Wind of Change, The. Flyer (Front)
It’s 1958, the time to be young in E1 – the clubs, fashion and music are swinging all the way to the ’60s. Ruth arrives from Jamaica to train for her SRN certificate at the London Hospital ‘to be the best Jamaican nurse since Mary Seacole’. But the attitudes that white people had to blacks was not something that Ruth was prepared for…
You can access the script of this play via the British Library’s MPS Modern Playscripts Collection. This play is also listed on the National Theatre’s Black Plays Archive.
Norman Goodman talks about The Wind of Change, Winsome Pinnock’s first play and how he enjoyed seeing writers and other artists working with the company. Interviewed by Beccy Allen.
The Wind of Change was first staged in the same year that Black History Month began in the UK. Set in Whitechapel in East London, the play was first performed at the Half Moon Theatre, Mile End, an area with a long history of migration, immigration and anti-racist action against white supremacists which is referenced in the play.
The play dramatises the tension between first and second generation Black British parents and their children about issues of racism and identity. 16 year old Trevor wants to hear about her experience of migrating to London from Jamaica and training as a nurse so he can make sense of the racism he experiences himself.
He is asking this question in the aftermath of uprisings against racist treatment in London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester in 1981 and more immediately, the aftermath of the Broadwater Farm riot of 1985. Ruth is reluctant to talk about it because she believes there is no point dwelling on the past.
Writer Winsome Pinnock drew on historical sources and contemporary sociological research to present a mix of voices and viewpoints. The play begins in the present (1986) before moving back to 1958 to juxtapose the experiences of Ruth, a black woman from Jamaica, and Tina, a local white woman both training at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. They meet on their first day and gradually form a friendship which becomes strained by the racism Ruth encounters. First she discovers that despite having applied to train as a State Registered Nurse and being suitably qualified for the programme, she has been placed by the hospital on the less skilled State Enrolled Nurse training programme. Then we see her living in a cold and rundown bed sit which contrasts unfavourably with the cosy working-class home Tina shares with her dad.
Ruth’s letters home to her mum, although ostensibly cheerful, also paint a bleak picture of her experiences in London. Their friendship is paralleled through the dwindling of another bi-racial friendship between Ted and Sam as Ted is recruited by white racists. The play ends back in the present where we learn that Ruth and Tina are no longer friends.
Interspersed with the dramatic scenes are recordings of voices offering their impressions of London and feelings of disappointment and betrayal: ‘they taught us about the Mother country: mother, protector and friend’ (Pinnock 2025, 26). The experience and impact of the Notting Hill riots is presented through a scene in which people recall their experiences of blockading themselves in a house and seeing injured people in the street.
Have you got a memory you’d like to share? Or perhaps you have a programme or poster from one of our shows that we're currently missing? Then we want to hear from you! The website is a living archive and we will continue to add information as it comes to light.
Read More
