After WWII ended in 1945, a socialist Labour government was elected in Britain. Their main policy was the creation of the NHS (National Health Service) and the Welfare State. The concept of the NHS is that everyone, regardless of class or wealth, pays taxes which pay for doctors, nurses, midwives, ambulances, hospitals, etc., so that health services are free at the point of use. (Its annual budget is around £122 billion). The NHS is an example of socialism in the UK and was supported by J.B. Priestley. 

Priestley had suffered in his life and feared that society would continue to perpetrate the same suffering and mistakes unless people seized the opportunity to change. The end of the Second World War gave him an opportunity. The backdrop of two brutal world wars which had caused unbearable hardship across the world, to both soldiers and civilians, forced people to think differently.  The old ways were comfortable for many, but the new ideas promised a better way of life for so many more. 

An Inspector Calls and J B Priestley’s Political Journey

Article written by: Alison Cullingford

Published: 7 Sep 2017

Alison Cullingford explores how J B Priestley's childhood in Bradford and experiences during two world wars shaped his socialist beliefs and fuelled the anger of his play An Inspector Calls, a work that revolves around ideas of social responsibility and guilt.

An Inspector Calls poses troubling questions: how can people live together? To what extent are individuals responsible for others? Gareth Lloyd Evans described the play as ‘perhaps the clearest expression made by Priestley of his belief that “no man is an island” – the theme is guilt and social responsibility’.[1] This article explores how and why J B Priestley came to this belief.[2]

‘Substantial and heavily comfortable’: Bradford before the War

Priestley was born in 1894 in Bradford, in Yorkshire’s West Riding. Bradford was an industrial town soon to become a city (in 1897), which had grown very quickly around the wool and dyeing industries. Young ‘Jack’ Priestley himself found work in the wool trade, as a junior clerk with Helm and Company, whose offices were in the (now demolished) Swan Arcade.

Jack found this work dull, but otherwise, for a youngster who enjoyed sport, landscape, literature, music, art and socialising, Bradford had much to offer. In his novel Bright Day, he looked back from the austerity of 1946 to a golden age of freedom, plenty, hospitality, conviviality, generosity, solid comfort and strong community, where, at Christmas,

brass bands played and choirs sang in the streets; you went not to one friend’s house but to a dozen; acres of rich pound cake and mince-pies were washed down by cataracts of old beer and port, whisky and rum; the air was fragrant and thick with cigar smoke, as if the very mill chimneys had taken to puffing them.[3]

The bright young lad realised even then, though, that Bradford was not perfect. Working and living conditions had improved from the hellish days of the 1840s, when cholera and starvation were serious threats, but many still lived in poverty. Priestley’s political views were heavily influenced by the West Riding’s strong Nonconformist socialist traditions, embodied by the Bradford Pioneer newspaper and epitomised by his schoolteacher father, Jonathan.

Jack also noticed that the city’s respectable folk could be smug, even hypocritical: ‘badly-divided men’ were pompously religious on Sundays, but on Saturday nights ‘coarsely raffish’,[4] ill-using young women. In When We Are Married (1937), Priestley made great comedy of turning the world of three respectable couples upside down when it emerged that they had not been legally married. An Inspector Calls also shattered the world of such a family, this time, however, revealing the true social and political consequences of the selfishness of the Birlings and others like them.

The First World War: men thrown away for nothing

This world was itself shattered by the Great War, which broke out in August 1914. Twenty-year-old Jack, drawn to prove himself, went alone to Halifax to volunteer for the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment. He served in the British Army for five years, as a private and lance-corporal, and, much later, as an officer with the Devonshires.

Despite being buried alive by a trench mortar explosion and gassed, Priestley survived relatively unscathed physically; but the experience of war changed him forever. He bore witness to the horrors of the front and his realisation of the implications of social inequalities that went far beyond what he had seen in his home city. As he wrote in his memoir, Margin Released (1962):

The British command specialised in throwing men away for nothing. The tradition of an officer class, defying both imagination and common sense, killed most of my friends as surely as if those cavalry generals had come out of the chateaux with polo mallets and beaten their brains out. Call this class prejudice if you like, so long as you remember … that I went into that war without any such prejudice, free of any class feeling. No doubt I came out of it with a chip on my shoulder; a big, heavy chip, probably some friend’s thigh-bone.[5]

Bradford could never be the same for Priestley after the war: so many of his friends had been killed, many of them in the 'Bradford Pals' battalions destroyed at the Battle of the Somme. After a venture into academia, taking his degree at the University of Cambridge, he decided to focus on writing and moved to London. The 1920s were years of hard work to make a living. We have the sense that he had a kind of survivor's guilt: he had to make something of his life when so many better men had been killed.

His 1929 bestseller, The Good Companions, gave him the financial security to experiment with new literary forms. Priestley turned to drama with great success: he was to re-use the thriller form of his first effort, Dangerous Corner, in An Inspector Calls.

Celebrity also gave him a platform to share his increasing social concerns. In English Journey (1934), he described what he saw when travelling around England by motor coach: the remnants of old rural England, the shocking deprivation of the declining industrial cities and the glamour of the modern Americanised world of arterial roads and cinemas. Of the ‘grimy desolation’ of ‘Rusty Lane’ in West Bromwich, he said:

There ought to be no more of those lunches and dinners, at which political and financial and industrial gentlemen congratulate one another, until something is done about Rusty Lane and West Bromwich. While they exist in their present foul shape, it is idle to congratulate ourselves about anything.[6]

Priestley confronted his own wartime past at a regimental reunion in Bradford. He was outraged to learn that some of his fellow veterans were too poor to afford evening clothes to attend the event. They had given their health, their futures, everything they had, for a society that did not care. This righteous anger would be seen again in An Inspector Calls.

The staggering power of broadcasting

During the Second World War, Priestley’s fame rose to new heights, largely thanks to his BBC radio broadcasts, the 'Postscripts'. In his first Postscript, of 5 June 1940, he helped create the narrative of the Dunkirk evacuation as mythic victory, paying tribute to the frivolous little steamers which saved so many lives. Throughout that momentous summer and early autumn, Priestley continued these weekly broadcasts, boosting morale through homely, often funny, reflections, musing, for example, on a pie which survived the bombing of Bradford and some happy ducks in a pond.

Priestley took an active part in a debate that went on in Britain throughout the war: was it appropriate to discuss what should happen afterwards, and if so, what should that be? He used the Postscripts to influence opinion on this issue, calling for a better, fairer society after this war was over. Carefully gauging what might be acceptable to broadcast, Priestley used everyday examples likely to be familiar to his listeners to make his points. His most outspoken Postscript, of 6 October 1940, uses the problem of the ‘idle rich’ occupying scarce hotel rooms from which bombed-out families could benefit to make the point that:

We are floundering between two stools. One of them is our old acquaintance labelled ‘Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost’, which can’t really represent us, or why should young men, for whom you and I have done little or nothing, tear up and down the sky in their Spitfires to protect us, or why should our whole community pledge itself to fight until Europe is freed? The other stool … has some lettering round it that hints that free men could combine, without losing what’s essential to their free development, to see that each gives according to his ability, and receives according to his need.[7]

It is often stated that the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, had Priestley ‘taken off the air’ as a result of this sort of discussion, and for using the Postscripts as a platform for sharing his views on building a better world post-war. Certainly, Priestley’s radio talks worried many politicians and journalists; the end of the Postscripts was, however, at least in part his own decision and the hand of the Prime Minister cannot be definitely traced in it.[8]

A new and vital democracy?

Away from the airwaves, Priestley could be much more candid about his views. Out of the People (1941) came out of his role as chairman of the 1941 Committee, a group of writers and politicians whose statement ‘We Must Win’ called for a declaration of national ‘ideas and objectives after the war’. In Out of the People, Priestley outlined the need for a ‘new and vital democracy’, an end to the waste and unfairness of social inequalities, a world in which everyone was responsible for others. The upheaval of war was shattering old systems and bringing people together to work for a common goal. Why not build on this, rather than going back to old failed systems as had happened after the previous war?

Priestley’s Postscripts and other broadcasting and writing certainly played their part in encouraging people to think about the shape post-war society should take, and thus helped pave the way for Clement Attlee’s Labour Party to sweep to power in the general election of July 1945. The Labour mandate was to create a ‘welfare state’ and a national health service, eliminating the shocking poverty observed by Priestley and so many other reporters.

However, the new government was not quite what Priestley had in mind. He disliked the centralised planning and bureaucracy that became synonymous with state socialism in the 20th century. Indeed, he stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in the 1945 election!

A Russian journey

An Inspector Calls was born out of this tumultuous wartime debate about society, though Priestley had first thought of using a mysterious inspector years before. He had then mentioned the idea to a theatrical director, Michael MacOwen, who reminded him about it during the autumn of 1944. Priestley was enthused by the idea, found it in his ‘little black notebook’, and quickly wrote a playscript based around it.

No suitable theatre was available in London, so in May 1945 Priestley sent the script to his Russian translator to see if there was any interest (his work was already popular in the Soviet Union). An Inspector Calls was thus first seen in productions by the Kamerny Theatre and the Leningrad Theatre in Moscow, followed by a European tour ending at the Old Vic in London.

Priestley and his wife Jane later travelled to the USSR, as guests of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries; he wrote about his experiences for the Sunday Express, his articles being reprinted in the pamphlet ‘Russian Journey’. Priestley found the Russian people highly congenial and wrote sympathetically about a country that had recently been Britain’s wartime ally. Later he was to realise more about the nature of the regime.

The play embodies Priestley’s reasons for calling for the ‘new and vital democracy’ by showing the personal consequences of a selfish society, and the future that would result if lessons were not learned about being ‘responsible for each other’: ‘If men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in blood and fire and anguish’. This future might be the Great War which Priestley’s 1945 audiences knew was just two years ahead for his 1912 protagonists, or it might be a terrible revolution yet to come: his Russian audiences had seen just that when the frustrations of an unequal society had led to violent revolution and terrible suffering.

Such ambiguities Priestley leaves in the play, along with its origins in his own past and his deepest beliefs, allowing it to work for audiences worldwide ever since, despite its historical origins in a complacent 1912 and his bleak yet hopeful 1945.

At the end of the play, Sheila and Eric display a completely changed attitude toward the poor and their own family. They understand the consequence of their actions and firmly believe they should change their ways. According to Mr. Birling they represent the “famous younger generation who know it all”, who are now looked down on by their elders who are set in their ways and fearful of change. At the end of the play, though they have done horrible things, Sheila and Eric have “learned their lesson” and they have stopped listening to their parents, choosing instead to stand up for what is right.

Sheila: “That’s just what I feel… and it’s what they don’t seem to understand.”

There is now a new division within this family: new generation vs. older generation. Unfortunately, not all of the younger generation are “on the same side”. Gerald, a member of the upper class, instead sides with the older Birlings and believes that there is no need for change. His unchanged attitude may be explained by a fear of losing his position, wealth, or privilege. 

Gerald: “Everything’s all right now Sheila…What about this ring?”

Like the older Birlings, he remains untroubled by the events of the night, believing that all the “evidence” is a hoax and there no proof to link him to any wrongdoing – his status remains protected. The older Birlings are relieved at the revelation that it’s all been “a lot of moonshine”; not because Eva lives, but because their reputations are no longer at risk. Mr. Birling even states, “…I’d a special reason for not wanting any public scandal just now,” referring to his potential knighthood. They represent the stubborn mentality of the old and the wealthy, who care about nothing beyond their wealth and public image. In their mind, with the disappearance of the Inspector and the lack  of solid evidence against them, the “natural order” of  things is restored and they can go on with life as “normal”. 

Gerald is a typical man of 1912, who exhibits little empathy towards his female counterparts. He initially begins his relationship with “Daisy Renton” (Eva Smith) because she is pretty and he is “bored”. He does not seem to value much beyond her innocent beauty (at least in his account). “She was very pretty – soft brown hair and big dark eyes...” Gerald continues the affair because it made him feel like a hero who has saved a very grateful “damsel in distress”. Her affection for him is not reciprocated as romance, but rather as a man who enjoys being “fawned over” and idolized. “I guess it was inevitable. She was young and pretty and warm-hearted – and intensely grateful.” Even in this account, he “side-lines” his fiancée Sheila in favour of justifying his actions to another man (the Inspector). This demonstrates that he still holds little consideration for the women around him. When he ends the relationship with “Daisy Renton” (Eva Smith), there is no implied feeling of sadness at the loss; he was not in love with her. In fact, his account of the ending is simple and straightforward. He shows little regard for her feelings in the matter, which are later revealed. The only real time we see him react in an emotional way is when he considers her death. 

Eric Birling would be the second man in “Daisy Renton’s” (Eva Smith’s) life that exploited her good nature and vulnerability. Remember, she has lost two good jobs and has no further promise of employment at this point and has become destitute as a result. Eric, who also met her at the bar of the Palace Variety Theatre (music hall), engaged in a relationship with her initially because of her looks. However, unlike Gerald, it becomes immediately clear that he was less than a gentleman during their first encounter and has pressured her into being intimate: “Well, I was in that state when a chap easily turns nasty – and I threatened to make a row.” His status as a man and a member of the middle class (with a notable name) would be protected, but “Daisy Renton” (Eva Smith) would be publicly and socially ruined this act. He effectively intimidated, blackmailed, and pressured her into intimacy by abusing his privilege for his own gains. The audience is left wondering how consensual their first encounter (and subsequent encounter) really was. This eventually results in an illegitimate child (recall the minimal contraception of the time) and “Daisy Renton” (Eva Smith) eventually attempts to get financial support through charity since she refuses to accept stolen money.

Eva Smith claiming to be “Mrs. Birling” – a married woman who has been left by her husband – was an attempt to gain more sympathy and increase her chances of getting financial support. Women who were widowed or abandoned were shown much more kindness than those who had fallen pregnant out of wedlock. Women of the upper classes would have been more sympathetic to this idea because it would have been seen as the “fault” of the man. This likely would have worked in her favour, except that she was unaware of the fact that the real Mrs. Birling was overseeing the interview and took exceptional offence to the misuse of her married name.

Implied consent and being a ‘fallen woman.’

Gerald assumes that he has Eva’s permission to ‘save’ her. The fact that he uses the word ‘install’ to describe her role as mistress shows that he assumed the answer would be yes, because of his social status.

 • In effect, he has rescued her from one person assuming consent (Alderman Meggarty) and has ruined her himself with little thought for the consequences

 • This affair would have a huge impact on Sheila’s reputation as well. 

• Note that nobody in the family is really outraged by the fact that Gerald has been in a sexual relationship; they are only mildly outraged that he has cheated on Sheila – and even then, they expect Sheila to understand and forgive him

Before the Welfare State was created, poor and/or unemployed people were sent to the local workhouse under the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. They would be segregated into male and female blocks (and occasionally further into male, female, and children), and given repetitive tasks to complete in exchange for food and a bed to sleep on.
They could be released if they had been offered a job or seemed “employable”.
However, many people never left the workhouse.

The poor were divided into three categories: 

• The Deserving

  • Those who were judged to be of good character and were worthy of assistance. Mostly widows, orphans, or “reputable” people.

• The Undeserving

  • Those who displayed some fault, self-inflicted suffering, or whose cases were not thought to be as important as others.

• The Residuum

  • Those who were petty criminals, addicts, gamblers, prostitutes, or otherwise “undesirables” who could never be reformed.

Only those who were deemed “deserving” would receive meagre charity offerings from rich benefactors or religious organisations. The help offered would only be enough to see them through a few days (at most a week), in order to dissuade laziness. 

Candidates would be subjected to an evaluation panel of “judges” (upper and middle class people) and would give interviews in order to convince the panel that their case was worthy of support (financial, goods, food, etc.). This process, in which candidates had to plead their case for a miniscule amount of charity, was rigorous and humiliating. This process reinforced class distinctions - the upper classes were making decisions and judgements on the working class, which they were forced to accept unquestioningly.

Charity organisations were commonly used as a status symbol by members of the upper class to demonstrate their supposed benevolence and their interpretation of “Christian charity”. However, while we think of charity as selfless acts of generosity, this was more of a pretence put on by the upper classes. We can infer from these comments that Mrs. Birling feels contempt and disgust for members of the working class by using derogatory language such as “a girl in her position” or “a girl of that sort”. She also implies, in the first quote, that the working class is incapable of having emotions or scruples (regard for morality or propriety). We can also infer that, while Mrs. Birling participates in “charity”, she only distributes a small amount of money and only to those she deems “worthy” of it. In her first comment, she implies that if she finds a case undeserving (like Eva/Daisy), she has no problem using her influence to ensure that no one else will help them either.

Mrs. Birling, as previously discussed, is a woman of means who donates a very small amount of her wealth to charity – but only the deserving cases. She uses this not as an act of generosity and kindness, but as a symbol of her status and privilege. She feels little concern for those of the working class, having never experienced poverty herself. 

This was common for the upper classes at the time, who were well-established and had never had to work for their money. They viewed the working class with prejudice and their judgements were easily swayed by their mood of the day. They did not want to simply give away their wealth to “lazy” poor and dissuade them from working – after all, “cheap labour” is what helped make Mr. Birling (and other men like him) rich. 

However, people in 1912 had begun to realise (much more clearly after the impacts of WWI and WWII) that the “evils of society” had to be beaten by kindness and generosity from those who could afford it. 

• The government had passed the Pensions Act in 1908 to look after the elderly and to prevent them becoming destitute after they were too old to work. 

• Organised Charity Groups were created to keep people out of the dehumanizing process of the workhouses. 

• Rich benefactors invested in charities to improve or rehabilitate the poor.

Though the book was written in 1945, Priestley uses the 1912 setting to emphasize his views on Social Responsibility. Remember, Priestley was a strong advocate for Socialism and was later a strong supporter of the NHS (1948). Key to Priestley’s beliefs was that those who were most in need should be helped and that by helping  them, we also make life better for ourselves by acting in a moral way. He uses this story to promote this idea through the thoughts and actions of his characters.

In 1945, when Priestley was writing the play, the government was trying to destroy what it called “The Five Giants”: Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness. They sought to annihilate these through Socialist policies with the Welfare State, the NHS, Pensions, and free comprehensive education. After the struggles and hardship of the Second World War, the Labour government wanted to harness the sense of community and shared purpose that the war had created in society, and instil a feeling of social responsibility to look after one another. 

Mrs. Birling’s argument about who should be responsible for Eva Smith’s finances, illegitimate child, and subsequent suicide, is Priestley emphasising the inadequacy of the pre-Welfare State system. Remember, the upper classes are used to passing the blame and “saving face”. Mrs. Birling considers what she has done as her duty – keeping the working class where they should be (at the bottom and away from her family). She shows little consideration for this case and openly admits she was prejudiced without contrition. By showing the humiliation that “Daisy” had to go through, and the judgemental attitude of Mrs. Birling, Priestley is showing the essential need for Social Responsibility. After all, would you want your private family matters brought before a judgemental and prejudiced character like Mrs. Birling when you were in need of help?

In the final pages of An Inspector Calls, the older Birlings and Gerald seem triumphant. They openly gloat about having found out that the whole interrogation was a “hoax”. They give no thought to the fact that all of their confessions have still happened – all they care about is that it can’t be connected to them. Mr. Birling is described as smiling, amused, and relieved in the stage directions. 

The younger Birlings, by contrast, are visibly changed and no longer share their parent’s perspective. In fact, even their language changes to suggest that they no longer recognise the terrifying mentality of the older Birlings.  When the younger Birlings argue against their parents, they are patronisingly told to “go to bed… and don’t stand there being hysterical” by Mr. Birling. 

Sheila: “It’s you two who are being childish – trying not to face the facts.”

This division would have echoed the mentality of the audience watching this performance – some would be watching and understanding the message, yet others would be unaware of it and the implications it may have on their own lives. Priestley wanted the audience to think about all the lives that have been affected by their own actions and question whether they’ve done enough to help others. 

In 1945 (when Priestley was writing his play) the Labour government, led by Clement Atlee, defeats Winston Churchill’s Conservative government in a landslide victory that nobody saw coming. This was the first time a Conservative government had lost an election since 1930. This moment of change coincides with an end to war and a desire for a new start, which fully embraced Socialism. 

This sense change is echoed in the final moments of the play, when the relief of the older Birlings (representing the upper/middle-class Conservative government) is shattered by the telephone ringing. The message here is that change is coming (Socialism and Social Responsibility) - not just for the family, but for everyone in society – whether they realise it or not.