers Chatto & Windus took full advantage of the situation, Robert, as the author, had created much interest. The Bookseller magazine reported on the publishers’ intentions. With ads to be placed for Shaw’s novel in the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, and The Observer over a weekend, this was to be followed up by ads in the weeklies, with 12 sound or television interviews with Robert also planned.
ATV assembled a TV production focusing on the book’s subject. A crew went to Thaxted to film a debate set over two days at the Guildhall and in the church about Shaw’s book and the events surrounding ‘The Battle of the Flags’. This recording is to be shown on a Friday evening, January 15th, 1965.
Abroad, the book also did well. When writing for the Sydney Herald, its reviewer caught the book’s revolutionary dynamic, quoting Calvin, Shaw’s written character. Calvin’s beliefs centered on a world and its perception if Jesus were to return. “I say he would have set his face against private enterprise, against the free market, and against the profit motive.”
‘The Flag’ had captured the public mood, the zeitgeist of the middle to late 1960s. The CND Aldermaston marches, the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott that had pressured the government to bring in the Race Relations Act, the continuing push for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Questioning the status quo, if detrimental to a greater good.
Robert’s awareness of historical repetitiveness around societal issues is prevalent. He writes bringing differing eras into one in ‘The Flag’ highlighting what is, is as before. Calvin, writes points, be that for a sermon or for himself that he wants to make sense of.
Capitalism. Marxism, early Christian Communism, are all areas he explores, seeking to come to some understanding and communicate.
Calvin questioning what he is about, how to express could so easily be Robert.
Here the writer and the character merge.
“Calvin examined the empty fireplace, thought of his wife, went to the window. ‘ “There are no solutions,” ‘ he quoted, an illusion arising from the limited nature of human knowledge. In fact there is neither good nor bad. Only, necessary stages”’ ‘No that can’t be right either,’ he said, spitting into the ivy. Who did this writing help? What exactly was he about? Slag heaps, chimneys and railway lines seemed a more normal landscape than the flowers, the grass, the hedges and the trees before him.”
Calvin’s view from the window is Shaw’s memories as a young child, but also as the writer looking from a window in Buckinghamshire, and as in the reverened in Eastwood. The contrast in views shows the young Robert, where a family unit of mother and father and security exists to the more pleasant green landscape, but here he is a man, still as the boy when looking back at an identity.
This looking back, is a theme repeated throughout the book. “I want to have a living church here in Eastwood….’Calvin paused to read what he had written and now he was conscious of the extraordinary differences in the air: ‘It don’t taste like Houghton,’he said. For a moment the perfumed sweetness from all the flowers drifting in through the open window seemed insipid and sickly after the gas and the sulphur, and then a faint tang of the sea was borne in upon the north-east wind and he was a little reasurred.”
The reference to flowers, seeming insipid and sickly, is an interesting description. A title for Shaw’s second book in the trilogy, that he had in mind being ‘The Artificial Flowers.’
Not only are we discovering the Reverend’s need to write but we are witnessing Shaw’s needs to write.
Speaking as the boy, book character or author, societal and personal, we are hearing a multitude of voices here which are really one.
Shaw’s comments earlier, related to bringing a subject into the here and now, are worth repeating. “He believes that by taking the story back in time he trains a sharper telescope on the present. “You see the issues as contemporary ones. This can be applied in the, as read sense and in a sense of one’s ownself, past and present is always with you."
Robert’s socialist beliefs were first nurtured, his finding, wanting to write about the ‘Battle of the Flags’, Reverend Conrad and that trilogy never written developed during his childhood.
1927, the year of Robert’s birth, the son of Westhoughton’s Dr. Thomas Shaw and his wife Doreen, was a time of high unemployment. The Bolton News, October 2nd, 1928, featured a column titled “Poverty-stricken Homes at Westhoughton.” It makes for depressing reading.
At a Westhoughton Council meeting, people became angry at the County Council decision to refuse the Education committee’s request to put into operation the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. Councillor Jones was especially critical, according to reports. Curiously, he produces a newspaper cutting where a Westhoughton doctor (could this be Thomas, as by 1928, Dr. Hatton, the town’s once Doctor had died) is supposed to have said, “there are no undernourished children in Westhoughton.”
Under the subheading ‘Milk is a Luxury,’ Councillor Thomasson rebukes the doctor’s conclusion.”The statements of the local doctor, whoever he was, could be absolutely disproved. Men in Westhoughton were practically begging for work and could not get it. The Board of Guardians had to administer laws which made the out-relief granted insufficient to maintain existence and there were houses in Westhoughton where butter was never seen and milk was a luxury.”
Robert, although most obviously still a young child, lived in a house doubling as a surgery, and attended the local school across the street from the family home.
His family’s dealings, conversations are all part of anyone’s childhood we experience. How we interpret as a child and how we later have the ability to articulate makes for an interesting question. Robert’s early life was at a time of great social disparity between the haves and have nots.
Over his time there, we see the beginnings of the Great Depression, where the textile industry was severely hit. An industry predominant in the area.
Under a government scheme, men without work were being sent elsewhere to find employment. Often having to accept jobs that had poor working conditions. A report from 1930, describes two men from Westhoughton experience on this scheme. Again, Councillor Thomasson raised the alarm. “Two men who were prepared to go anyway and do anything as long as they could get work. On arrival they were each handed a pair of trousers which had been worn by someone else, and were given living accommodation in army huts. The food they received was not fit for dogs.”
Another five men from Westhoughton went to work in a sewer with no protective clothing, no rubber boots, having to work in water and lacking a place to dry their clothes .
1932 saw the mass walkout of cotton workers, who were facing wage cuts and demanded reinstatement of striking workers. Westhoughton loom workers appealed for donations to help them hold out while on strike until a settlement could be reached. Were these striking loom workers on Robert’s doorstep. His recollections of the women mill workers singing as they passed his house, are a memory he recalls in interviews.
‘The Flag’, its theme the characters bring over to the reader as a historical event, is a place of looking back. Shaw’s injection of his memories and the meaning become enveloped in the characters’ thoughts and actions he writes about.
Consultation. Robert, when interviewed by the Evening Post, August 17th 1965 gave a revealing insight into why he started writing. In that interview he uses the word consultation. Writing can be that, but also opens up the contradictions in ourselves, and that consultation can be the simple practice of putting pen to paper. Shaw’s own words are fitting for what he wanted to achieve as a writer.
“There is no such thing as a great actor,” he said, “Certain actors are better than others and at times they give remarkable performances. But there is such a thing as a great novelist. Though I took up writing partly as a consultation, I maintain that one good novel is worth all the good acting performances you could ever give.”
The book would see reprints by the The Reprint Society in 1966 and a published as a paperback by Penguien books in 1968. Also a stage play adapted by Alex Ferguson from The Flag would be see the light in 1994, with Corin Redgrave in the the role as Reverend John Calvin.
The Flag, is it a good novel? Would Shaw see it as that, would that be enough? Are we to read Robert’s novels in a semi autobiographical way, where he is at, at what time as the writer. All of the above, or none? I’ve been asking myself that question since being captivated by his written work. All I know is as the writer he draws you in.