HL Deb 14 December 1971 vol 326 cc1016-23

3.40 p.m.

BARONESS LEE of ASHERIDGE

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships have the Bill before you and I think you will agree that it is not a complicated or long one. It is simply asking that the live theatre should have the right to perform on Sundays. This right is already enjoyed by cinemas and by orchestras, large and small. People in their private homes are able to look at theatre on television; and, not least, in our pubs, more and more on a Sunday evening there is a sing-song or a concert of some kind, and, although it is not strictly within the letter of the law, there is no doubt at all that costume is quite often used. So it seems odd that I should have the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, representing Covent Garden, the National Theatre, the Coliseum, about sixty repertory companies, ardently asking that the theatres, for which he has a special responsibility as Chairman of the Arts Council, should have this privilege. The noble Lord. Lord Goodman, may be here before the end of this debate, but he has other pressures on him, and if lie fails to be here in time, I have his personal consent to say that he most ardently wishes the support of your Lordships' House for the passage of this Bill.

At the same time the managements of our commercial theatre are most anxious that your Lordships should agree that their theatres should be open on a Sunday—not for the whole of Sunday but only after one o'clock, so that many morning church services will not be interfered with at all. As we know, modern churchmen of all denominations have discarded the idea of a gloomy old-fashioned Sunday, on which you get people to church because there is nothing else that they can do. There are very few modern churchmen who would take this point of view. The noble Lord, Lord Soper, was kind enough, speaking as a distinguished Methodist leader, to say that he agreed with the purposes of this Bill. Other leading churchmen—I do not want to claim too much support—of all kinds of denominations have taken the same point of view.

Several Members of your Lordships' House have been a little worried whether the Bill would result in actors, mechanics, and other people being compelled to perform on seven days a week. They have also been a little disturbed because, in the original drafting of the Bill, there was specific mention of the six-day week. That specific mention is not included in the present Bill. I think I could best explain why by reading to your Lordships a passage from a letter which I received from Mr. Emile Littler, the chairman of the Theatres' National Committee. He says: I am writing to you because I thought it might be as well if I explained to you the reasons why we are deleting from the previous draft of the Bill the provision that no performer would be employed on a Sunday who had been employed under the same contract to act on each of the six previous days. We were advised by the Home Office officials that it would be very difficult to draft this provision satisfactorily, "— this is the important matter— and as we have previously given an undertaking to Equity in writing, which they have acknowledged, that we would not require their members to work more than six days a week on the same contract, it was agreed that it would be better to leave the matter to be dealt with between the Unions and Management in collective agreement negotiations. The management side and the union side (Equity and the technical unions) feel it would be better that this question should be left for negotiation among themselves.

Mr. Littler goes on to explain part of the reasons. He says: Had the six day clause been part of the Bill, it might have stopped a small variety artiste, who works only during the Christmas season, from taking a Sunday engagement for a Christmas party, if he had been working in a variety bill, even doing only 10 minutes in a show, during the week. It might also have prevented an artiste who was appearing in a show, from giving a charity performance on a Sunday. He then explains that he himself was very keen to have this written into the original Bill, but by common consent and the will of both management and unions it is agreed that this matter should be left to private negotiations between them.

I had hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Olivier, would have been Present, but to-day in his full-dress rehearsal for the Eugene O'Neill play which begins a week to-day. It was impossible for him to be here in person but he has written to me, and I could not possibly answer some of of the doubts and give some of the reasons behind this Bill more adequately and eloquently than in the way he writes in his letter. If your Lordships will bear with me, I should like to read a passage or two from his letter. He begins by saying: I will never forget during the war, how appalled I was by the sight of soldiers on leave having absolutely nothing to do on the Sunday except go to the pubs or sec a movie at the local cinema. What they saw at the local on the Sunday night was always a specially cheap old film that the cinema could foist on to these captive audiences. I am not saying that that is the contemporary situation, but the noble Lord is recalling that he became concerned about this first of all during the days of the Second World War. He continues: There was a big movement afoot to open theatres on Sundays to look after these fellows a hit and the people in favour tried hard to sell the idea to the membership of my profession, at least as a wartime measure and to feel, if you like, that this was part of their war effort, but so strong-ingrained was the feeling of affectionate tradition regarding the famous English Sunday, that we did not succeed. Lord Olivier goes on to make what I think is a very important point; namely, If the Sunday Observance Society had been strong enough to keep pubs closed on the Lord's Day and the cinemas shut also, not to mention Sunday concerts, the English Sunday would at least have consistency. But I do think the times of performances on Sunday should be restricted to between the beginning of the usual matinee time and the usual end of the evening performance time, and it must of course be"— taken for granted that the free day will exist. He says: I think from every realistic point of view, from that of good business to that of employment, we must now bring the theatre within legalised Sunday entertainment. He talked about fair play for our live theatre on a Sunday. He has expressed himself as a family man, and indeed in his last passage he writes: Perhaps I am strengthening my case a little by declaring that this is not to my own personal advantage, in fact being a family man, very much the reverse as it will indeed be to any professional person who is a parent, but cardinal in the nature of our business is that our work is other people's play. I think that last paragraph expresses the generosity of Lord Olivier's personal character. Of course he does not want to work on Sunday, and neither does his talented and distinguished actress wife. They want a free day on Sunday. Who does not? But the theatre, like so many other occupations, is casual in its labour. There are times when there is no work at all—alas! far too many times. There are times when, although their main contract may be for a six-day week, those employed, want to be free, if an offer comes along from television, a charity show, perhaps a seaside performance, to take on this extra work.

I have talked about our great repertory companies. Most of the young people engaged in them are underpaid, and often have to starve for years. The lazy ones are weeded out, because it is no good just being Daddy's girl, or Mummy's boy. You may have influence to get your start, but you will not get very far unless you have staying power, and unless you can accept the disciplines of the training. I think almost without exception the young ones are eager for Sunday opening. Some of them say, "Normally when we travel on a Sunday it is the fish or us." Sunday is not an ideal day for travelling, so even in terms of their personal convenience they would see some advantages in the theatre opening on Sunday.

Another important point is that if the live theatre is not only to survive but to flourish, it must attract a wider audience. After all, at the beginning of the century there were the music halls, and not only in the large cities; there were concert halls even in the smallest towns. In fact, my playground as a child was a music hall. I owned it and everything around it, in the way a child owns everything. Actually, my father managed it, my great uncle owned it, my grandmother owned the hotel, and my mother managed it, so that the whole world I surveyed was my world. It was very common at one time for there to be a lively music hall where there would be folk music, sentimental plays, old-fashioned plays, D'Oyly Carte and the visiting opera companies. But the cinema came, together with radio and television; and since then our little theatre has had a very bad time indeed. Most of the theatres have either vanished or been converted into cinemas, and many of the cinemas have now been converted into bingo halls.

We are not engaged in banning people from the leisures that they choose, but what civilised society must surely do is to give a diversity of choice. If anyone wants bingo, then good luck to him! If anyone wants to go to a good old do "in his local pub, then good luck to him, too ! But I hope that no one will encourage my friend and colleague Lord Longford to go to some of our Midland clubs on a Sunday. They are not vulgar; they are bawdy—and there is a big difference. All we are asking is that we do not take away from anyone what gives him pleasure. and that we should encourage our living theatre, the best of our actors and actresses. And I am not talking only of high drama or opera or ballet; I am talking about the family that goes for a holiday at the seaside. What guarantee have they that it is not going to be wet on a Sunday evening; and why should this one form of entertainment be denied to them? They can go and get drunk in a pub if they want to; they can go to a sleazy night club, or to a cinema, good or bad; but they cannot go to a living theatre. That seems so wrong. Many of your Lordships have an enthusiasm, which I do not share, for going into the Common Market. On the Continent they think we are crazy to have our theatres closed on a Sunday. In this island we depend for our livelihood on attracting as much tourist trade as we can, but visitors from abroad, as well as our own people, coming to the cities for a week-end find that the theatres arc closed on a Sunday.

I am not going to go into the details of this Bill, which is a very simple one. This is only the Second Reading, and there will be ample time for any legal points to be raised. Furthermore, there are other Members of your Lordships' House, with a lifelong knowledge of the theatre, who will contribute. I just want to say this. For me, in my childhood, Sunday was the best day of the week and it was the day we looked forward to. For us, it was both a holiday and a holy day. My father was a deeply religious man, not in a narrow sense, but not as one who belonged to any particular Christian denomination. If you had to put a label on him, he was a humanist. But he worked very hard for his trade union' movement and in the Labour Movement, trying to help his fellow-men in the fight against poverty and in the attempt to get a better life. Sunday was the day that we were with our father. It was a family day. But there was no reason why you should not go to a Socialist Sunday School and hear the ten Socialist commandments. or go to the Methodist chapel, to the Catholic church, or to the Jewish synagogue. One thing does not exclude another. But I feel that Sunday is the family day, providing an opportunity for old and young to enjoy themselves, together or separately. There is surely no reason at the present time why families should not be able to go to the theatre together. You might ask: what about the other nights of the week? But more than ever these days men and women do not leave their work at the factory door. At the end of the days' work they have to get a bus, a train or a car home, and life is such that, by the time they have earned their living and have got home and cooked themselves a meal and done a bit of cleaning up, very often all they want to do is to put their feet up and look at the television.

I am not speaking in opposition to television, but I would say this about it. We are told, A little learning is a dangerous thing. Drink deep or leave it alone. I say the opposite about television. I say that a little television is not a dangerous thing, but that to drink deep and have too much of it, and too continuously, especially where children are concerned, is a dangerous thing. Indeed, there is a danger of the "telly" becoming a substitute for the old-fashioned dummy teat: the way to keep the children quiet is just to sit them in front of the "telly". But there is a revolution beginning in our schools, which I think will come to the rescue of the theatre. Particularly in the primary schools, children are being given a sense of movement and drama and design. These will be the theatre-goers of the future, and the theatre of the future will be what we care to make it; there are fashions in the theatre, as there are in everything else. Surely it is better that, instead of thinking of a nation sitting like fascinated rabbits for hour after hour watching television, there should be a diversity of choice. They should have all the television they want, especially if they are very tired and their feet are sore and they cannot go out. But if at the week-end the old and the young want to go out to the enchantment, excitement and stimulus of the living theatre, then they should be able to do so. I hope that we in this House feel that we are no enemy of any man's religion; that we do not want Sunday to be the same as any other day of the week; that we want Sunday to be a day of rest, a day of refreshment and recreation, but that we want it to be a happy day, a holiday, as well as a holy day.

This is a simple Bill. It has nothing to do with sport, or with the fear that some people have of a great deal of congestion and noise. We can leave those questions entirely aside. I am simply asking your Lordships to be good enough to agree that this ban on the live theatre on a Sunday is an anachronism, and that the time has now come when, in the interests of employment, in the interests of the living theatre, in the interests of that vast talent that we have in our theatres, and in the interests of the enlargement of life, it should at last be lifted. My Lords, I beg to move.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2ª. —(Baroness Lee of Asheridge.)