Breaking accumulated silence of working women

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Deb Baxter spoke to Pat Barker, author of a new novel about the lives of working class women in decaying capitalist Britain first conference for Labour women Phone.. for credentiz COMING UP _Women's Fightback AGM. October 23 -County Hall, London. Open to all women, but only members and delegates from affiliated groups can vote. For conference details send s.a.e. to 41 Elling. ton St, N7; to join WF too send £3 (or £5 to include UNION Stre street in an dustrial hea novel, thou of a North It is Winte though it c the 1930's unemploymı crisis and 1 Heath Govel Union Str line uniting disparate sI of the seve novel conc young Kelly age of eleve who dies on the charac merely in et could be any ly decaying inirtland. In this igh, it is part . Eastern city. er 1973 - alould easily be - a Winter of ent, the oil the fall of the mment. 'eet is the life: the otherwise nap-shot views en women the :erns. From ', raped at the en, to old Alice 1 a park bench, ters are not dividuals (alName though they are that to but represent the chron ogy of the life of one woma - of all women even.

This is a novel whir raises many question What, for example, is i author saying? Is it se sationalised? Is it a soci or political commen Is it a feminist nove With these questions mind, I spoke to P Barker.

Born and brought up the North East, the auth claims that the book based on personal expel ence but that it 'isn autobiographical' . It tor a three-year stint in Lo:

at Please fill in: ch IS. its ial 'at in or ri'ter ok Stoicism for the don, where she the London : Economics, hot Pat to realise ho the Northern wa and just to what working-class, working-class wr been neglected misrepresented ture.

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Send, with £2.50 Registratioi tee (£1.50 ul waged) and to: sake of stoicism? studied at School of wever, for w different ly of life is extent the especially smen, have and even by literaIn creating 'Union Street', Pat set off with what she terms 'the accumulated silence of working-class women'. She sees herself as essentially 'a listener' , transferring what she perceived into the novel.

It may be this facet of Pat Barker's style which explains one criticism that the book has had levelled at it: that the characters are shallow and their speech oversimplified. The women in 'Union Street', and indeed the men too, have their own modes of speech and, as the author says, essentially their own art. By portraying them as she does, Pat captures that art, which is indeed different from, but by no means inferior to, other forms, and in effect, paints her characters in their own way. They don't analyse their situation or ponder the meaning of life. They rarely discuss the wider issues of politics (i.e. those which go further than the problems of everyday life).

Shallow

This is not to say, though, that the characters are shallow, but rather that such subjects are remote from their lives, or at least seen as such. And indeed, it is the reality of this problem, which active socialists will attest, that stands in the way of what seems to outsiders to be the obvious solution: socialism.

Speaking more particularly about the women in the novel, Pat characterises their main motivating force as 'stoicism' - sometimes even for the sake of stoicism. Union Street women do not, she feels, see their lives as hopeless or meaningless, in contrast to their middle-class counterparts. This is not merely a question of education, but relates also to the different emphasis placed on the women's role and, ultimately, on the importance of the family. Iris King, the street's matriarch, is a case in point.

'Union Street' is a brutal book. For every woman portrayed there is a tragedy in store. But, the author believes that, rather than sordid, the book is realistic. She cites the example of Brenda King's back-street abortion. The aim here is not to portray the graphic details, although Pat adds that this would not necessarily be a bad thing, but to reveal the thinking of Iris King (Brenda's mother). Iris has moral sense, emphasises Pat. In showing this, she attempts to rectify the typical novelist's portrayal, especially in Nell Dunn's 'Up the Junction' and Alan Sillitoe's 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning', of the working-class casual and uncaring attitude to abortion.

Reality

Does this misrepresentation occur because middle-class writers don't understand the working-class reality of abortion? This would seem to be the case, especially since legal abortion involves little horror and certainly leaves no dead foetus to dispose of.

Raising, as it does, so many fundamental socialist issues, I was a little disappointed by Pat's continuing insistence that the novel is not intended as 'socialist or feminist propaganda'. ', although she does admit to being a feminist and does accept that there may be some 'unconscious' links. The social and political comment is, however, there, most strongly perhaps in the feeling that throughout the book the reader is really in the 1930's. Little has changed,. and the feeling is that little will change. Life will go on and the Kelly Browns of the Union Streets will lose their youthful anger (for as Pat points out, Kelly is the only character in the book who is actually angry), soon to become the dying Alice Bells talking to the young Kellys in the park. A never-ending spiral?

Confronting Pat Barker with this hopelessness, she says that the Union Street situation is not an unending circle, but rather 'a never ending spiral' and she points to symbolism in the book to prove it. There is always a chance that Kelly will escape her inevitable destiny, but even Pat herself, when faced with the obvious question 'How?' can provide no real answers.

'You don't say something through a book', says the author of 'Union Street' 'A novel speaks for itself.

New issue of Women's Fightback - 16 pages and articles on the NHS dispute, the jobs campaign, WF pageng gigerates as some henging ser summer space, sexism in education Judith Williams, Labour women's Hoe:worr conterence, etc. 20p from WF, 41 Ellington St London N7.

regular mailings and the paper).

For me, that meaning is infinitely clear: it is an indictment on an uncaring, exploitative capitalist society and a further indication that the road to Socialism (to extend an already extended metaphor) is the only way out of Union Street - but not the easiest route to follow, especially when so many are not thinking of leaving.

'Union Street' is published by VIRAGO, at £2.95.

BY ANDREA 512%

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 30 September 1982 Page 12 LET'S IMPROVE Can Scargill carry through pay fight? Dear S.0, We invite readers. We invite readers to send us their to send us their letters, up to a letters, up to a usual maximum usual maximum length of 400 words. length of 400 words.

Send to Socialist Organiser. c/o 28, Middle Lane. London N8. ALL OF the options open to the left wing "79 Group' within the Scottish National Party have been closed, bar capitulation or expulsion.

Ever since the decision of the 1982 Annual Conference of the Party that the Group be disbanded, its members have sought ways of evading the inevitable. Their attempt to seek a loophole by establishing the Group outside the framework of the SNP and open to non-party members has been rejected by the leadership of the "political kailyard' , as Stephen Maxwell has aptly described them.

Already leading members of Group, such as Jim Sillars and Ron Wylie, have sought an accommodation with the right wing fundamentalists. Margo MacDonald has quit the SNP. Others, including Maxwell, have yet to make a decision.

George Galloway has rightly made a public call to those socialists who have entrapped themselves in the nationalist straitjacket to break free and join the of Gretna is the milde objection we have to th prognosis.

A more fundamental arj ument against it is that proceeds from that assum] tion to advocate a furthr weakening of the effort 1 create a united workin class movement against th Tories throughout the UK.

The major argument fr devolution| is that it bot holds out the promise of weakening of the capitali

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