An Inspector Calls: Context
JB Priestley, 1894-1984
How much money proportionally
should the maker of a pair of Nikes
earn?
JB Priestley Biography
• Left school at 16: “I believed that [experience of] the world outside
the classrooms and labs would help me to become a writer.”
• 1911-14: formative years, associates did not do the ‘social chit chat’
but rather discussed ‘real talk and hot argument’. Priestley stated
that it was these years that ‘set their stamp upon me’ (the time
before the first world war). He had political discussions with his
father’s socialist friends.
What is
Socialism?
“The establishment of a
system of society based
upon the common
ownership and
democratic control of the
means and instruments
for producing and
distributing wealth by and
in the interest of the
whole community.”
The Socialist party of
Great Britain
Priestley’s Biography (cont)
• Called up 1914-19, front line service: experience of war
summed up by two key points—narrowly surviving a German
shell; being the victim of a gas attack
• Went to university after WW1: began writing novels, then
plays: ‘to prove that a man might produce long novels yet be
able to write effectively, using the strictest economy, for the
stage’
• 2 themes recur in his plays: the effects of an individuals
actions over a period of time; the Collective and Individual
responsibility for actions and their consequences.
• Had a radio show reflecting on WW2 conditions, but were
cancelled for his being too critical of the government
Contemporary Theatre in the 1940s
• Before WW2 theatres were very popular.
• Since the introduction of cinemas, theatres
had been competing with musicals with lavish
sets, costumes and budgets.
• With the coming of WW2, theatres opened
and closed erratically due to air raids.
• Performances were relocated to the North or
the Midlands.
• By 1944 the Old Vic Theatre Company had
returned to London and the play was first
staged in 1946.
TWO KEY DATES
1912
1945
• The date that the play was
set in: Edwardian England.
• Huge social divisions and
distinctions
• A year of key traumatic
events
• Suffragette movements:
Repeated introduction of
woman’s suffrage bills to
parlt defeated between
1896-1911, militant
campaign by Emmeline
Pankhurst since 1906
• The date that the play
was written.
• Post-war ennui:
egocentric tension of the
people, concentrate on
their own business.
• Dramatic Irony from the
start: audience looking
back from the vantage
point of time
Edwardian England
1912: Arthur Birling’s England
• Huge social divisions and distinctions
• ‘class divisions were never so acutely felt as by the
Edwardians’
• Massive differences in income, wealth, and living
standards
• 87% of the country’s wealth was owned by 5% of the
people
• 7000 people owned 4/5 of England’s land.
• 8 million people had to get by on less than 25 shillings a
week (£1.25): as a result they were ‘underfed, underhoused and insufficiently clothed.... Their growth is
stunted, their mental powers are cramped, their health
undermined.’
• Female workers near the bottom of the pile
Poverty Legislation
Date
1906
1908
1909
1911
1911
Legislation
School Meals Act
Old Age Pensions Act
Labour Exchanges established
National Insurance Act, dealing with
health and unemployment
Legislation demanding stricter safety
measures in coal mines, regular meal
breaks, weekly half day holiday.
OR...
“It was the golden age of the country
weekend, of the London season, of the
new business tycoons, of the Gaiety girls
(who sometimes married not tycoons but
aristocrats), of the bustle and of the top
hat, but, above all, of the golden
sovereign.”
The end of an ‘age of
innocence’. Death,
the great equaliser,
came to all classes –
1st, 2nd or 3rd –
aboard the Titanic.
‘These silly little war scares’
• 1905-14: England in costly arms race with
Germany, increasing likelihood of war:
over 40 new battleships (dreadnoughts)
commissioned and constructed, costing
each year between £31-45 million.
• £229 million spent in 6 years: half of this
would have cured the country’s social
problems.
Industrialisation
• Such mass industrialisation led to the
potential (and reality) of massive fortunes
for those who have the abilities to get it:
manufacturing trades, etc.
‘lower costs and higher prices’
• However, the period leading up to 1912 was blighted by
increasing industrial unrest, known as the Great Unrest
Date
Action
1901
Taff Vale Decision gave compensation to the railway company for
striking workers, effectively outlawing trade unions
1911
June, a seamen’s strike begins in Southampton
Dockers and railway workers strike in Liverpool: troops called in
London Dockers strike for a wage increase from 6d to 8d an hour
National railway strike: troops sent to Manchester
December, Miners vote to strike for better pay and working conditions
1912
March 1st, 1 million miners on strike: most extensive and complete
stoppage in British History
Govt soon gives way, conceding a Minimum Wage Act
Population Expansion
• Birlings live in Brumley, N. Midlands (traditionally set in
Yorkshire): mighty industrial heartlands, rampantly
hypocritical, unjust and depressing.
1800
1850
1900
Birmingham
71,000
215,000
760,000
Bolton
1000
3000
47,000
Bradford
13,000
104,000
280,000
Leeds
53,000
172,000
429,000
Manchester
75,000
340,000
645,00
• Huge housing pressure: wealth moved out of centres,
poor crammed into back to back houses or long terraces,
unsanitary overcrowding, smoke, filth, poor public health,
massively reduced life expectancy.
Breakout of War 1914-19
• Few foresaw what was a localised conflict
with the Balkans to turn into all-out
slaughter
• Grateful to prove their chance in battle:
Rupert Brooke, ‘God be thanked that he
hath matched us with the hour’.
• It should have been over by Christmas
‘I noticed... a present for any good child
called Jolliboy II Quick-firing Machine
Gun (See How Quickly Pellets Are
Ejected), and as I walked away I hoped
that the jolly boys who played with it
would never find themselves caught in
the barbed wire with a stream of hot
lead disembowelling them. The people
who sell that toy might be encouraged
to give away with it a few photographs
showing what its parent toy can do to a
man’s guts.’ (Priestly, An English
Journey)
Post-War Britain: Rebuilding Britain
• How? Radical ideas voiced: redistribution of wealth,
common ownership of industries and resources,
health and welfare, long term security
• Trying to solve the problems of unrestrained
capitalism, self-interest, a lack of understanding of
how society inter-connects
• Priestley did not want to see a return to the values
of 1912 or 1930s where the moneyed classes ruled
and working people received little recognition
• → Post-war welfare state. Labour’s famous
landslide victory of 1945, Attlee ousting Churchill:
physical, social, political reconstruction