What are we fighting for? Is it worth all the sacrifice?
These were questions that occupied the minds of workers on the Home Front and British troops in the desert in September 1942. It was a bleak moment in the war, with the unthinkable loss earlier that year of Singapore, the fall of Tobruk, and news of desperate defense of Stalingrad by the Red Army. There were few military victories to crow about. Desertion rates among the troops in the Middle East were so bad that earlier that year Auchinleck recommended to Gort that the death penalty should be re-introduced.[1] The Beveridge report outlining the architecture of the welfare state was still to be published in November that year and the nation was lacking a vision of the future. Britain’s glorious past and the pluckiness of the British people were obvious themes for those trying to lift the spirits of the nation and to provide a reason to carry on fighting.[2] Basil Dean, director of the Entertainment National Service Association (ENSA) picked up the theme of patriotism and ran with it for all his life, with his extravaganza, The Cathedral Steps.[3]
Crowds began gathering around the west entrance of St Pauls cathedral during the morning on Friday 25th September 1942 and as the roads were closed and traffic diverted people stretched along Ludgate Hill. Two signs had appeared outside Wren’s cathedral that morning announcing ‘An Anthology in Praise of Britain’ and city workers on their lunch break strained to get a view of the stage that had been set up at the bottom of the famous steps. The signs told the audience:
“We have a story to tell you. It took 2000 years to write, but we can tell it to you in a lunch-hour.”
Although planned for months, The Cathedral Steps was not allowed to be advertised in the newspapers or on radio, so Dean (the producer) and Clemence Danes (the artistic director) must have been very relieved at the turn out. BBC sound engineers had already been busy setting up microphones to record the performance and relay the broadcast to the United States. 500 performers made up the cast of The Cathedral Steps, including the Lord Mayor of London and his Sheriffs, famous actors from stage and screen, a choir of 300 singers, and the massed band of the Brigade of Guards. It was difficult keeping any performance quiet with this number of people involved, but a few rehearsals had been held earlier in September at the Albert Hall and the Open Air Theatre, Regents Park.[5] The final dress rehearsal was held at 7am on the steps of St Paul’s the day of the performance. Artists shivering in the cold September morning were revived by a WVS-run coffee stall organised by Madam Vernon (see Virgina Vernon: ENSA's Secret Weapon article). At 12.40pm, the crowds hushed, and the performance began.
The relationship between the British government and the nation’s culture went through a revolution during 1939-1942 with institutions, like ENSA and Committee for the Encouragement of Music and Arts (CEMA) receiving state funds for the very first time.[6] At the beginning of 1942, CEMA became wholly government funded.[7] The contribution of the arts to the morale on the home front and for troops fighting overseas was considered of national importance and not something that could be just funded by charities or private individuals. Despite this change in policy, at a time of rationing and austerity, with people being asked, ‘Is your journey really necessary’, it was important that a show of the scale of The Cathedral Steps was not seen to be diverting funds from the war effort. Dean had been able to work his financial magic and secured funding for the event from an anonymous donor, the fees from the BBC broadcast to the US, and the voluntary contributions of the artists. Dean was very aware that the Press would have a field day if they could show ENSA as being a drain on the war effort and the organisation had regularly received bad press since the war began. It was ironic then (or perhaps deliberate) that ENSA was about to put on their biggest show on the doorstep of Fleet Street. The newspaper reporters and cameramen were out in force around St. Paul’s cathedral on this Friday lunchtime waiting to make column inches on any slip up by ENSA.
The performance itself was envisaged by Dean to be a cross between a medieval English morality play and a Greek drama, using the chorus to comment on the actions on stage (a theatrical device used extensively by Brecht in the 1930s). Reading contemporary accounts, The Cathedral Steps would seem unbearably jingoistic, patriotic, and slightly odd to a modern audience. It was structured around 13 episodes in British history starting with Boudicea and ending in the start of the Second World War. These episodes were performed by famous actors, like Sybil Thorndike and Leslie Howard, and included music conducted by the great Sir Henry Wood. The audience would be given stirring passages from British literature, such as Shakespeare’s St Crispin Day’s speech and Tennyson. A chorus made up of archetypal figures like, ‘Patience of Britain’ and ‘Valour of Britain’ are quizzed by two characters representing the common people; ‘Any Man’ who wore a raincoat and ‘Any Woman’ who carried a shopping bag.
In one scene, Any Man goes up to Boudicea and asks, ‘Did you win?’, I cannot help but see a proto-Baldrick from Blackadder in this naïve character. In the penultimate episode showing 1914 and the First World War, the pattern of the chorus changes with Any Woman taking out a steel helmet from her shopping bag and hands it to Any Man, who in turn takes off his raincoat revealing a khaki uniform and slowly walks up the steps into the cathedral. During this episode the choir sings It’s a long way to Tipperary. The final scene, covering the Second World War, starts with Any Man reappearing from the cathedral wearing contemporary battledress and Britain’s Valour tells him that he is destined to build a dream on this land. The massed band plays Jerusalem. The themes of the role of the citizen soldier and war worker are reflected in these two scenes – one cannot remain a spectator in a total war but must become an active participant. The overall message of the performance is to go on fighting because of Britain’s illustrious past and to be a part of the next chapter. It does not articulate exactly what that future Jerusalem would look like.
I have not been able to find evidence showing what the audience thought of the performance, but Basil Dean kept newspaper clippings reporting the Cathedral Steps in his private papers held at the John Rylands Institute in Manchester. The Daily Herald wrote
“It was emotional: its effect on the people was undeniable; for two hours no traffic stirred in the streets around the cathedral.”
Philip Page of The Daily Mail effused that the show was “inspired by the loftiest spirit of patriotism” and “provided pageantry that had not been seen in London since Queen Victoria’s jubilee in 1897”
The Daily Herald was slightly more guarded in its coverage, bookending the report on the event with a reminder that the Red Army were fighting for their lives in Stalingrad. This theme was taken further by the newspaper columnist ‘As Hannen’ in his criticism of Dean’s extravaganza. The columnist complains
‘never was a performance so ill timed! Verses will not win a war’.
He goes on to hope that filmed recordings of Cathedral Steps are not shown in Britain’s provincial theatres to
‘shipyard workers, miners and munition workers who are still being implored to go ‘all out for victory’.[9]
A second performance of the The Cathedral Steps took place in the ruins of Coventry cathedral on Sunday 27th September. There were plans for at least two more performances, but these were shelved by Dean as the funding dried up and perhaps, he was stung by some of the criticism he had received from some of the newspapers. It could be argued that there was never a good time to put on a performance as ambitious as The Cathedral Steps during wartime and it is easy to look at this extravaganza as a rather naïve attempt to raise morale. However, for two hours on that Friday lunchtime in 1942 the crowds around St Paul’s cathedral could forget the war and watch a spectacle.
[1] Jonathan Fennell, Combat and Morale in the North African Campaign The Eighth Army and the Path to El Alamein, First paperback edition (Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 157.
[2] Noel Coward’s play, This Happy Breed, written in 1939 and first staged in 1942 is one example of harking back to the past for a reason to fight:
.
[3] Performed Friday 25th September 1942 at St Paul’s Cathedral, London and repeated in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral on Sunday 27th September 1942.
[4] Basil Dean, The Theatre at War (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd, 1956).
[5] Dean, The Theatre at War, pp. 297–304.
[6] Anselm Heinrich, Entertainment, Propaganda, Education: Regional Theatre in Germany and Britain between 1918 and 1945 (University of Hertfordshire Press ; Society for Theatre Research, 2007), p. 45.
[7] Daniel Todman, Britain’s War: A New World, 1942-1947 (Penguin Books, 2021), pp. 75–76.
[8] Dean, The Theatre at War.
[9] Basil Dean’s Private Papers, DEA 5/1/415