Programme of 'The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil'.
A clip from the show
John McGrath was the artistic director of 7:84 Theatre Company in the 1970s. He wrote one of their best known plays 'The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil.' This was first performed in 1973. 7:84 toured Scotland with this musical drama which told the story of economic change in the Scottish Highlands, from the Highland Clearances in the early 19 th century through to the oil boom of the 1970s. This extract from John McGrath's book, which is a contemporary source, shows us that some people in the 1970s were able to put the sudden rise of the North Sea oil industry into its historical context in a thought provoking and entertaining way.
The Year of the Cheviot by John McGrath.
The book was published in 1981. The play, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil, was first performed in March 1973.
John McGrath
At the first sniff of oil off the east coast of Scotland, things began to jump. First in Aberdeen and the North-East. Then all over. Suddenly villages that did not merit even an advance factory for 100 workers are being taken over by thousands of men in labour camps building oil-rigs, and oil-production platforms. The Highlands and Islands Development Board had failed to do anything about Stornoway's 150 unemployed. Now Fred Olsen's men are talking about Stornoway's need for 5,000 jobs: it happens they want to service and build rigs there. They're even talking about a shipyard. Land prices in some areas have been so inflated by speculators that local farmers can't stay and, in Aberdeen, young couples in need of houses are talking about emigrating. International corporations – oil, land, property, building, construction, marine, even catering – are jumping about all over the place looking for millions of dollars. And they don't care what they do to the people to get them. Capitalism has seen another big opportunity in the Highlands.
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Our first gig was in Aberdeen. We had one van borrowed from the original 7:84 that sort of went….The show went well, for a first night, and we were staggered to see an Aberdeen audience stand up and cheer at the end. The last section of the show, on the oil rip-off, had meant so much to them, they demanded that we come back (which we did with pleasure, a few months later).
