Category Archives: Colin Veitch (1881-1938), footballer, actor, politician

The People’s Shakespeare

On 20 June 2016 (with perfect, even poetic, symmetry, the very day on which this year’s midsummer solstice will fall), actors from the People’s Theatre, Heaton, will take to the stage at Stratford upon Avon for the first time, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company, in a performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. They will perform an encore the following night.

The troupe has already played the parts of the ‘mechanicals’ (Nick Bottom, the weaver; Peter Quince, the carpenter; Snug, the joiner; Francis Flute, the bellows-mender; Tom Snout, the tinker and Robin Starveling, the tailor), the comic characters who perform a play within the play, to critical acclaim at our own Northern Stage. But The People’s connection with Shakespeare goes back almost 100 years and, although the theatre company wasn’t based on this side of the city then, Heaton was nevertheless already centre stage (if you can forgive the pun) and has remained deeply connected to both the theatre group and the bard.

Veitches of Heaton

The People’s was founded in 1911 by members of the Newcastle branch of the British Socialist Party to raise money to fund their political activities and enable them to pay the rent on their meeting rooms at the corner of Leazes Park Road and Percy Street. (Today you’ll find Tea Sutra Teahouse in what was to become the new company’s first home).

The first meeting of around half a dozen interested members was dominated by one family: 32 year old telephone engineer, Norman Kidd Veitch, and his wife, Edith, who lived at 19 Stratford Grove Terrace, Heaton and, Norman’s younger brother, Colin Campbell Mackenzie Veitch and his wife, Minnie, who lived just around the corner at 1 Stratford Villas. Fittingly both couples lived in what we now call Heaton’s ‘Shakespeare Streets’, a group of roads with connections to Shakespeare, the story of which goes back to the 1864 celebrations of the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.

Colin was, of course, a professional footballer, still fondly remembered as Newcastle United’s most successful captain in the Edwardian era, during which the club won three Football League Championships and graced Wembley six times in seven years, at a time, of course, when FA Cup semi-finals weren’t played there, and the first League Cup was still fifty years away.

Colin Veitch

Colin Veitch

But there was much more to Colin Veitch than his football talent, immense though that was, as shown by his presence at that inaugural meeting of the Clarion Dramatic Society, as it was then called. Sometime between the initial meeting and the society’s first dramatic performance on 11 July 1911, Veitch captained Newcastle United, the holders, in the 1911 FA Cup Final (which they lost 1-0 to Bradford City after a replay at Old Trafford) but he was by now approaching 30 and in dispute with Newcastle United, and so although it was only the outbreak of WW1 which brought the final curtain down on his playing career, he was ready for new challenges.

Colin Veith's commemorative plaque

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The Veitches, as well as being keen socialists – Colin was a founder member and later chairman of the Association Football Players Union (now the PFA) and turned down the invitation to stand as a Labour MP – were all lovers of the arts. Minnie was a star of Newcastle Amateur Operatic Society, where Colin, Norman and Edith were members of the chorus; Colin wrote music and conducted; Edith and Norman both wrote plays, a number of which were performed by the Clarion and later The People’s, so what started as an income generator for the British Socialist Party soon took on a life of its own.

From the beginning, the Clarion were ambitious. They performed the works of George Bernard Shaw, the eminent contemporary – and socialist – playwright.  They also performed Ibsen, Galsworthy, Chekhov and other great playwrights. As Norman Veitch said: ‘ If we are going to murder plays, let us murder the best’.

In 1920, the company invited George Bernard Shaw to see them perform. Shaw replied ‘I wouldn’t travel so far overnight in a railway train to meet Shakespeare himself’ but come he did on 25 April 1921 to see the company perform his play ‘Man and Superman’, with Colin Veitch playing the part of Old Malone.

The People’s Shakespeare

The next and final play of the landmark 1920-21 season was ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’,the Clarion’s first Shakespearean production. Colin Veitch was Falstaff, Minnie and Edith merry wives. Norman Veitch later wrote that ‘it was a jolly and inspiring performance’.

That summer, the Clarion was renamed The People’s Theatre and Shakespeare became a staple: ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, ‘The Comedy of Errors’, ‘Coriolanus’, ‘Cymbeline’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Henry IV Part 1’, ‘Julius Caesar’, ‘King Lear’, ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’, ‘Measure for Measure’, ‘The Merchant of Venice’,  ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, ‘Othello’, ‘Pericles’, ‘Richard II’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, ‘The Tempest’, ‘Troilus and Cressida’,  ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ and T’he Winter’s Tale’, were all performed before the company moved to Heaton.

People’s in Heaton

The People’s Theatre was based in a disused chapel in Rye Hill from 1930 but by 1953 the company recognised it had outgrown the premises and they set their sights on their own arts centre. A public appeal was launched in 1955 at a luncheon attended by Sir John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft. Eventually by 1959 a suitable building was found and enough money was in the bank to start to convert it into a theatre.

Lyric cinema 1936

Entrance to the Peoples 2013

The soon to be refurbished People’s Theatre

 

The building was the recently closed Lyric Cinema, next to the Corner House on Stephenson Road (the Coast Road). It reopened as a theatre on 24 September 1962, with Shaw’s ‘Man and Superman’ (of course!) and the season appropriately ended with the People’s first Shakespeare performance in Heaton, a Christmas production of ‘Twelfth Night’. The official opening by Princess Alexandra followed on 20 October 1964.

The company continued to bring new Shakespeare plays to Heaton audiences eg Henry IV Part 2 (1965), Richard III (1967), Henry V (1981) but soon there was an even more exciting development, which cemented the east Newcastle relationship with Stratford which had begun with Frank Benson’s company in 1895.

RSC at the People’s

The RSC had made Newcastle its third home in 1977, bringing productions annually from Stratford to the Theatre Royal and the Gulbenkian, but in 1987 and 1988 they needed a third venue and so actors such as Jeremy Irons and Brian Cox trod the People’s boards.

The second season will always be remembered for a particularly gory production of ‘Titus Andronicus’, after which reports of fainting audience members even  made the pages of ‘The Sun’!

The RSC returned to Heaton in 2004 when the Newcastle Playhouse (now Northern Stage) was undergoing refurbishment. It’s an honour for both the People’s and Heaton for our own theatre company to be able to accept a return invitation to Stratford twelve years later in this most special of seasons for both theatres. There’ll be a few charabancs of Heatonians heading down to the midlands in June. It would be lovely to welcome members of the RSC back to our own soon to be even more fantastic theatre before too long.

Sources

The main sources used in researching this article were:

Chris Goulding ‘The Story of the People’s’

Norman Veitch ‘The Peoples’

http://www.ptag.org.uk/about-us/history.html

http://www.colinveitch.co.uk/

where you will be able to read much more about The People’s Theatre and Colin Veitch respectively

Can you help?

If you have memories of the People’s or any performances or readings of Shakespeare in Heaton or can provide further information about anything mentioned in this piece, please contact us, either by clicking on the link immediately below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Shakespeare 400

This article was written and researched by Chris Jackson, as part of Heaton History Group’s project to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death.

We are interested in connections between Heaton and Shakespeare through its theatres, past and present; writers, actors – and of course, the famous brick Shakespeare on South View West. See:

A Road By Any Other Name

The Grand Opening

We are also researching and writing about some of the people who have lived in the ‘Shakespeare Streets’: initially, we are looking at Bolingbroke, Hotspur, Malcolm, Mowbray and Warwick Streets plus Heaton Park Road, Stratford Grove, Stratford Grove Terrace, Stratford Grove West, Stratford Road, and Stratford Villas. See:

Colin Veitch’s Twelve Days of Christmas

George Waller: world champion cyclist

George Waller: life as a champion

More to follow!

If you would like to join our small friendly research group or have information, photos or memories to share, please contact us, either by clicking on the link immediately below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Colin Veith's commemorative plaque

Colin Veitch plaque unveiled

On 25 September 2013, after a campaign by Heaton History Group, a commemorative plaque was unveiled at former Newcastle United captain and People’s Theatre co-founder Colin Veitch’s former home in Heaton by the Lord Mayor of Newcastle. Below are some photographs of the event, links to media coverage and other sources of information about this Renaissance man:

Colin Veith's commemorative plaque

The plaque was made possible by the support of Newcastle City Council, the PFA, Chris Goulding and Keith and Sam Smith.

Bob Moncur, Lord Mayor and party

Bob Moncur, the last Newcastle captain to lift silverware, spoke about Colin’s achievements

Colin Veitch's great great great niece

Members of Colin Veitch’s family were present. This is his great, great, great niece

Veitch family photo

A photograph of Colin (fourth from left) and other family members given to Heaton History Group by Janet Keighley, his great niece

Members of Heaton History group, the Veitch family, the Smith family with the Lord Mayor and councillors.

Members of Heaton History Group, the Veitch family, the Smith family with the Lord Mayor and councillors.

Media coverage
The Journal
Evening Chronicle
Sky Tyne and Wear
NUFC.com On the home page at the time of writing but hopefully will be archived later.
Evening Chronicle

Colin Veitch resources

Colin Veitch website

Colin Veitch on Wikipedia

Colin Veitch on Spartacus Educational

Poem for Colin Veitch

Colin Veitch’s Twelve Days of Christmas

The People’s Shakespeare

 

 

Colin Veitch

Colin Veitch’s Twelve Days of Christmas

The days immediately following Christmas 1906 were bleak across much of Britain, with heavy falls of snow, icy temperatures, strong winds, even thunder and lightning. Much to the disappointment of North East football fans, the Tyne-Wear derby due to be played at Roker Park on Saturday 29th December, was postponed.

Holiday fixtures

Newcastle United’s Colin Veitch could be forgiven for secretly welcoming the enforced rest. Footballers in those days faced a punishing schedule over the festive period that would make today’s superstars blanch. In the previous week Newcastle had already played three matches. The derby was due to be their fourth in eight days, all away from home, at a time before luxury travel, pristine pitches or squad rotation.

The previous Saturday, 22nd December. Newcastle had played and beaten Manchester United at United’s Bank Street ground. Colin had scored a penalty in a 3-1 victory. Veitch’s defensive performance in shackling United’s best player, Menzies, was singled out for particular praise in the press.

Colin Veitch

Colin Veitch

Perhaps the game took a lot out of the Tynesiders because three days later, on Christmas Day, Newcastle travelled to Blackburn where an almost unchanged team (just one of the full backs being replaced) suffered their heaviest defeat of the season, 4-0 in front of a big holiday crowd of 35,000.

And the unrelenting schedule continued the following day, Boxing Day. Snow was already carpeting much of the country but players and fans, not to mention train companies, were clearly made of stern stuff back then and United fulfilled their fixture at Stoke City. There were just two further team changes and Colin played his third game of the week in a 2-1 United victory. The win left the Magpies just two points behind Everton at the top of the league.

New home

Newcastle will have had a long and difficult journey home and, had it not been for the weather, would have played their fourth away game in eight days the next Saturday. Colin Veitch and his wife, Minnie, had recently moved into a new house at 1 Stratford Villas, Heaton, where on September 25th Colin’s achievements as a footballer, an actor and a politician will be recognised when the Lord Mayor of Newcastle unveils a commemorative plaque.

We’ve chosen to highlight this period of Colin’s football career because, when carrying out work on their home, the current owners of the Veitches’ former house, found a copy of the Evening Chronicle dated 29th December 1906 under the floor boards. It doesn’t take too much imagination to guess that instead of sitting with his feet up on his unexpected rest day, Colin had instead found himself crouched under the floor mending a burst pipe. His day would get even worse, championship rivals Everton beat Middlesbrough 5-1.

Colin Veitch

Colin Veitch

But Colin and the team soon got back to work. Just two days later on New Years Day 1907, they at last played a home game. A football-starved Newcastle crowd of 30,000 cheered the team to a 2-0 win on an what was by all accounts a quagmire of a pitch. Colin and most of the Newcastle team played their fourth match in eleven days but, luckily for them, it was their opponents Derby County’s fifth! Not to be outdone though, Newcastle played a friendly the following day against Corinthians and won 3-0.

Champions again

United lost to Everton later in the month but showed much greater resilience than their rivals over the second half of the season. They won three matches in four days over Easter and on 7 April, when Blackburn beat Everton, the Geordies were confirmed as champions for the second time in three years.

This was undoubtedly the Magpies’ golden era: in the eight years between 1904 and 1912, they won the league three times and played in five FA Cup Finals, albeit winning only once.

Not only did Colin Veitch play a leading role in the football team’s success, he was also, in 1907, a founder member of the players’ union and in 1911, a co-founder and leading actor (and composer) of the People’s Theatre. In his spare time, he also wrote for the Evening Chronicle!

Special day

Come to our talk at the Corner House, Heaton on Wednesday 25 September to find out more about Colin Veitch, his part in the history of Newcastle United, the PFA and the People’s Theatre – and what his story tells us about the Edwardian era and life in Newcastle and Heaton at that time. Booking is essential as a capacity crowd is expected! Contact maria@heatonhistorygroup.org/ 0191 215 0821 / 07763 985656 to book a place.

The plaque, which will be unveiled earlier in the day, has been made possible by Newcaste City Council, the PFA and private individuals. We’re delighted that we’ll be joined at both events by members of Colin’s family, who are delighted that his achievements are being recognised by the city.