In Praise of Grandmothers
Food for Ravens
Recently, on my brother's recommendation, I watched, Food for Ravens, on BBC iPlayer. The screenplay by Trevor Griffiths, originally turned down by the BBC, but commissioned by BBC Wales, was shown on BBC 2 in 1996, in the Sunday, late-night, graveyard slot. It's not surprising therefore that it seemed to get lost.
Food for Ravens, is a haunting elegy for the politician Nye Bevan, Labour member for Ebbw Vale from 1929 to 1960. Bevan–played by Brian Cox, in a bravura performance–is in the final weeks of his life. The dying man, out walking in the Welsh woods, sitting by lakes, resting by trees, re-examines his life, testing and interrogating the past. Along the way he meets himself as a boy and later as a young man. Slowly a life accumulates.
He recalls his political career, the great speeches, his hatred for the Tories, his harrying them over the Poor Laws, his ambitions to lead from the Left, as well as childhood efforts to overcome his stammer, his pleasure in poetry and champagne, and his sense of humour- there's a great sex scene that will make you smile, with his wife, Jennie Lee, played by Sinead Cusack.
It wasn't, and isn't to everyone's liking, there are good and bad reviews but to me it worked as a fluid and revealing way to tell, or at least evoke a life. It was poetic and moving and I know from experience that memoir can often be got at more successfully by telling it slant, through other than simply literal means.
Nye Bevan was my grandmother, Edith’s hero. I was nine years old when Nye Bevan died and I remember watching TV with her–black and white of course–in the small, back room of her terraced cottage in Oxford Street, Burnham-on-Sea. The programme was a commemoration of his life. It may even have been his funeral, I can’t be sure, but what I am sure of is that Nye Bevan, born, as my grandmother was, from mining stock in south-west Wales, had filled her heart with pride and ambition, and hope for a better world.
My grandmother, Edith, Emily, Thorne, nee Russell, grew up in the Rhonda Valley in a small town called Maerdy. Maerdy is a Welsh word meaning, 'house of slaves,' but also translates as 'summer dwelling'. Maerdy was the last pit to close in the Rhonda, in 1990. Her father and brothers were minors, as were their fathers before them. Like many families she lost two brothers in the First World War and their photographic portraits hung above the fireplace in that back room. Growing up, her life was poor and hard, and when she was old enough, which I think was around fifteen, she was sent to work in service in a big house in the Quantocks in Somerset. It must have seemed a very long way from home. It had been her dream to be a nurse, but her father had forbidden it. Nursing was seen as a questionable occupation for women pre-second world war. (She finally achieved part of this ambition through training with the Red Cross.) So she left home to go into servitude, eventually becoming a cook.
I spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She was my rock in the rough seas of childhood, and I was her witness in the sense that she liked to tell me stories, particularly about the Red Cross, about Wales, and about life during the Second World War. I wish now, as I’m sure many of us do, that I had listened better to those stories, and I had asked more questions. I wish I had a written record of her life, of my grandparents lives on both sides.
Edith was fiercely proud of being Welsh, she didn’t speak the language, she only knew it in part, but she taught me to count and say the Lord’s Prayer in Welsh. She was a lifelong member of the Labour Party and local Labour Party secretary, something of which my grandfather disapproved and often made fun of, as he did of Bevan and all the Labour politicians. She worked tirelessly on behalf of the party despite the fact that Labour were never returned in the constituency of Bridgewater, now the constituency of Wells. This did not deter her. And she was famous in later years for writing to Tony Benn and persuading him to come to a Burnham on Sea, Labour Party Dance. Probably her finest moment.
There was a real buzz in the house around election times. I remember going out leafleting with my parents, putting Labour Party pens through letterboxes. I also took numbers at the polling station on Election Day, and later watched at the local headquarters (somebody’s front room), when the activists poured over their large map of the area, spread out on the table, identifying labour voters who had so far failed to appear in the polling numbers. Cars were sent out to fetch the voters. Getting the vote out was always part of the Labour Party strategy, their members in those days, were less likely to have cars than Conservatives.
Both my mother and father were united in their support for my grandmother’s political ambitions. In his youth, in the East End of London, my father, had joined the Communist party and the fight against Mosley and the English fascists. It was no surprise then that they should be so in tune, agreeing wholeheartedly on their socialist principles, and I know I owe my education to this. When I passed the eleven plus to go to the Grammar School, any number of people on the council estate where we lived, questioned my parents' decision to send me, particularly as I was a girl. Thankfully they never wavered.
A belief in education was the pillar of Edith's and my parent's politics, and so I was encouraged to aim for higher education. I was the first member of the family to go to university, and that was a source of huge pride for my parents and my grandmother. She wanted that photo of me with headboard and gown. Sadly, she didn’t live to see my graduation.
Watching, Food for Ravens, proved to be a very personal experience for me, taking me back as it did to the warmth and safety of my grandmother's home. It lingered long afterwards. I looked at maps and googled images of Maerdy. I was struck by the similarities between that Welsh town and the old pit villages and towns of County Durham, where I now live, by the rows of colliery houses nestling on the valley sides surrounded by fields and hills. The very rural nature of that world. The scarred landscapes.
But it was more than personal. It was political, resonating now when our National Health Service is under threat and poverty is growing. I couldn't watch it and not think about how we live and about the kind of society I want to live in. I guess that's one of Edith's legacies, as well as her mouth watering blackcurrant tart, teaching me to knit, looking after me when I was ill, taking me with her to Forte’s ice cream parlour on the seafront, encouraging my early attempts at writing... and so, so much more.
In all of this I am reminded of how important our grandmothers can be…
Food for Ravens, ends with this from seventh century Welsh poet, Aneirin
A man of courage but a boy in years
Brave in the din of battle
Swift horses with long manes
Under the graceful youth
A light broad shield
On the crupper of a swift horse
Clean blue swords
fringes of fine gold
before his wedding feast
His blood streamed to the ground
Before we could bury him
He was food for ravens.
Thank you for reading and for indulging me this week! If you have special memories of your grandmother do please write them in the comments below. They deserve to be heard. Avril x
Thank you for writing this. I have been thinking about ancestors recently, and how little I know about my own and this was lovely to read.
How many of us wish we'd paid more attention to the stories of our grandparents. I certainly do. A lovely read Avril and will check out Food for Ravens on iPlayer.