ON November 1, an event at Bridgwater Arts Centre will celebrate 40 years since the great Miners’ Strike in the British coalfields – and the 50th birthday of Birmingham’s political theatre company, Banner Theatre.

This longevity is an astonishing achievement for any theatre company, but for a political theatre group it’s pretty much superhuman. 

Dave Rogers has been involved with Banner Theatre since 1974 and is now artistic director. How has Banner survived?

The answer is complete dedication and infinite adaptability. “Our roots were with Charles Parker,” says Rogers, “who was a founder member of Banner and also worked with Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. MacColl was part of Theatre of Action in the 1930s, so we come out of a long tradition, and an unpaid tradition. We’ve learned to survive regardless of the funding environment.

“We first got Arts Council money in 1979, and then Thatcher got in. All the way through the 1980s we survived on a collection at the end of a gig. Very early on we learned how to survive when there’s no money. 

“In the current environment, it’s just as bad as it was then. I’ve got a pension so I’m all right, and we can prioritise the younger members of the group and make sure they get paid for gigs and rehearsals. We’ve developed a way of surviving that does not rely on funding.”

Does it help that Banner have a supportive community in the trade union movement? 

“We get a lot of positive feedback and a lot of support, the gigs are generally paid properly. The stuff that’s really hard to fund is the research, the writing, the rehearsals, the admin and the promotion. We’re part of the gig economy. Most of the performers are in other bands, so we have to negotiate around their availability. So I don’t see it as a theatre, three weeks rehearsal, six weeks tour. We’re on call all the year, until we come up with a new show.”

Outside Banner’s strong trade union links, Dave is critical of the British left’s attitude to the importance of theatre and the arts to the movement: “I think the left in this country see culture as a marginal activity on the outside of what’s going on,’ he says, “which I find quite frustrating! Last year I was in El Salvador. Culture is central to the movement over there, not just song and music, but a theatrical way of organising events, which is much more interesting than the dreary way they do things over here.”

But it wasn’t always like this. “Really important to us was there was a resolution in the TUC that the trade union movement should be radically involved in culture.” 

This was Motion 42 at the 1960 TUC Conference, and playwright Arthur Wesker’s subsequent Centre 42 initiative that toured cities creating opportunities for involvement in the arts for working-class people. “The Birmingham bit was about the gas industry, and some of the people who came into Banner were involved with that.”

Banner’s longevity is linked to its close integration with, and expression of, the long history of radical popular culture in Britain. 

“For our 50th anniversary we want to say: ‘There is a thing called working-class culture, and there is an enormous need for a politicised cultural movement in this country. Let’s look at the best elements of that and ask: how can we do better?’” 

Banner will be performing their current touring show, Battle Lines. It’s an example of the form they call Video Ballads, demonstrating the continuity with MacColl, Parkes and Peggy Seeger’s seminal “Radio Ballads” of the 1950s and 1960s. 

“We believe in the power of working-class utterance, the way stories get told. The songs come out of that. We used to do it by reading the words of people we interviewed. Now we use video on a big screen and we have a lot of interview material, which we cut with song and music. 

“The first half is about the miners’ strike. We worked full time supporting the strike, so we’ve still got very strong links with ex-mining communities. The second half looks at current struggles. We focus on the Indian farmers’ strike, which resulted in the biggest general strike in history, with 250 million people coming out to support the farmers. 

“We relate it to the Amazon workers in Coventry where they just had a wildcat strike. You’re supposed to have six people on a picket line – they had five hundred! It’s a brilliant story, and they’re great! There were forty different languages they had to translate into. And they’re all young, they’re all diverse, and they’re all angry. So it's a great story to tell. God knows where it’s going to go, because Amazon are putting everything in to defeat any kind of proper union recognition. There’s a lot of energy there, it’s an interesting new energy.  

“So Battle Lines is first half historical, second half now.”

What’s the future for Banner? 

“I don’t know. We’ve got younger members in, who are keen. I’d like to believe that at some point someone can take my place. At the moment we’re so under-resourced that it’s just a question of survival and doing what we’re good at: putting shows together and touring them.”

Banner Theatre represent much more than a theatre company. They embody the history of the Labour Movement, from the days when we could assume some kind of continuing progress to the desperate doldrums of Starmerism. Banner are determinedly local, yet with a global outlook; they are part of our history, yet still share and disseminate the dreams of a diverse and multicultural youth. 

They have a right to be proud, and we should be proud of them.

The 50^th anniversary event will be held at Brigewater Arts Centre on November 1; Battle Lines is on tour until November 27. For more information see: bannertheatre.co.uk