VOICES 1 ISSUES 1 -7 1972-75
Paperback 6" x 9" 345 pages £9.30
From the INTRODUCTION to Voices 1
The first issue of Voices appeared in 1972. Its founder, Ben Ainley, an academic teaching English in Manchester was diffident, almost apologetic, in his introduction:
“I can make no great claims for these pieces, except that they are, it seems to me, varied, interesting, freshly written, and in most cases the work of men and women taking up a pen late in life; with some qualms, though with real curiosity as to how it will turn out.”
But it flourished; Ben had struck gold. Over the next 12 years 300 contributors produced nearly half a million words. It became a national phenomenon; there was nothing quite like it before – and there hasn’t been since. When asked for financial support the Arts Council scratched its head, squirmed and pronounced worker writing: 'successful in a social, therapeutic sense, but not by literary standards’.
Ben was a Communist Party activist - without his energy, commitment and contacts Voices would have died an early death. His banner under the title from issue 6 onwards became “working class poetry and prose with a socialist appeal”. Politics and aesthetics remained tangled right up to the end.
This volume reprints everything in issues 1 to 6. By May 75 the eighteen foundation writers had been joined by another sixty. The tone was becoming more confident and the treatment more artistic – though those early accounts of the Glass Works, the General Strike and radical activism were fascinating as social documents.
Voices ran for 31 issues until 1984 with contributions from Manchester, London, Liverpool, Glasgow and Newcastle. Original sets are now impossible to find – there are some in Universities and one in the Working Class Movement Library at Salford.
A web site at www.mancvoices.co.uk contains everything which appeared in the magazine.This paper incarnation is for those who prefer books. The five volumes are available from www.lulu.com/uk and can also be accessed via the Voices website or the Penniless Press website at www.pennilesspress.co.uk. This is a non-profit making project and each volume, at approximately £10, is sold at cost price. There are five volumes altogether which contain the entire contents, graphics and text, of the original 31 issues.
I was an early contributor to Voices and met Ben Ainley a couple of times. I was not, however, involved in any of the Voices committees or those of the later Federation of Worker Writers into which Voices merged.
The background to Voices is well covered in the excellent papers of Tom Woodin, extracts of which appear on the Voices website. A more synoptic overview of British proletarian writing, which also touches on Voices, can be found in Ken Worpole’s classic Dockers and Detectives.
I’d like, finally, to acknowledge the invaluable help of Tom Woodin who supplied copies of issues 28 to 31 which were missing from my own set and thank Rick Gwilt, Ken Worpole and Penniless Press editor Alan Dent for their encouragement and support.
Ken Clay – November 2008