Stephen Lowe's dramatisation of Robert Tressell's novel is a gross distortion of the original text.

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My home town is Hastings (aka Mugsborough) where Robert Tressell’s novel is set in the early nineteen hundreds and when young I was acquainted with some people who had known Bob Noonan (Tressell’s real name) including Harry Green, Tressell’s apprentice, who appears as ‘Bert’ in the novel.

Back in the nineteen eighties I saw a performance of Stephen Lowe’s adaptation for the stage and was rather surprised at the liberties he had taken with the story line of the original.  The main character ‘Owen’ (obviously closely modelled on Tressell himself) is a committed activist in the Social Democratic Federation, the original Marxist political organisation in Britain.  Accordingly, Owen is very hostile towards the recently formed Labour Party which he sees as reformist and accommodating to capitalism – no change then.

Thus, I was rather surprised that towards the end of Stephen Lowe’s dramatisation Owen undergoes a sudden conversion to becoming a Labour Party supporter.  This is not artistic licence but a crude falsification of the spirit of the original work.  Read the book if you don’t believe me.  I see that a new production of Lowe’s dramatization is being hawked around to try to raise funds for the Labour Party.  Please show some respect for that great working class fighter and artist Robert Tressell and avoid this travesty like the plague.