Jack Common
Jack Common | |
---|---|
Born | Heaton, Newcastle, England | 15 August 1903
Died | 20 January 1968 Newport Pagnell, England | (aged 64)
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | British |
Period | 1928–1968 |
Notable works | Kiddar's Luck, The Ampersand |
Jack Common (15 August 1903 – 20 January 1968) was a British
Writing
Common's writing was warm, ironic and quirky. He soon won admirers throughout the 1930s as a writer with a genuine proletarian viewpoint, as distinct from the purveyors of middle-class
Common's writings about the day-to-day realities of workers lives include descriptions of how work was performed and production organized, and how knowledge was transmitted from worker to worker. Common's writing also reflects on the separation between the ideas of middle-class intellectuals and the ideas of workers. In his usual warm tone, he wrote "Very likely we will have to await the arrival of the intellectuals-in-touch, the unemployed man at present reading in public libraries, the young stoker spending the mornings of his back-shift week ploughing through Shaw and Lawrence, fumbling his way through acceptances and rejections towards a cultural consciousness which squares with this communal experience."[4]
He inspired, prefaced and edited the compilation Seven Shifts (1938), in which seven working men told of their experience. Common and Orwell became friends,[5] corresponding and occasionally meeting when Common was running the village shop in Datchworth, Hertfordshire, about ten miles from Orwell's Wallington cottage. The impractical Orwell asked Common's advice on setting up his own shop. After the war he was engaged in writing film scripts including Good Neighbours (1946), about a community scheme in a Scottish town; he also travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador on another film assignment.
In 1951 Turnstile Press published Common's best-known book, the autobiographical Kiddar's Luck, in which he vividly describes his childhood on the streets of
In The Ampersand (1954) Common took the story further, but his publishers went into liquidation two years later.[6] Neither book had been a commercial success and Common had not completed the trilogy with his long-promised Riches and Rare, a novel set in Newcastle at the time of the General Strike. Too early (or too old) to be an angry young man of the 1950s, Common was unable to sustain a career in writing. His political attitudes were by now out of fashion, and when he sent the manuscript of In Whitest Britain (1961) to his friend Eric Warman in London, Warman replied in a letter of 7 June 1961 that he was sorry 'such a bloody good writer' could not achieve success. There was too much 'class distinction' in the book, and the downtrodden, golden-hearted workman was a dated 'leading cliché'. Thus Jack Common, perhaps the finest chronicler of the English working class to follow Robert Tressell, spent his last years in Newport Pagnell writing film treatments at poor rates.
Personal life
Newcastle
He was born in
London
In 1928, against the wishes of his father, Common went to London with hope of a better chance of finding work than at home. After a stint as a mechanic in a
In 1939, during the editorship of
Mary died in 1942 from cancer, and Common began living with and eventually married Constance Helena (Connie) Wood, née Sambidge (1902–1979), who had a son Jan from her first marriage to Gilbert Wood, another Newcastle friend of his youth. Their first daughter Caroline Alison (Sally) was born in 1944, followed by twin daughters Mary and Charmian, born in 1946. Meanwhile, Common took part in a number of wartime BBC radio broadcasts, including a lively debate, 'What Matters?', broadcast on 19 June 1942, which featured two opposing sets of speakers representing, roughly, suburbia and 'the streets'. Common remarked: 'I like a good argument'. The family changed residence several times, ending up in a council house at 32 Warren Hamlet, Storrington, Sussex, with Common trying to make ends meet by working at a mushroom nursery, while toiling over scripts and reviews at night, and writing for himself in between. He was acutely oppressed by financial insecurity—and the lack of beer and tobacco.
Later life
In 1956 Common embarked upon a two-year stint as guide to Chastleton House in the Cotswolds, a position obtained for him through Sir Richard Rees (editor of Adelphi, 1930–1938). Predictable disagreements with the owner, Alan Clutton-Brock, put an end to an arrangement whereby Common had been able to get some writing done in the winter months.
In 1958 a friend from Frating days, Irene Palmer, was instrumental in obtaining a rented Georgian house at 14 St John Street, in the centre of Newport Pagnell. There Common spent hours working on books for film treatment reviews in the 'garden' (a cemetery), walking with Connie in the countryside they both loved, and reading to his children. His daughter Sally later recalled listening to Shelley and Omar Khayyam in the translation of Edward FitzGerald, whose atheistic stance Common was at pains to emphasise. He had always been interested in astronomy (his Uncle Robin was a flat-earther), and Fred Hoyle's theory of an endlessly self-renewing universe, which dispensed with a creator, was attractive.
Common was not a joiner or an activist, nor did he encourage his children to be so. He did, however, blossom in the right setting, often in pubs (a favourite was The Bull in Newport Pagnell), where he enjoyed political arguments with self-taught thinkers like himself. Another favourite haunt was the nearby working men's club on Silver Street, where he took his slippered ease at the bar. He was a connoisseur of beer and was described by his friend Tommy McCulloch as 'fairly jolly' at this period, though he retained his hatred of the 'bulky bourgeoisie' – and kept his Newcastle accent.
He died of lung cancer in 1968, leaving a mass of unpublished material, which forms the Jack Common Archive, now held in Special Collections at Newcastle University Library.[8]
In popular culture
Sculptor Laurence Bradshaw used Common's brow as a model for his bust of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, saying that he found there a similar patience and understanding.
The folk singer/songwriter Jez Lowe has an album entitled Jack Common's Anthem, containing a song of the same name.
In 2009, North-East poet and scholar Keith Armstrong published Common Words and the Wandering Star, about Jack Common and his work. He has drawn extensively on the archive.
North East folk band, Kiddars Luck, formed by John Dixon, Colin McLelland and Alan Beadle have a track on their album, Where the Red Kites Fly, called "Jack The Lad" dedicated to Jack Common.
References
- ^ Marshall, Ray (12 December 2007). "Fanfare for the common man". ChronicleLive.
- ^ The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 1 – An Age Like This 1945–1950 (Penguin)
- ^ E. M. Forster,
"The Long Run", the New Statesman, 10 December 1938. Reprinted in P. N. Furbank,(ed.),
The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings. London : Andre Deutsch, 1998. ISBN 0233991689(p.291)
- ^ Revolt against an Age of Plenty p 32-41
- ^ a b Furnival-Adams, Tom (26 November 2015). "George Orwell hailed Heaton author as 'voice of the working class'". ChronicleLive.
- ^ "Jack Common". Jackcommon.com.
- ^ Jack Common: Forgotten Geordie Writer, Tom Draper, Reflections on Cinema and Culture, July 8, 2014. Accessed October 2014
- ^ "Special Collections - University Library - Newcastle University". Archived from the original on 14 October 2016. Retrieved 13 October 2016.
External links
For a selection of articles by Jack Common, further biography and a photograph: Jack Common - selected articles