In February 1948 nearly 500 delegates gathered in London for an unprecedented four-day meeting designed to tackle no less a task than the complete regeneration of British theatre. The British Theatre Conference attracted a broad sweep of interests: London and regional theatres, drama schools and training colleges, plus national institutions, such as the actors’ union Equity and the umbrella body for amateur theatre, the British Drama League. Some were present as individuals, among them leading West End theatre managers, who collectively had refused to send a representative when they learned that theatre ownership was on the agenda.

Here was an historic opportunity for the British theatre to redefine itself and its relationship to society. The upsurge of interest in culture during World War Two had survived into peacetime, and Labour’s nationalisation programme offered the promise of significant state funding for the arts. The conference, chaired by the writer J. B. Priestley, passed an astonishing array of far-sighted resolutions: on strengthening the Arts Council, establishing a national theatre, reducing and controlling theatre rents and costs through a public authority entertainment tax, renovating theatre buildings, reforming safety and licensing regulations – including a call for Sunday opening and an end to censorship – expanding drama in education, increasing co-operation between amateur and professional theatre, improving professional training and – most contentious of all – regulating entry and re-entry into ‘the profession’ through training or apprenticeship.

Although this impressive roll-call of concerns prefigured the major debates that defined British theatre during the following half-century, the moment of radical change was lost. National economic stringency and the reassertion of conservatism within the theatre itself pushed the profession of theatre down a different path.