The 2006 Labour Party conference in Manchester was dominated by the news of Tony Blair’s departure from office. Ten Tiny Toes is the culmination of interviews taken during a three-day peace camp in Manchester with people involved in Military Families Against The War (now called the Iraq-War Families Campaign Group.) The conversations were shocking and illuminating.

Playwright Esther Wilson was in Manchester for those four days but she didn’t attend the Labour Party conference, instead she was out and about in the peace camp set up in the city centre within full view of Blair’s hotel by the campaign group, Military Families Against War.

There were other protests during the conference – most notably a Stop the War march but it was the families of those killed in action, or serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Wilson wanted to spend time with.

The idea for a play – a play about the conflicts showing their devastating impact on home life – had begun to form in her mind, and she wanted to talk to as many people as possible to get a handle on the emotions she was trying to set down on stage. Esther wasn’t prepared for the stories that came out of the interviews taken during her research.

Esther said, “The stories shocked me, in political terms; I was hearing things that at the time weren’t getting much attention in the media, particularly about the lack of equipment our soldiers were struggling with. You had desperate parents visiting American army surplus websites to buy equipment for their sons. The boy who came back wasn’t the boy that went – that was a sentiment I heard a lot,” says Wilson.

“You’d hear about the good son who would come home on leave, drink a lot, hit his girlfriend, and be disruptive at home. The mum would say: ‘I’m worried he won’t come back, but I’m worried what’ll happen if he does.’ And it was the mums, in the main, who opened up: “They were glad to because they felt no one was listening to them.”

Rehearsals are currently underway at Liverpool John Moores University. The play returns to the stage as a statement on the current political landscape of the U.K.

Esther Wilson continues: “The recent publication of the Chilcot Report after a long, seven year wait came without much of a fuss. Our current political mess seems to be keeping it off the front pages and out of the public’s consciousness. Iraq-War Families Campaign Group were instrumental in helping to push for the enquiry and without their courage and tenacity, it would never have happened. Those bereaved families are, seemingly, left without any hope of real justice. They are trying to raise as much money as they can in order to take Tony Blair to task.”

Liverpool venue Unity Theatre will host Ten Tiny Toes this Thursday, the 4th August 2016, 7:30pm. Tickets for this event are free, however donations on the night will be gratefully received and all funds raised will go towards the Iraq War Families Campaign Group to help with their legal funds.

You can also make donations to the fund at: https://www.crowdjustice.co.uk/case/chilcot.

Tickets are free and can be booked via Unity Theatre’s Box Office, by calling 0151 709 4988 or via www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk.

Please note that there are a limited number of seats available on a first come first served basis.