Circuit Training 102: Mark Thomas's End of Year Address

It's Mark Thomas's End of Year Address. And that address is the Red Shed, somewhere in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, a still-active socialist meeting place that stoked his political fires many moons ago, when he was a student, and is now the hub for his latest theatrical adventure.

The Red Shed is the conclusion of a bravura trilogy from the comedian/campaigner, following Bravo Figaro and Cuckooed, and it's another high-concept affair. It's more nakedly political than the previous pair, but manages to be impressively inclusive too, and garnered several well-deserved awards during its Edinburgh run in August.

That show will return to the nation's stages in February - well, if riotously left-wing shows are still permitted once a certain right-wing loose-cannon takes over the western world's top job in late January. But we'll get to that, as well as Thomas's perhaps surprising take on Brexit, and where we go from here. First, we go home.

So, you've finished gigging for the year?

Yeah, which is very exciting, I just want to get home!

I saw The Red Shed as a work-in-progress at Latitude, and it seemed pretty finished?

There was still stuff to be done. The day after Latitude we had a full day's rehearsal - my sister is a vicar so we used her church, we cleared all the pews out the way and set the Red Shed up. We were still doing things up until the last minute, the end of the story didn't fully happen until just before we get to Edinburgh.

For those who haven't seen it, can you talk us through it?

The Red Shed is the place where politically I came of age, so I go to help celebrate the 50th anniversary, and decide that I have to find out whether a memory I have is true, about whether the children I saw in a playground singing to the miners as they marched back to work is a true memory. So we start trying to find this pit and the school and these children, and in doing so we go on a journey, quite literally, where we look at where we are, what happened in those places, and what's happened in our country.

I remember it being quite interactive.

The way that I've done it, we've written a show where it's absolutely intrinsic that the audience join in. If they don't join in, we haven't got a show. Everyone has to be part of the community of it - they have to sing, and recreate the club, and whistle, let off party poppers. Members of the audience lift masks and become the sweet and lovely mannequins that form the backdrops of scenes. I love the fact that we've made this show that is completely about an audience joining in, feeling like a community.

Latitude was interesting in that respect. I don't suppose there are many right-wingers at that festival...

I don't think you'll get many fascists.

... but the socialist song at the end, I did wonder if everyone there would be happy singing it. Remind me what the song was?

It's Solidarity for Ever, an old trade union song.

Have you had many responses from people saying 'I felt a bit uncomfortable singing that'?

No, it's very weird, but people join in. It's interesting, in Glasgow it just took the roof off, and Liverpool was just ecstatic, straight away - but then you go down to Reading, and they completely surprise you by being completely on board and singing from the off. Cheltenham didn't go as well.

But people do join in despite their political allegiances, and that's really important - leave them at the door, it's about the ethos of the place, and the bonds here. I've had people drop me a line saying 'it's very funny that you had me doing this because I'm a Lib Dem supporter' - and that's lovely.

Are people just happy to hear a different point of view nowadays, given all the nasty right-wing stuff around Brexit, Trump etc?

Well, the thing about the show, it looks at where we are and how we got to vote for Brexit and all that. I've been very clear about this, I was going to vote 'leave' up until six weeks before, and the reason I voted to remain was about the racism that was going on. But actually, I think there's a very good socialist reason to leave.

Tony Benn was very anti-European Union.

I've always thought there should be a referendum about leaving the EU, and I think it's fucking great that we've had one, that's an important thing. The way it was conducted, the divisiveness, the racism of it, was shit.

And it's still shit.

It's really interesting talking to mates who are socialists: they voted to leave because they wanted to get rid of what they regarded as a bosses' club. Maastricht binds people into privatisation, and once we leave we've got an option to renationalise stuff.

Why should we be part of a union that behaves the way it does over democratically elected governments like Spain, Greece and Ireland? It's just bullying. Freedom of movement is a really important thing, but if you're saying that this club is working - that's a myth.

Latitude came at an interesting time, just after the referendum. Every comic who mentioned Brexit had similar views - 'what have those idiots done?' - whereas you explained why, say, a struggling old lady in Yorkshire voted 'leave'.

Yeah, if you think that people who are living like that are going to sit there with a fucking FT report, and go through the analysis of what's going to happen with our fucking sterling and the currency - it's just insanity.

So they gave it a go - 'it can't get any worse'?

I think it's very much a case that people are furious, absolutely furious, because lots of things have happened to create this situation, and part of it is that London has become its own inflated city state of wealth. Obviously not everyone in London is a millionaire, but the point being, there's a huge amount of wealth in London, and you can feel it when you walk around, just as surely to god that when you walk around Wakefield you feel the absence of it.

London doesn't realise that they exist.

London doesn't care whether they exist or not, it's not about realising. The way that people have treated the north, 'these stupid Northerners, voting for their own demise,' I think even that reaction shows an incredible amount of bigotry and absence of care, about what is happening in those places.

Yes, there are all sorts of things that are going badly wrong. It's transparently obvious that Boris, Gove and everyone didn't have a fucking clue. They still don't have a clue.

I also think it's fairly insane to think 'oh Brexit should happen automatically', as if there's no complexity, as if the relationships that we have with 27 different countries, the trade and legal system and all that, we can simply go 'snip' and everything will be fine.

Do you reckon they didn't expect to win?

I don't think they did expect to win. I think Boris was very calculating, he was anti-Brexit, he's pro-freedom of movement, pro-Europe, all of that, but he made a very calculated move, that he would stand against Cameron, and Cameron would win but only just, and he would be the heir apparent who would step in and unite the party. He expected to lose.

I remember that jokey thing 'imagine in a year's time when Boris and Trump are both leaders' - I don't think anyone took that seriously.

People were shocked because of complacency - and actually I think if you go back, and The Red Shed is about this in many ways, it's about what happens when you just cut people adrift, abandon them, regard them as just part of your machinations, your block, how you get to power. [Labour were thinking] 'they're on our side, we don't have to work for them'

Do you think this right-wing surge will provoke more red sheds now though? Local activism?

I don't think we've got an option. You've got to get out there and really fucking fight. Especially because the level of racism is just appalling in this country at the moment, we have to get out there and fight that. Is it bleak? Yeah. But it's been bleak for people for fucking years and other people haven't noticed.

Is that the difference now - it's suddenly bleak for everyone?

Now the middle class are going 'oh fuck, this is bleak!' It's been like this for a while for the working class.

Burnley was ahead of its time - they lurched to the right years ago, now everybody's doing it.

If you look at Oldham and Burnley they've had a history of the BNP, EDL marches, a history of right wing extremism, so it's not surprising that UKIP have gained a foothold - how much of a foothold is up for debate. [Theresa] May has camped out on the UKIP ground, and how much of a threat UKIP can be to Labour, Paul Nuttall - I'm gonna have to call him Paul Nuttalls, after Stewart Lee - I don't know if he can gain much. It depends on the local Labour party, the local candidate, how it works there.

What do you reckon to the 'progressive alliance' suggestion - the centre and left parties working together, proper tactical voting?

I love the idea of a progressive alliance, I'm very supportive of that. If you look at it mathematically, Labour can't win the next election. Scotland's gone and it's gone for a generation, so it's really, really hard for Labour to win outright, and certainly the polls are saying that they won't.

So what has to happen is that tactically, you have to fight with the Greens, Plaid, the SNP, and the Lib Dems, and I know when you say this to Labour people they say 'the Lib Dems aren't progressive!' - well that's the choice you have. Forming an alliance and trying to make it progressive, or you can allow the Tories to win.

I interviewed a musician last year who was involved in the Canadian campaign that helped get Trudeau in, via well-organised tactical voting.

If you look at [the by-election in] Richmond it's really interesting. A lot of people were really angry at Zac Goldsmith, for a number of reasons, so a lot of Conservatives switched to Lib Dem, but that wasn't enough - you needed the Tories to switch en masse, and Labour and the Greens. The Greens and the Women's party stood aside and said we should build a progressive alliance, Labour didn't, and saw their vote just absolutely crumble.

People were galvanised by Goldsmith's racism, that's what got Labour and Green voters to go 'we'll fucking swallow this one and vote Lib Dem' - you needed that mass switch from the Tories, but you needed that push from Labour, the Greens and the fringe parties too. So it was an interesting taste of what could be.

Labour probably won't get behind it though, so you can't see much changing if there's a general election soon.

Electorally, in terms of parliamentary politics, that's where we are, but I think in general there's a real mood, a mood that swings now against low wages, that's absolutely 'we've had enough of this shit.'

There's lots of well-intentioned social media campaigning nowadays, but I wonder if it has much effect.

Well, people have campaigned outside parliament for years, and that's what trade unions do. People have had enough of low wages and no union representation - the number of places that are building up to strikes, whether it's Southern Rail or the Post Office, people are just not having it anymore. There are interesting signs.

Why do you think the US election turned out like that? I tend to think that loads of people who never cared about elections now voted Trump, as if they were voting on a reality TV show.

I think what they're voting for is anti-establishment; anti-establishment charismatic leaders. But actually Trump is hugely establishment, just as Farage is, and Boris, who's regarded as being such a maverick.

I'm looking at a poster by an artist caked Wild Billy Childish, a mate of mine produces these posters, beautiful distressed paper, lovely print, and it's Boris hanging on his zip-wire waving his flag, and underneath, the words 'YOU'RE A CUNT.' I've had that framed.

The nations of Europe should line the street with those whenever he makes an official visit.

Personally, I think if the Human Rights Act goes, we should be legally entitled to publicly lash Boris Johnson in the street.

That version of The Red Shed I saw talked about Brexit, which must have been added fairly late - are you still adding stuff?

A few bits and bobs get tweaked here and there, but that's it.

It's a theatrical piece, it's not stand-up where you could just change it easily?

Absolutely, it's a proper play. We won awards for it!

Indeed!

The Stage award was the most unexpected one - 'a unique contribution to art at the fringe.' I phoned my wife and said 'I've won this award for "unique contribution"' and you couldn't stop her fucking laughing.

Do you think the judges took the trilogy as a whole into account there?

Yeah, I think they probably did, the way in which we work, the way we research stories - these are real things. It's a show, it's a narrative, but we try to document things on stage, in a way that brings reality into the room.

You had audio clips on Bravo Figaro, then video on Cuckooed - this one is a bit more back to basics, lower tech.

Yeah, it just felt appropriate, we didn't want to go 'we shall use the latest technology!' Sometimes that's not needed.

Have you had any interesting experiences with your 'cast', the people you get to help out on stage?

We had one bloke, I think he was over emotional, he walked onstage with two bottles of cider, and I thought 'I might not have picked the most sober person in the room.' About five minutes before the end of the show, he had to dash across the stage: 'ok, I know where he's going'.

That's probably quite typical Red Shed behaviour really?

Yeah, it was fine.

What's next after the trilogy then?

We've got two projects that we've started work on already, two shows for 2018, but we're touring now - I always say 'we', people think it's the royal 'we', but it's a very practical 'we' - the fact is, I work with other people and the collaborations and how we work are really important.

But as for the rest of the year, I have no idea yet, we get to the end of The Red Shed, and then I don't know what we do - and that's interesting, because I'll have to make up my mind very quickly.

We could be in a nuclear winter by then so you won't have to worry about it.

Yeah, we'll all have to be goose-stepping in Trump wigs. Who knows.

The Red Shed is touring from February 1st, visit markthomasinfo.co.uk for dates.