"Did Ewan ever discuss his plays   with you, jim"
A little Dick, especially during the time I stopped with him (when I should have been looking for work and somewhere to live) - he called it "working in the garden" but it seldom was
He told me of the agit prop pieces they put on during the cotton workers strikes (he hated Gracie Fields because she joined the bosses to break the strikes)
He didn't tlk that much about the Plays themselves, but he was quite proud the the Brecht Theatre in Germany was still putting them on and owed him "enough money never for him ever having to work again" if they ever got round to paying him
He spoke of his 'lost play' - one he wrote based on Aristophanes 'Lysistrata' about the wives of soldiers going on a sex strike to stop men going to war
He have the only surviving script to an early member of The Critics Group who left it on a Tube Train
He talked on another he wanted to write based on a "scabber", a silor he'd bet who was blacklisted as a troublemaker for trying to get better conditions at sea
He explained that the whaling ships weer used as a last resort for those sailors during the trade - conditions and length of voyage put off so many others
Ben Bright, who he based the song 'Shellback' on was a "scabber" - Ben finally jumped ship in California and joined Joe Hill's I.W.W. during the Depression and worked with T Bone Slim and Helen Gurley Flynn
Reactionary old bugger, Stan Hugill knew Ben and described the I.W.W. (International Workers of the World) as the "I Won't Work"
I think he used that ambition to write his last play 'Shipmaster' which was premiered in Manchester - I never saw it
I'm pretty sure he'd have continued writing had the acting group survive

Bits and pieces only Dick
Jim