A Socially Useful Production of “The Participation Waltz” begins with The Lucas Plan; a radical proposal developed by workers at Lucas Industries in the UK in 1976 which was nominated for a Nobel Prize.
Lucas Industries was a manufacturer with multiple sites across the UK. By the 1970’s the workers possessed specialised technical knowledge which was being directed towards the design and manufacture of military equipment used overseas and funded by UK tax payers. In response to what they experienced as a decline in working and living conditions, and an ideological disconnect with the company’s changing end products and goals, the workers at Lucas Aerospace developed what became known as The Plan, which proposed that engineers and workers should have a meaningful role in determining what was produced and how. Rather than accepting technology as something that progresses independently of society, these workers argued that the technologies and systems we make are shaped by social choices, and that those choices should be more democratic.
The workers developed 150 proposals for “alternative products and systems” which included dialysis machines, wind turbines, fuel cells and public transport systems. The Plan described changes to the hierarchy of the company itself, proposing job redesign, employee development, collaboration with universities and the wider community, and improving participation of women in engineering and technological development. The workers challenged Lucas’s management definition of profitability, asking instead what might happen if social and environmental needs became measures of value.
During the plan’s inception, the play “The Participation Waltz” was developed with Lucas workers by Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre. The play was performed in factories, picket lines, car parks and community halls and explored the “many dilemmas faced by these highly skilled workers: cancellation of projects, perennial redundancies, having to work on military rather than socially useful products”. Lucas workers designed and built a stage for the theatre and supported the theatre companies Arts Council application, emphasising that dramatisation could provide a basis for a “widespread discussion” of the profound questions facing workers. remain hidden behind closed doors, whilst presenting an alternative.
The Lucas Plan was never implemented. Its ambitions were unrealised, however it remains urgent. Who gets to decide what is valuable and useful? What is produced and why? How might we dismantle and shape the systems we are made to be part of?
This collaborative exhibition transforms the gallery into a space for making, gathering and performance, in which the mechanics of work and decision making are revealed and the histories of worker movements and radical theatre can be revisited, with alternative scenarios tested, scripts rewritten, objects remade and the play restaged. Created with Production Designer Rosanna Vize, the exhibition is divided into two ‘Acts’. The first Act is set in the Lucas corporate offices, glossy mock wood paneled surfaces clad the walls and archival materials are inspected by management. The second Act, presents the ‘behind the scenes’ backstage of a working theatre, including a recreation of the Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre stage and original and reimagined props from earlier productions. Movable skate stages and print materials invite the opportunity to reconfigure the space. ‘Flats’ and props borrowed from the National Theatre, The Rose Theatre Kingston and The Old Vic also set the scene.
Throughout the exhibition, talks, performances and collaborative activities will revisit this history and test alternative possibilities, with members from Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre and Lucas Workers sharing their stories. Over the course of the exhibition Sophie Huckfield, Dr Caoimhe McGuinness and Theatre of the Oppressed facilitators will work with Performance Art students at Kingston University to deconstruct and develop new iterations of “The Participation Waltz”, connecting the history of workers’ theatre with contemporary questions around work, demilitarization, democracy and education.
Special thanks to Kathleen McCreery for their generosity and permission to use Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre archive materials for the exhibition. Thanks also to The National Theatre, The Rose Theatre Kingston and The Old Vic.
Biography
Sophie Huckfield is an artist, designer and musician, awarded the Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University in 2024. Working across sculpture, sound, installation, performance, video and writing, they draw on archival research and collaborative processes to produce works that investigates the relationships between political and social histories of labour, technology, craft, class and (de)industrialisation. They make sound, perform and DJ as Lady Ludd. They have exhibited, performed and screened at The Southbank Centre, The Barbican Centre, The Design Museum, Dutch Design Week, London Design Festival, Vivid Projects and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and others. Previously, they were a Mechanical Engineering Technician working in research for The Physics and Astronomy department at The University of Birmingham. They also worked as prop and model maker for film, animation and architecture.
Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre was founded by Kathleen McCreery and Richard Stourac in 1974 to “create and tour thought-provoking, innovative, entertaining and accessible theatre which would contribute to the struggles of working and marginalised people in the UK and support progressive, anti-colonial movements around the world.” The group was active until 1986 performing agit prop style plays for activist and socialist campaigns.
Kathleen McCreery is an Irish/Canadian playwright, director, actor and activist. She co-founded Red Ladder and Broadside in the UK, and Bread and Roses in Donegal. Her plays range from street performances and Theatre in Education to adapted classics. Kathleen’s published work includes the book ‘Theatre as a Weapon’ (with Richard Stourac), Routledge 2025/1986. She has worked with professional theatre companies and community and educational projects in Zimbabwe, Ghana, South Africa, Lesotho, Germany, Austria, the US and Canada. A lecturer at universities and colleges in the NE, she also trained and practiced as a counsellor. She’s been politically active since marching in Selma, Alabama in 1965.
The Lucas Plan was developed by The Lucas Combine Committee. Which included Mike Cooley, Ernie Scarbrow, Brian Salisbury, Phil Asquith, Danny Conroy, Terry Moran, Ron Mills, John Routley and Mike George (CAITS). A book: The Lucas Plan – A New Trade Unionism in the Making? Was written by Hilary Wainwright & Dave Elliott.
Phil Asquith is one of three surviving members of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’ Committee and has been intimately involved with the Lucas Plan since its conception over fifty years ago. He was Chairman of the Combine Committee at the LA site in Burnley, the second largest, representing 3500 mainly highly skilled workers. Over the last fifty years, Phil has spoken at countless meetings and conferences in the U.K. and as far afield as the United States, Scandinavia, Europe and Moscow and has appeared in films, radio and TV. He will be speaking again at the Lucas Plan fiftieth anniversary conference on 21st November at Manchester University.
Rosanna Vize is a critically acclaimed award-winning international designer, working across opera and theatre. Previous Production Design credits include: Les Liaisons Dangereuses and The Other Place at the National Theatre which was also at The Shed, NYC. In London’s West End: Vanya at the Duke of York’s and in NYC (as co-creator and designer). Upcoming: Golden Boy at the Almeida; and The Other Place at Schaubühne, Berlin.
Dr Caoimhe McGuinness is a senior lecturer and Course Leader of the BA Drama at Kingston. They previously taught on the Humanities Foundation and MA in English, as well as across London at Birkbeck, Queen Mary, Goldsmiths and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Their teaching specialisms are grounded in critical and historical considerations of drama, theatre and performance and how to activate these through writing and performance. Specific teaching topics explore empire, gender, sexuality and disability as they are treated through performance and how this can make us think in turn about broader social, economic and political contexts.
Ian Saville is the world’s leading performer of socialist magic tricks. He may well be the world’s only performer of socialist magic tricks. He’s performed in comedy clubs, theatres (including the National Theatre), arts centres, Performance Art events, universities and the Albert Hall. He was a member of Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre.
