by OLIVER WAKE

Every major conflict in living memory has become the subject of drama almost the moment it was over. The Falklands war, which this month reached its thirtieth anniversary and is again in the news due to renewed tensions between Britain and Argentina over the islands, is no exception. Numerous plays about the conflict reached the stage and radio in its aftermath, but none caught the attention of the public at large. However, when television tackled the subject for the mass audience, the results were frequently politically charged and contentious.

by OLIVER WAKE<\/h4>\n

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Every major conflict in living memory has become the subject of drama almost the moment it was over. The Falklands war, which this month reached its thirtieth anniversary and is again in the news due to renewed tensions between Britain and Argentina over the islands, is no exception. Numerous plays about the conflict reached the stage and radio in its aftermath, but none caught the attention of the public at large. However, when television tackled the subject for the mass audience, the results were frequently politically charged and contentious.<\/p>\n

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First was Don Shaw\u2019s The Falklands Factor<\/em><\/a>, for the BBC\u2019s Play for Today<\/em>, which was screened in April 1983, less than a year after the war\u2019s end.1<\/a><\/sup> Shaw dramatised a previous cold war for the Falklands from 1770-71 to illuminate the history of the conflict and draw parallels with the recent war. The play strongly hints at the role of political expediency in each response to a Falklands invasion and, by showing how diplomacy \u2013 narrowly \u2013 averted bloodshed, questioned whether the same could not have been achieved in 1982.<\/p>\n

The use of picture book-style animation to depict events around the islands and an omniscient narrator, making clear the now-and-then parallels, prevented the play becoming simply a dull spectacle of middle aged men in period dress arguing. It also benefited from the highly watchable presences of John Bird as scheming Prime Minister Lord North and Donald Pleasence as the distant and distracted Dr Johnson, who helped subdue the public\u2019s lust for war over the Falklands.<\/p>\n

The links between past and present conflicts were to have been made even more explicit with a newsreel montage of the recent war at the conclusion. However, at the eleventh hour the BBC\u2019s Director of Programmes, Brian Wenham, insisted upon its removal, reportedly for fear of offending those bereaved by the conflict. Shaw alleged political censorship, suggesting the Corporation were afraid of offending the government in the run up to a potential general election.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Screened on BBC2 less than three months later, in July 1983, Maggie Wadey\u2019s The Waiting War<\/em> dramatised the conflict via the experiences of three navy wives in Portsmouth whose husbands were aboard HMS Sheffield<\/em>. It was shot in Portsmouth itself and based on Wadey\u2019s interviews with the families of Task Force sailors in the town. The drama charted their experiences from the Sheffield<\/em> being redirected to the South Atlantic, to media reports of the ship\u2019s sinking and their frantic efforts to get news from the impenetrable official channels.<\/p>\n

The Waiting War<\/em> highlighted the anxieties of service families, the way in which television and radio bulletins become sources of fear in the absence of official news, and their hopeless task dealing with Ministry of Defence bureaucracy. It also indicated the ignorance of many about the objective over which their loved ones were fighting, with one character asking: \u201cWhere are the bloody Falklands anyway?\u201d, a question many may again be asking as the latest diplomatic row over the islands rumbles on during the war\u2019s thirtieth anniversary.<\/p>\n

By all accounts, The Waiting War<\/em> was a success. Television critic Peter Fiddick praised the \u201ctaut, economical play\u201d for maintaining \u201ca delicate balance in keeping such potentially sensational material at the same time angry and decent.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup> He also noted the \u201cstrong performances\u201d of the cast. Peter Ackroyd was equally impressed, calling it a \u201cpowerful drama\u201d and finding it \u201csuccessful enough that, in parts, it was too painful to watch.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> It was one of very few Falklands themed television dramas not to provoke controversy.<\/p>\n

ITV\u2019s only Falklands drama was also the only one for the children\u2019s audience, being made as part of Thames Television\u2019s schools series Middle English<\/em>. Screened in September and October 1983, Jan Needle\u2019s three-part A Game of Soldiers<\/em> depicted how children encountering the real world consequences of the battles they played at could themselves get caught up in the \u2018fog of war\u2019. A trio of children on the Falklands find a wounded young Argentinean conscript hiding in a sheep shelter. He is scared to surrender himself to the British army because propaganda has convinced him he would be shot. The children, meanwhile, are afraid to tell their parents as one of them had overheard them discussing an incident in which local ‘hothead’ farmers had killed lost Argentinean conscripts. The impasse is unresolved and the drama ends in tragedy.<\/p>\n