Salter Lecture: Red Flag over Bermondsey

Ian Kirk-Smith reviews the Salter Lecture

Ada Salter was a pioneer of ethical socialism and an important figure in the story of radical politics in early twentieth century Britain.

While familiar to many Quakers, she is not widely recognised outside the Religious Society of Friends. Most people do not know that she was only the fifteenth woman in London to be honoured (among hundreds of men) with a statue. It was the first public statue in the city of a woman trade unionist, the first of a female environmentalist, the first of a Quaker woman, and the first of a woman politician. She was also the first female mayor in London.

The life of this remarkable activist and reformer was given a dramatic realisation at Yearly Meeting in this year’s Salter Lecture: Red Flag over Bermondsey: The Ada Salter Story.

Lynn Morris gave a fine solo performance, conveying Ada Salter’s life through a series of short scenes taken mostly from her time in the London borough of Bermondsey, where she worked with her husband, Alfred, on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged.

Alfred’s devotion to the poor of Bermondsey as a doctor and campaigner has been widely acknowledged. The Salter Lecture, which is put on at Yearly Meeting each year by the Quaker Socialist Society, is named after him. The lecture is usually presented it in the form of a conventional talk. This year was very different.

The main floor of the Large Meeting House was cleared of all chairs. Below the platform, on the floor, was a table covered with a white tablecloth. Two chairs on either side faced the audience, and behind it an open ‘wardrobe’ contained some coats hung from a rail. A desk with a chair was placed to the right. The set design was simple and effective and during the performance Lynn Morris changed her costume for each scene.

Lynn Morris portrayed Ada Salter as a strong, determined woman, totally committed to the socialist cause and to addressing the appalling conditions of the poor of Bermondsey. She was presented as a woman of vision, organisation, and action. She ‘got things done’ – in alleviating poverty, in organising women to fight injustice by joining trade unions, in the pacifist cause, in local politics, and as a prominent figure in the early Labour movement.

This was a play about one woman’s response to the poverty, injustice and inequality that she found on her doorstep. It was also a story about putting ‘faith into action’, selflessness, compassion, the price an individual has to pay sometimes for following the promptings of conscience and, above all, the power of idealism: the belief that a better world is possible if people are prepared to confront evil and work for good. The short scenes – in which aspects of Ada Salter’s life and witness were conveyed – worked very effectively both to propel the narrative forward and to provide an insight into the lives of the poor in Bermondsey at the time.

Ada Salter’s reaction to the poverty and deprivation around her was to set about building a ‘new Jerusalem’ where ‘our socialist dream becomes a reality’. This journey led to her become a leading national figure in the Labour and trade union movement. Her work as a pioneering environmentalist was a very welcome and illuminating aspect of the production.

Lynn Morris presented the story of Ada Salter’s life with real passion and energy. Her portrait of a mother in grief, torn with guilt at the price her dead child, Joyce, may have paid for her idealism, was most affecting.

The production was an imaginative and successful innovation to the Salter Lecture series: a good story very well told. Hopefully it will encourage Friends to read the excellent new book on which the script was based: Ada Salter – Pioneer of Ethical Socialism by Graham Taylor.

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