Back in the DHSS… Play for Today Volume Two, BFI box set

 

I was angry then and I’m bloody angry now. Tony Garnett

 

I was lucky enough to see Tony Garnett talk after a screening at Elstree of The Boys (1962) in which he acted, a few years back. Tony decided that he would never be as good an actor as he wanted to be and set about forging his career as a ground-breaking producer for Ken Loach and others. He still retained his passion for social justice as the above quote reveals; said with a smile but with a steely glint.

 

His production of The Spongers (1978) still provides the fiercest of gut punches and not for nowt has Jimmy McGovern described it as ‘the best television programme ever made’, and he wouldn’t have been the only one influenced by its realism and raw power. All of the plays in this new BFI set reflect discussions on social care, education, race and employment relations that are very much ongoing and none more so than disability rights.

 

Cheeky messaging at the play's start

The Spongers is based on an actual case in Salford in which council support for a child with Down’s Syndrome was withdrawn for the usual reasons of cost and the child ended up in a hospital where the care was hopelessly inadequate rather than in the expert and supportive environment she needed.

 

There are more than three classes in this country and the “Disability Class” cuts across them all in its own silent way, whole families impacted by circumstances not of their making and desperately trying to pull social, medical and educational support together under their own steam. You’re very lucky if you have income but you better hadn’t be poor.

 

Here Christine Hargreaves features as Pauline, a mother on benefits with four children including Paula, a child with Down’s. Paula McDonagh’s performance is very affecting even now especially when she has a meltdown which feels all to real to be comfortable but she is at the heart of the family and supported by loving friends as well as relatives.

Paula McDonagh and Gertie Almond

Times are hard and as the play opens the bailiffs arrive to reclaim a few hundred pounds worth of debt, a fortune for Pauline who, despite the attempts of a well-meaning social worker, has to sign off her possessions. Whilst she’s in a downward spiral of debt so too are local authority cuts removing the support for Paula and she is placed in unsympathetic environments that start to impact her mental health.

 

This all happens under a Labour government and with a Labour council – led by Councillor Conway played by Bernard Atha who had been a Labour councillor in Leeds and gives the debate between what is possible and what can be afforded extra grit. There are social workers and a dedicated support worker for the estate called Sullivan played by PFT ever-present Bernard Hill with passionate subtlety – he’s as helpless as Pauline to channel events.

Bernard Hill and Christine Hargreaves

Directed by Roland Joffé – his first film, Tony Garnett who “threw him in the deep end and he swam…” - the play mixes a good deal of natural humour and local warmth amidst the gloom. We’re setting up for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and there are street parties, singalongs and working men’s clubs in which Auntie Gertie (Gertie Almond) sings in the Northern way and is always ready with a quip and The Last Word!

 

But there’s no escapism left for Pauline who, having been married on a dual income for sixteen years, has slipped into debt following her husband’s departure and is now faced with agonising decisions if she wants to keep her family together. Her father, played by scouser Peter Kerrigan, tries to help and can’t believe as a child of thirties depravation, that his country is in such a state. It’s that feeling of helplessness that resonates still, even in this most prosperous of nations. Disability and ill fortune can condemn so many even as we find billions for failed track and trace systems and even more nuclear weapons that we will never need.

 

Frankie Miller and Ken Hutchison

Things are tough in Glasgow too and the two Peter McDougall plays, both directed by John Mackenzie show different aspects of the area, “Greenock Industrial and the Greenock Pastoral” as termed by David Archibald in his booklet essay on these most Scottish of plays. Martin Scorsese reportedly described Just A Boys’ Game (1979) as a Scottish Mean Streets… and it’s not hard to see why with this no holds barred vision of working-class brutality. Singer Frankie Miller is perfect as cock of the walk Jake McQuillen reminding me so much of the lads in seventies’ Liverpool, you’d cross the road to avoid. Jake doesn’t need to put out as he never backs down and has the cold-eyed certainty of a fast gun; he knows he can take anyone on his day.

 

His supremacy is about to be challenged by a “young team” (Mogwai were watching…) led by the razor blade toting McCafferty. In the pivotal battle Jake moves towards the gang telling him that “your tea’s oot’ and local catch phrase was born. The rules of the street pass on from generations and Jake’s Granda (Hector Nichol), even in extreme health is a hard-boiled bastard and his Grannie (Jean Taylor Smith) gives better than she ever gets. Tough love or just survival… there’s so much nuance in performance and players that you’ll be left thinking about the visceral actuality for days.

 

Jon Morrison and Billy Connolly

Another musician also features in The Elephant’s Graveyard (1976), this time banjo-player/comic and former shipyard worker, Billy Connolly who plays poetic postie, Jody who meets up with a bored IBM worker Bunny (Jon Morrison) up in the Greenock hills as they both bunk off work for the day. Jody is pushing 40 whilst Bunny has just started work and, over two bottles of stream-chilled fortified wine – you’re heads the next day!? – they start to set their worlds to rights and amidst the macho bluster and boyish “dares” start to establish a bond of sorts. The barriers come down and they even share a vision of cowboys being ambushed by Indians over a brook.

 

Despite their ages they have the same concern with how to live their lives and perhaps look back to the childhood freedoms of days in the woods for some clues. I like the robustness of the dialogue and the humour too. In the end you’re still wondering… what was really being exchanged and is Jody a vision of Bunny’s future or, maybe, just a smart-arsed postman.

 

Lovely music from young Carl Davis by the way, whatever became of him?

 

Get your hair cut Davies!

No less than Daniel Day-Lewis described Phil Davies’ astonishing performance in Barrie Keefe’s Gotcha (1977) as one of his early acting inspirations. He plays an unnamed fifth former who, on his last day at school finds his gym teacher Ton (Gareth Thomas) and another teacher Lynne (Clare Sutcliffe who is also to be seen in eth BFI’s new release of I Start Counting) embracing in a storage room. Disaffected by his lack of consequence and Ton’s slaps, the kid holds them hostage by holding a lighted cigarette over his motorbike. Even the threat of immolation can’t help them remember his name and when the head (Peter Hughes) joins them, we see the three try to talk him round with only Lynne genuinely concerned with the boy and not the situation.

 

As someone who attended comprehensive school in the Seventies, I remember some dramas but, again, under a Labour regime, it was clear that not all schools were equal and that success was elusive. As with social care, you need to ride your luck with education especially if you can’t pay for it. Keefe went on to script The Long Good Friday and if you know that you’ll recognise this.

 

Gotcha was presented with another short school play, Brian Clark’s Campion’s Interview, in which a head teacher (Julian Curry) attends an interview for another headship and uses it to inform the gathered mix of educationalists exactly why they are failing his current school. It’s a smart script and well played by Curry who maintains an almost matter of fact calm as he lines up each and every failure of policy and leadership. The two plays together stir and shake.

 

Bryan Marshall and Gareth Thomas drink to a common cause?

In terms of production values and cinematic entertainment, Stocker’s Copper (1972) is the pick of the bunch not that this tale of industrial action and police suppression goes any easier on the viewer. Based on events in 1913 when a squad of specially trained policemen were sent from Glamorgan to break a strike at a Cornish clay mine. As the silent bobbies sit grimly on the train approaching their destination only one turns and remarks on the huge creamy mountains of china clay, Herbert Griffith (Gareth Thomas) who with the out of context innocence, remarks that it looks like snow.

 

Herbert – played so well by Thomas – is able to encompass a whole range of contradictions without crumbling under the weight of conscience. A former steel worker, he became a policeman for a steady wage and the “special training” his particular force offers; he understands the process of industrial action and even the need for it but he knows he has the right to beat down on it once the law is beached.

 

Jane Lapotaire and Gareth Thomas

He stays with the family of one of the strike’s leaders, Manuel Stocker (Bryan Marshall, excellent here as he is in I Start Counting…), with Stocker’s wife Alice (Jane Lapotaire) putting the need for income over the awkwardness of the arrangement. Tom Clarke’s screen play is canny and uses this device to explore the relationships between labour and the law as well as the many things the two working class men have in common. He pits Manuel’s stern resolve against the openness and seeming honesty of Herbert and the relationship is fascinating as you know all too well how things may end up.

 

The labour movement was on the rise across Europe and strikes were to be of increasing concern. The Home Secretary Winston Churchill sent troops to put an end to the Liverpool Transport Workers Strike in 1911 – including my tram driving great grandfather – and he also sent a battle cruiser up the Mersey for good measure. Yet these unions we ultimately to prevail. Not without many heads being broken and when the push comes to shove, Stocker’s Copper is unsettling viewing.

 

There’s another a splendid score from young Carl Davis along with the magnificent Treviscoe Male Choir and St Dennis Silver Band reminding us of the solidarity and comfort music can bring.

 

Victims of Apartheid

Lastly, we have Victims of Apartheid (1978), scripted by Tom Clarke and directed by Stuart Burge which feels the most of it’s time (I generally hate the concept of dated, how can any work of art know how it needs to be viewed in future?) but, for all that, still disturbing in this era of “All Lives Matter” relativism and denial.

 

South African actor John Kani plays George an anti-apartheid campaigner itching to return to the fray in his home country but also suffering what we’d now term as PTSD after being tortured by the authorities who drove a nail through his foreskin and made him stand on tip toe to avoid tearing his flesh. Kani is jobless and having been dumped by his wife, is being supported by various well-intentioned British activists including Canon Caper of Christian Underground (Peter Jeffrey) who offers him money to look after Henry (John Matshikiza) another supposed refugee from South Africa.

 

George’s life is chaotic and he has a new girlfriend, sex-worker Carrie (Coral Atkins) which says much of his position in this new society. The question is raised early on as George takes Henry on a bus ride and talks to the black bus conductor about his new friend conceding that whilst there is “racialism” in Britain there is no colour bar. The bus conductor’s response says it all: You got racialism, who needs a colour bar.

 

So, how “dated” is the vision of domestic racialism we see in this play exactly? It would be well over a decade later that Apartheid legislation was finally repealed in June 1991, pending multiracial elections held under a universal suffrage in April 1994. It was only then that Kani would tell the Financial Times that he felt ‘liberated from the responsibility of relevance’. The case continues…

 

The BFI are to be congratulated once again for making these works available and the Blu-ray transfers are top notch. The booklet is packed with high-quality essays commissioned by the tireless Vic Pratt and add so much context to films that still present as fearless. They were certainly challenged at the time with Gotcha shouted down for a repeat by Mary Whitehouse and her league of complainers and other’s such as Peter MacDougall’s Just Another Saturday – about Orange Day marches, rescheduled.

 

These plays put fear into the hearts of some in the establishment. Shall we ever see their like again on the BBC?

 

You can pre-order Play for Today Volume 2 direct from the BFI shop, in person (hoorah!) or online. It’s out on 17^th May and is an absolute delight! Rated: *****