Play for Today Writer: David Edgar; Producer: Margaret Matheson; Director: Mike Newell
This essay continues from Part 2.
Part 3: Analysis of Destiny and its afterlife
Please note that, in order to explore this programme and its political context, this essay quotes racially offensive language.
Visual motifs, setting, culture and class
In its adaptation to television, the play’s text was sometimes faithfully translated, but Edgar made significant alterations and changes of emphasis. The medium is used to historicise the play with exact dates – “15th August 1947”, “20th April 1968”, “19th June 1970” and “1977” – being presented. The stage version’s text does not as clearly indicate the year of the contemporary scenes.
Play for Today<\/em> Writer:<\/strong> David Edgar; Producer:<\/strong> Margaret Matheson; Director:<\/strong> Mike Newell<\/p>\n This essay continues from Part 2<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Part 3: Analysis of Destiny<\/em> and its afterlife<\/strong> Visual motifs, setting, culture and class<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1987, Edgar, reviewing Paul Gilroy\u2019s book, There Ain\u2019t No Black in the Union Jack<\/em>, argued in favour of a left-wing localism over nationalism: <\/p>\n the future of the radical project will be located not in generalised and ideologically dubious evocations of a vaguely popular-fronted Churchilliana, but in the struggles of specific and often local communities whose rootedness in tradition and immediate social relations is the essential basis of a radical response to social change.2<\/a><\/sup> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Labour Club in Destiny<\/em> is a positive exemplar of this kind of social environment, a setting that nurtures radical actions such as solidarity with the striking Asian workers. In contrast, the NF headquarters is presented as a nativist dead end, peopled by the uninitiated. In the original text, Tony and Liz make a banner with \u201cA union jack, behind an applique white family\u201d, which bears the archetypal fascist slogan \u201cThe future belongs to us\u201d, which elicits Cleaver\u2019s approval.3<\/a><\/sup> This is removed, suggesting lack of agency on these minor characters\u2019 part, with Cuthbertson\u2019s domineering Cleaver having less meaningful interaction with them.<\/p>\n The picket-line scene is especially minimalist when compared with Leeds United!<\/em>, a Play for Today<\/em> in which director Roy Battersby employed extras as vast crowds of strikers and, as Dennis Potter observed in his review, used \u201clong, steady pans and elaborate tracks\u201d that subtly conveyed \u201cdeep emotional commitment\u201d.5<\/a><\/sup> In contrast, Newell does not intend Destiny<\/em> to be a drama-documentary; its aesthetic is somewhere between the studio-based, anti-naturalist minimalism of Churchill\u2019s People<\/em> and what Ian Greaves and John Williams describe as the \u201crealist aesthetic\u201d of the entirely-location filmed Days of Hope<\/em>.6<\/a><\/sup> Newell’s predominantly studio aesthetic usually tends to reflect naturalism, though the picket-line scene stands out as minimalist. The scene\u2019s complexity is heightened by Crosby\u2019s lack of complacency, as he speaks to Clifton about the NF being \u201cour creation\u201d and resulting from the post-WW2 era. Critic Day-Lewis commented that Edgar had managed to show how \u201creasonable discontents\u201d with the present had influenced the rise in fascist support, as well as \u201cunreasoning fear of immigrant infiltration.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Rolfe\u2019s introductory poem is read over a scene of him in business-wear sitting on a train carriage in the midst of modern Britain. In contrast, the theatre version depicted him in an empty set, standing in the centre, in a black overcoat and \u201cwith medals and a poppy\u201d. Newell and cinematographer Crosby isolate Rolfe, who is alone on the carriage and given twitchy and despondent expressions by Hawthorne. Towards the end of this sequence, Rolfe spots an Asian and a black man walking past on the train, and gives them a frowning look: connoting that ethnic diversity is part of Rolfe\u2019s doomy, declinist vision of Britain. During Colonel Chandler\u2019s funeral, like the train sequence shot on film, and a rare use of outdoor location, Hawthorne emphasises Major Rolfe’s bitter anger with his shouted delivery: \u201cWill it be any different next time!?\u201d He is also given the hyperbolic abstract noun \u201cArmageddon\u201d when outlining his vision of the left-wing threat to Britain, which he sees as embodying unreasonable discontent.<\/p>\n The sight of Nigel Hawthorne weeping as he plucked at the folds of a Union Jack managed to be both disgusting and moving, thrilling and dangerous, an absolution and an accusation, at one and the same time. Great acting, great writing, great direction; among the very best I have ever seen. Malignancy charted.8<\/a><\/sup> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hawthorne conveys how Major Rolfe\u2019s personal despair and grief and are intermingled with politics and history, with a performance of physical stillness and quivering vocal passion. Hawthorne convincingly conveys the dark paradox of Edgar\u2019s dialogue and how Rolfe feels more sympathy for the \u201c12-year-old boy killer in the Divis flats\u201d than the British generals and the ministers. The end of the scene is significantly altered; unlike on stage, Kershaw is present, as is gradually revealed. <\/p>\n The closing line of this scene (and of Act 2) of the stage version is omitted from the television version: Rolfe\u2019s authoritarian statement \u201cWe need an iron dawn\u201d and Rolfe holding up the Union flag. Instead, the Tory Kershaw is given rueful but defiant dialogue that Rolfe alone had spoken in the stage version. Its inclusion following Rolfe\u2019s monologue directly links their shared desire for a right-wing counter-attack with the strike situation at Baron Castings: \u201cThey say they\u2019ll get them in. Unthinkable, to use these people\u2026 Impossible not to, all other options closed\u201d. This refers to their making use of the NF to break the picket-lines; this may be Edgar alluding to the situation at Grunwick in the summer of 1977 where the right-wing NAFF assisted George Ward, the photo processing plant\u2019s boss. The last section of Kershaw\u2019s dialogue is heard over the opening of the next scene: a tableau of the flag-wielding NF, applauding the abashed Turner, wearing an election rosette, all ready to set off for the picket-line. This scene is entirely new for the television version, showing Cleaver arriving to much heartier applause than Turner, followed by his imperative to his troops: \u201cRight, let\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n In the scene in Turner’s shop, the television version cuts down detailed explanatory dialogue about the 1970 General Election, instead conveying it economically through the use of a Daily Express<\/em> front page. However, Goodman does say \u201cI\u2019m a Selsdon Man, like \u2019im!\u201d, pointing to the image of Edward Heath. The Colonel\u2019s poem begins while we see Turner taking down and folding up his Conservative election poster. This makes more explicit the link between Turner and the dying Tory MP Colonel Chandler, and emphasises Turner’s sense of grievance and betrayal by his \u201cown\u201d Party, which he sees as being invaded by spiv capitalists like Goodman. Turner\u2019s status as shopkeeper is emblematic: Margaret Thatcher\u2019s greatest inspiration was her father, Alfred Roberts, not just a Conservative councillor in Grantham but, importantly, a grocer. <\/p>\n Although cultural allusions are significant, the television version gives a reduced role to music. We hear The Last Post<\/em> at Colonel Chandler\u2019s funeral but the programme does not retain the text\u2019s use of an unspecified piece by Handel as the stage blackouts at the end of Act 1 or the use of \u201cA German recording of the SS marching song\u2019 Horst-Wessel-Lied<\/em> at the end of the scene set in 1968.15<\/a><\/sup> More significantly, Edgar chose to remove Tony Perrins\u2019 guitar and vocals musical setting of Rudyard Kipling\u2019s poem The Beginnings<\/em>,16<\/a><\/sup>, which Turner describes as \u201ca patriotic song\u201d.17<\/a><\/sup> This was originally used towards the end of the Taddley Patriotic League meeting. This five-stanza poem, with its refrain \u201cthe English began to hate\u201d, was arguably dramatically superfluous following the audience contributions and Maxwell\u2019s speech, added to which it is unlikely that a disaffected working-class youth would know and sing Kipling in 1977: as Orwell argued, in Kipling\u2019s day, the masses were \u201cbored\u201d by the Empire and his audience was primarily \u201cthe \u2018service\u2019 middle class, the people who read Blackwood\u2019s\u2019.18<\/a><\/sup> Orwell also mentioned how erroneous much left-wing criticism of Kipling as a \u201cfascist\u201d could be, arguing that he was a \u201cConservative [who] identified with the ruling power and not with the opposition.\u201d19<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n While this omission may have been a wise move, creating greater naturalism, it means the television play has less connection with a source of mythical Englishness. Rob Young and Peter Ackroyd, in different books about national identity and music, feature extensive discussion of Kipling\u2019s strange collection of stories, Puck of Pook\u2019s Hill<\/em> (1906), where ash, oak and thorn leaves give the children access to earlier times. In his biography of Kipling, published the year the television Destiny<\/em> was recorded, Angus Wilson discusses how the collection embodies some of Kipling\u2019s most cherished themes; he mentions how \u2018The Knife and the Naked Chalk\u2019 expresses the archetypal libertarian right-wing myth of \u201cthe terrible price to be paid by the individual for society\u2019s advances\u201d.20<\/a><\/sup> It is easy to imagine the child Peter Crosby as an avid young viewer of the 1951 television adaptation of Puck of Pook\u2019s Hill<\/em>.21<\/a><\/sup> Kipling\u2019s ideas do circulate in the television play.22<\/a><\/sup> Edgar keeps the illusion to the \u201cWhite Man\u2019s Burden\u201d, a famous phrase attributed to Kipling, in the opening scene in India.<\/p>\n Although the television version keeps the allusion to Kipling, it removes all textual references to Winston Churchill and Lord Mountbatten.25<\/a><\/sup> It also removes Kershaw\u2019s scornful reference to \u201cMr Wedgwood Benn\u201d and the theatre version’s topical references to \u201cmoderate\u201d Labour figures such as Reg Prentice and Roy Jenkins, which had clearly defined Paul as an oppositional leftist insurgent. This is evidence of Edgar trying to aim at a less specialist television audience. However, he does also change Rolfe\u2019s dialogue about the Tories \u201cGenuflecting to the fashionable myths\u201d to them \u201cstill genuflecting to the sacred cows of Congress House\u201d. This greater emphasises the Major\u2019s hatred of trade union power; Congress House being the TUC\u2019s Headquarters since its opening in 1958.26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Social class is important throughout. Within the India scene, army rank and hierarchy are emphasised, as is Rolfe\u2019s more lowly educational background: the fact that he didn\u2019t go to prep-school, unlike his commanding officer Colonel Chandler. Rolfe thus lies closer to Turner in class than the Tory grandee Chandler and refers to himself as being from \u201cthe lower middle-class\u201d. Turner\u2019s petit-bourgeois class is disclosed in his reference to \u201cold virtues, thrift and prudence, despised\u201d and details such as the front page of the Daily Express<\/em> being visible on his desk in the 1970 sequence, its headline signifying historicity: \u201cMarginals are falling to Heath \u2013 TORIES RACE TO VICTORY\u201d. Edgar further emphasises Maxwell\u2019s sense of social superiority to the plebeian Turner in this new dialogue for the television version: \u201cI have had all morning with Turner and his medical paranoias\u201d. Maxwell sees Turner\u2019s base conspiracy theories as beneath his socialism-infused vision; Maxwell was identified by Day-Lewis as a paradoxical \u201cracialist-Trotskyite\u201d.27<\/a><\/sup> When he finally abandons the NF, due to his preference for \u201cthe masses\u201d and distrust of Cleaver\u2019s messianic leadership style, Blatchley plays him as more clearly scoffing than the original text suggested. Cleaver ultimately enforces his traditional views of class on the party when arguing with the \u201cbolshie\u201d Maxwell: \u201csome were born to lead, others were born to follow\u201d. <\/p>\n The depth of Edgar\u2019s portrayal of the varying far-right characters reflects his support \u2013 expressed later, in 2005 \u2013 for the BBC\u2019s public service remit to \u201cgive a voice to those who aren\u2019t heard\u201d.28<\/a><\/sup> Similarly to the right-wing characters\u2019 discourses in Peter Nichols\u2019s The Common<\/em>, the Tory Platt refers it now being \u201cvery dodgy\u201d with the \u201cnew estates\u201d [council estates]. In his 1968 speech, Cleaver uses sexist humour, which indicates Edgar\u2019s greater gender critique in the television version: \u201ca good speech should be like a woman\u2019s skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the subject!\u201d<\/p>\n Representations of ideologies<\/strong><\/p>\n In the 2017 French film Chez Nous<\/em> (This is Our Land<\/em>), \u00c9milie Duquenne plays a disaffected nurse who turns to the far-right and becomes a Marine Le Pen-style electoral figurehead. Liz might have been a comparable character, but her role is reduced in comparison with the play; unlike Tony, who retains his importance through his prison \u201creunion\u201d scene with Paul. Liz’s longest bit of dialogue is cut to just: \u201cI want a reason to have children\u201d. This removes her story of disillusionment leading to her giving up sewing and her declinist arguments: \u201cOur country\u2019s rotting. Fabric\u2019s perished. Ripping at the seams.\u201d It also loses her articulation of finding a home and a sense of identity in the Taddley Patriotic League. Instead, Sandy\u2019s speech about working-class voters stands for much of her resentment. Her sense of grievance felt is due to powerlessness, with centralised government seen as high-handedly ignoring local opinion and imposing its will: a feeling Rudyard Kipling would have empathised with, never being as at home with British culture following the growth of the Whitehall apparatus due to geopolitical developments and the invention of the telegraph after 1914.29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n In the meeting scene, Maxwell\u2019s skilful communication includes his allusive: \u201cto use a light-hearted phrase, we all feel \u2018Fings ain\u2019t what they used to be\u2019\u201d. As well as synthesising the disparate grievances around the room, he taps into his audience\u2019s nostalgia and its shared memories of popular musical theatre; indeed, as noted earlier, the programme was broadcast on BBC1 shortly after The Good Old Days<\/em>, which offered a nostalgic version of Victorian popular entertainment. It is unlikely those gathered in the Taddley Patriotic League would have known that Lionel Bart\u2019s light-hearted musical, Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be<\/em>, was first produced by Joan Littlewood\u2019s left-wing Theatre Workshop.30<\/a><\/sup> Maxwell may have known, though. He has a good deal of the socialist about him, bringing him into conflict with Cleaver. Maxwell\u2019s smooth way with words, brilliantly captured by Joseph Blatchley, is contrasted by the dour, gauche Turner.31<\/a><\/sup> Unlike in the theatre text, Maxwell delivers a short, near Hitler-style salute near the end of his speech, signifying Edgar\u2019s view of the NF as ultimately a Nazi front. Maxwell\u2019s complexity is shown by Edgar giving him the angry words \u201cWe are not ex-Tories with a thing about the wogs\u201d, dialogue in the television version which replaces the theatre version’s \u201cWe are not ersatz Conservatives with a particular distaste for immigration.\u201d Edgar also removes the pre-modifiers he originally gave to Maxwell\u2019s noun phrase: \u201cbackwoods Conservative elitism\u201d. This blunter, more colloquial dialogue adds to the portrayal of the public-schooled Maxwell as a clever populist. While Turner is portrayed with empathy and his motivation is convincingly established, his unreconstructed racism is not soft-pedalled: the television version keeps his line to Crosby (\u201cOh, after the nig-vote, are we?\u201d),32<\/a><\/sup> and gives him the additional line that makes him sound like a West Midlands Bernard Manning: \u201cAnd have you heard the one about the Paki?\u201d<\/p>\n Cleaver\u2019s speech, on the day of Powell\u2019s \u201cRivers of Blood\u201d speech, is foregrounded in the television version, moved from being Act 1 Scene 6 to Scene 2: directly after the Indian independence day. Edgar creates a greater subtlety in this scene by omitting the characters\u2019 toast to \u201cThe Fuhrer\u201d, though the picture of Hitler and Union flags are prominently displayed as part of the mise en sc\u00e8ne. The scene in which Cleaver and Maxwell school Turner as a candidate via cross-examination shows their far-right campaign\u2019s central focus on how non-whites \u201ctake jobs that would normally be given to the whites\u201d. This scene becomes gradually more chilling, as the manipulative Cleaver leads Turner towards Anti-Semitism, naming communists and big business people united by race: \u201cRothschild. Marx. Kissinger. Rosa Luxemburg. Oppenheimer. Lev Davidovitch Trotsky. What they have in common\u2026\u201d This litany omits the stage text\u2019s references to \u201cWarburg and Schiff\u201d \u2013 probably the banker James Warburg and New York Time<\/em>s owner Dorothy Schiff \u2013 while adding reference to scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Turner\u2019s weakness is played upon \u2013 to convince him, Cleaver asks him the name of the man who took his livelihood away, and Turner speaks it as if now convinced by his argument: \u201cMonty Goodman\u201d.<\/p>\n The wider right-wing view of Britain in 1977 is presented; Rolfe provides a response to the famous 1962 Dean Acheson quote about Britain\u2019s having lost an Empire and not yet having found a role: \u201cWe have found a role. As Europe\u2019s whipping boy\u201d. He also refers to the nation as \u201cseedy, drab\u201d and a \u201cflaccid spongers\u2019 state\u201d. Rolfe\u2019s views echo Robert Moss, whose book The Collapse of Democracy<\/em> (1975) is quoted at the start of Act 3: \u201cthe tentacles of bureaucracy and egalitarian socialism are strangling private enterprise.\u201d33<\/a><\/sup> In the theatre text, this is placed directly before a Hitler quotation from February 1933, making an explicit analogy between Weimar Germany and 1970s Britain. Yet Edgar undermines this doom-laden vision: the scenes in the Labour Club and the Pakistani restaurant have a mood of humdrum warmth to them, indicating a contrast with \u201cPeterhouse School\u201d Conservativism, which Edgar associates with Rolfe\u2019s solitary individual traits.<\/p>\n Significantly, left-wing Labour agent Paul\u2019s mocking comment about Major Rolfe being \u201cto the right of Genghis Khan\u201d is given instead to Peter Crosby, the moderate Tory. This is part of how Edgar makes Crosby more sympathetic in the television version and a stark contrast to both the Nation Forward characters and Major Rolfe. Significantly, Crosby is given no role in Kershaw and Platt\u2019s use of the NF members to break the picket-line; their Machiavellian actions mirror the dog-whistle cynicism of Thatcher\u2019s \u201cswamped\u201d comments. However, he does benefit from this, holding the seat for the Tories \u2013 though Crosby’s moderate Conservativism would have been tested under Thatcher as the 1980s progressed.<\/p>\n Edgar claims the play \u201cgot some things right\u201d: for example, Maxwell being a prototype Nick Griffin \u2013 who was first to stand for the NF in the Croydon North West by-election in 1981. But Edgar also admits that he got the involvement of big business in the far right wrong \u2013 though he includes a caveat that the anti-Common Market far right has drawn upon business support; Arron Banks and the rise of UKIP being the key current example.34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n An entirely new scene is added, in which a new character, the young local militant Don Matthews, makes a rousing speech demanding that people join the picket-line.36<\/a><\/sup> This speech follows an opening in which the television announcer reveals that the Tories\u2019 majority at the previous election in Taddley was 1,127. In an echo of Turner\u2019s opening to the Taddley Patriotic League meeting, Matthews\u2019 delivery is faltering and nervous, with his clumsy pun falling flat and the Labour club drinkers need to be shushed to listen. He gives a stinging denunciation of \u201cTaddley hatred\u201d and criticises the complacency of many white workers who won\u2019t support the Asian strikers. He refers, in New Left academic mode, to media simplification of history: \u201cWhat\u2019s the Nazis now? They\u2019re comic bits in Colditz<\/em>\u2026\u201d As a warning, he lists the groups the fascists would come for: blacks, Asians, Jews, Irish, the Unions and the Labour Party. He ends motivationally and colloquially: \u201cWe want you on that bloody picket-line. That\u2019s all\u201d. <\/p>\n Edgar claims that this addition was due to criticisms of the stage play \u2013 such as Radin\u2019s argument that \u201csome would say it was too kind\u201d for putting the NF case \u201cso clearly and persuasively\u201d.37<\/a><\/sup> This supposed extra focus on the right is backed up by how it is 21 minutes before the television version properly introduces any of the left-wing characters (barring Paul\u2019s brief first appearance in 1970). Edgar’s insertion of the young militant\u2019s speech is the playwright\u2019s attempt to address the impression that all of the energy and drive was given to the far-right characters. <\/p>\n However, much else in this television version represents the left pessimistically. The key scene in which Paul and Tony are reunited, representing the contradictory left and right-wing facets of the working-class, is made notably more naturalistic on television. Paul\u2019s sense of authority and power in the scene is reduced: instead of his cocky shouting out of the cell, \u201cHey, sergeant! Did you know, you got the bloody Master Race in here?\u201d he is given the sadder, forlorn declaratives: \u201cThe bleeding Master Race\u2026 Oh, blimey\u2026\u201d Paul\u2019s rhetoric is pared down; his dialogue is briefer and blunter: \u201cBloody ovens\u201d.38<\/a><\/sup> In the play, he has a closing, non-naturalistic address to the audience: \u201cAnd, you know, it was like looking in a mirror, looking at him, me old mate [\u2026] The opposite. The bleeding wrong way round\u2026\u201d This scene\u2019s ending, with Paul given the last say, is changed for television, as Tony shouts: \u201ctoo good for \u2019em!\u201d It is more disturbing and discomfiting, with the usually garrulous Paul cowed and silenced by his former friend and born-again fascist. Tony\u2019s dialogue in this scene about \u201cputting Britain first\u201d is prescient of mainstream politics in 2017.<\/p>\n The television version also truncates the late scene in the Pakistani restaurant. In this scene, which is naturalistic in d\u00e9cor and lighting, the Cliftons, Paul and Khera discuss Patel\u2019s arrest as an illegal immigrant. Edgar retains references to the Immigration Act 1971 but omits Khera\u2019s pointed mentions of the history of the 1919 Amritsar massacre: he outlines how Brigadier-General Dyer had ordered troops to open fire on unarmed Indian protestors, resulting in 400 deaths.39<\/a><\/sup> The television version also omits Khera’s statement that there is \u201cmore British capital in India, today, than 30 years ago\u201d.40<\/a><\/sup> It also changes the emphasis of this scene when Paul trenchantly calls for the Cliftons to choose sides. It omits his longer, more positive speech in the play about how strikers\u2019 socialist consciousness has been raised by the strike: \u201cJust, amid all that, some people learning. Talking, for the first time, \u2018bout just how to do it, working out, quite slowly, tortuously [\u2026] But it is listening to people grow. Learning that it\u2019s possible for them to make their future\u201d.41<\/a><\/sup> On stage, this was basically Paul\u2019s parting shot before the election count scene. Replacing this for television, Edgar gives Paul a metaphor: \u201cBut sooner or later, Bob, you\u2019re going to have to make up your mind which side you\u2019re on. \u2019Cos you\u2019re standing on a little pack of ice that\u2019s floating in a sharky sea and there\u2019s too many people on it, Bob, and the bugger\u2019s melting away\u2026\u201d This new dialogue emphasises the polarised political situation that seems to exclude the moderate likes of Sandy and Bob and, perhaps, even Crosby.<\/p>\n This all has the effect of making the play more politically pessimistic, with less left-wing optimism \u2013 in keeping with the political mood of the later 1970s. It can even be seen as prescient of Kinnock and Blair\u2019s moderation: Sandy, arguing for realism, seems to be more convincing than Paul, whose arguments in this scene fit Bob\u2019s accusation that Paul sticks to his \u201ccosy dogma\u201d. He is a notably more left-wing Labour election agent than Bill in Melvyn Bragg\u2019s contemporaneous novel Autumn Manoeuvres<\/em>, who idolises Jim Callaghan and successfully guides his candidate to a narrow victory. Edgar\u2019s pessimism is more prescient than Bragg\u2019s 1978 optimism, in view of Thatcher\u2019s subsequent electoral hegemony post-1979, though less so in terms of the far-right, which Thatcher through her \u201cswamping\u201d comments, and the Left through street protest, successfully repelled. Edgar argues that, by the play\u2019s television production, the National Front were losing momentum due to the Anti-Nazi League and other anti-fascist organisations.42<\/a><\/sup> <\/p>\n As if in response, the television play cuts to a City of London bank, where we see in close-up \u201cF.T. Index Prices\u201d and \u201cMarket Prices\u201d on BBC Ceefax on a TV screen. The next shot establishes the set, including the old Indian Mutiny painting. This final scene represents a softening of Turner, and a hardening of Major Rolfe. Turner\u2019s line from the play is cut: \u201cIn Calcutta, bastards stoned us\u201d, while Cleaver\u2019s historicising reference to the Indian Mutiny being in \u201c1857′ is retained. This links back to a speech by Colonel Chandler in the play\u2019s opening scene (dialogue added for the television version) suggesting his greater enlightenment: \u201cAfter all, it is their day, their freedom, all they fought for, hmmm\u2026?\u201d Turner\u2019s lukewarm \u201cif you say so, sir\u201d reply prefigures his later gravitation to Nation Forward. Khera is also given the new line: \u201cI\u2019m a British citizen!\u201d and we are shown Turner\u2019s horrified reaction. At the end of the play, Turner grasps his manipulation, coming to the realisation that Rolfe’s firm, the Metropolitan Investment Trust, were behind his bankruptcy. The deflated Turner is shown to understand the real situation: that Rolfe has much more power than Goodman, and the far-right he has aligned with is in bed with City of London capitalism. We are left with the single, subtle imperative \u201cTell me\u201d from Turner, in contrast to his three in the theatre text. Rolfe emerges as the powerful businessman overlord and collaborator with the demagogic Cleaver. It is Rolfe who is given the impassioned rhetoric; some of his separate lines in the play are synthesised into one sentence, as he affirms his belief in \u201cAn ideology red, white and blue in tooth and claw\u201d.<\/p>\n Destiny<\/em>\u2019s afterlife and later work by Edgar and Matheson<\/strong><\/p>\n Destiny<\/em> has had a notable cultural afterlife. Commenting on the theatre version in Manchester, less than two months after the broadcast of the television version, Guardian<\/em> critic David Ward argued that events had proven the points made by Destiny<\/em>: \u201cpicket line punch-ups, left-right confrontations on the street, a race-dominated by-election\u201d.43<\/a><\/sup> Ward noticed that either Edgar or director Howard Lloyd Lewis had \u201cinserted Mrs Thatcher\u2019s now famous word \u2018swamped\u2019 into an early dialogue on immigration.\u201d44<\/a><\/sup> In another politically-charged alteration to the text, businessman Frank Kershaw\u2019s name was changed to \u201cFrank Ashley\u201d, to avoid confusion with local Conservative councillor John Kershaw, who had recently attempted to halt the payment of a grant to a local theatre group \u201con the grounds that it was too left-wing\u201d. <\/p>\n A radio version was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 23 July 1979 at 7:20pm, while the television Destiny<\/em> was given a repeat in August 1979,45<\/a><\/sup> gaining 4.4 million viewers, a higher rating than the first showing.46<\/a><\/sup> Aptly, this was due to politics: specifically, the ITV strike by the EETPU and ACTT unions. This dispute over pay and overtime had started at Thames and the entire network was blacked out on 10 August \u2013 a situation that lasted for ten weeks and greatly benefited BBC ratings, from Doctor Who<\/em> to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy<\/em>.47<\/a><\/sup> Thus, Destiny<\/em> won a somewhat small-scale \u201cratings battle\u201d with BBC2, easily defeating its Sandor Vegh Masterclass<\/em> (0.9m), Late News and Weather<\/em> (0.9m) and Beethoven<\/em> (0.2m).<\/p>\n In December 1983, the Monthly Film Bulletin<\/em> featured Julian Petley\u2019s review of an apparent video release of the television Destiny<\/em>.48<\/a><\/sup> This piece suggested that it was released on VHS in U-matic format and distributed by the BFI. It is unclear whether this was intended purely for viewing within Video Access Libraries, internal BFI purposes or commercial release.49<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, it is unclear whether any release ended up happening. In his critique, Petley praises the play for avoiding being dry or using stereotypes, claiming that \u201cEdgar captures only too clearly the very real fears and miseries which push perfectly ordinary people towards the extra-ordinariness of fascism.\u201d50<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Matheson moved away from Play for Today<\/em>, citing BBC interference with her work, and went onto produce many notable television dramas, exercising her sense of \u201cmischief\u201d as Controller of Drama at the new Central Independent Television.51<\/a><\/sup> In this role, she commissioned and produced David Leland\u2019s Tales out of School<\/em><\/a> (1983) quartet of plays which tackled issues such as contested ideals in comprehensive education – in Birth of a Nation<\/em>, directed by Mike Newell –52<\/a><\/sup> and the appeal of the far-right in Made in Britain<\/em>.53<\/a><\/sup> (Newell was later better-known for hugely successful films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral<\/em> (1994) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire<\/em> (2005).) At Central, Matheson also executive-produced Trevor Griffiths\u2019 Oi for England<\/em>, practically a companion piece to Destiny<\/em>, which depicted racism and the persuasiveness of the far-right in Moss Side, Manchester.54<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Edgar\u2019s subsequent work for television included versions of stage work, like The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs<\/em>,55<\/a><\/sup> which he had adapted from Sachs\u2019 autobiography and which centred on the arrest and solitary detention of the left-wing Cape Town lawyer in October 1963 by the South African authorities for suspected subversive activities. This adaptation was praised by Banks-Smith as \u201ca simple beautiful play, raised from the personal to the universal.\u201d56<\/a><\/sup> This was followed by an epic four-part television adaptation of his successful stage version of Dickens\u2019s The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby<\/em>.57<\/a><\/sup> Julian Barnes praised \u201cthe marvellous bustle\u201d of Edgar\u2019s script, transferred to television \u201cwithout loss\u201d.58<\/a><\/sup> This involved Trevor Nunn, who also directed Edgar’s one feature film, the Tudor period drama Lady Jane<\/em> (1986), whose mixed reviews singled out Edgar’s screenplay for praise.59<\/a><\/sup> Edgar\u2019s next television work was co-writing Vote for Them<\/em>,60<\/a><\/sup> which was shown in three episodes on Fridays at 9.30pm. The series was based on real events, in which soldiers in Cairo in 1943 set up a \u201cmock parliament, to debate the kind of new world that they wanted to build in the peace\u201d. Academic Neil Grant had extensively researched the Cairo Forces\u2019 Parliament, and handed over speeches, agenda and \u201cmiles of audiotape\u201d to Edgar to dramatise. Edgar comments on how he used dramatic license to connect \u201cthe various factual things we knew [\u2026] to make them humanly and narratively credible\u201d, omitting the \u201cspecific roles of the actual people\u201d, such as future Labour MP Leo Abse.61<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n In The Listener<\/em>, Edgar discussed the process of writing Vote for Them<\/em> within the context of \u201cthe recently renewed Great Faction Debate\u201d.62<\/a><\/sup> He locates his and Grant\u2019s script within the tradition of docudrama, which uses specific historical events \u201cas a source for treatment of general questions\u201d, which he analogises to Shakespeare\u2019s history plays.63<\/a><\/sup> He cites Leslie Woodhead\u2019s The Man Who Wouldn\u2019t Keep Quiet<\/em> (1970),64<\/a><\/sup> about General Grigorenko\u2019s persecution in a Soviet mental hospital, and Charles Wood\u2019s Tumbledown<\/em>,65<\/a><\/sup> with its Falklands War backdrop, as exemplars of the television docudrama. He contrasts these with the drama-documentary genre, where \u201cour interest is in the rights and wrongs of what is being represented\u201d and there\u2019s attention to \u201cthe credibility of the argument\u201d.66<\/a><\/sup> He gives Granada’s Invasion<\/em> (1980) and Breakthrough at Reykjavik<\/em> (1987)67<\/a><\/sup> as exemplars of drama-documentary. Edgar argues that Vote for Them<\/em> is primarily a docudrama, in its human-centred dramatising of general themes from specific events \u2013 but that it uses the drama-documentary device of having actors as older versions of the characters in the series giving \u201ca retrospective observation on the events of their \u2018fictional\u2019 junior selves\u201d.
\nPlease note that, in order to explore this programme and its political context, this essay quotes racially offensive language.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_07-e1495981501556.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_08-e1495981492509.jpg\")
In its adaptation to television, the play\u2019s text was sometimes faithfully translated, but Edgar made significant alterations and changes of emphasis. The medium is used to historicise the play with exact dates \u2013 \u201c15th August 1947\u201d, \u201c20th April 1968\u201d, \u201c19th June 1970\u201d and \u201c1977\u201d \u2013 being presented. The stage version\u2019s text does not as clearly indicate the year of the contemporary scenes. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_10-e1495981472992.jpg\")
As on stage, the painting showing the putting down of the Indian Mutiny is a key visual motif.1<\/a><\/sup> This is shown three times throughout the play: in the opening India scene, in the Northern Ireland army HQ, and in the hospitality room of the City of London merchant bank in the final scene. A gramophone is added to the India set, alongside the stuffed tiger referred to in the text. There\u2019s much connotative period detail, but less specificity: the play text states its setting as Jullundur in the Punjab. On television, it is merely \u201cIndia\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_09-e1495981481702.jpg\")
Posters and banners are made prominent. In Turner\u2019s antique shop in 1970, we see a poster with the soon-to-be ironic message: \u201cVOTE CONSERVATIVE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW\u201d, and a poster of Edward Heath looms over the seated Turner from its position attached to the shop window. This scene also presents the garishly dressed Goodman, who has a carrier bag with the Union flag emblazoned on it. This appropriation of the national symbol signifies the sort of commodification of identity loathed by Turner and Rolfe, and represents Goodman as Turner’s enemy, embodying rootless, speculative capital. In the Labour Club scenes, a poster reads \u201cWith your help, Labour will go from strength to strength\u201d, and a later picket-line scene includes a poster bearing the slogan \u201cBritain can win with Labour\u201d. The Nation Forward public meeting opens with the prominent display of the capitalised \u201cTADDLEY PATRIOTIC LEAGUE\u201d banner, which emphasises the movement\u2019s nativist attachment to local identity. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_11-e1495981462613.jpg\")
Settings are critical to the play. The text\u2019s Act 2 Scene 3, where Clifton meets with the striking Asian workers, is moved from the Labour Club to the picket-line outdoors. This is represented on television via a bare and dark studio set, presumably the result of budgetary disciplines. We see a brick wall, lamps, a staircase and a few posters. The scene is distilled, with some of the more direct dialogue from the original cut, such as Patel\u2019s \u201cAnd with a racist party, in the bye-election. Making propaganda. Leafletting. And so on.\u201d Later, the entire Act 3 Scene 2 of the play is excised, losing dialogue between the Asian strikers, Platt, Attwood and a policeman. In addition, Patel\u2019s aggression towards Attwood, pushing him and branding him \u201cYou bastard blackleg scab\u201d is cut, softening Patel significantly. The picket-line setting on television lacks the veracity that a more drama-documentary aesthetic would have created; there is a paucity of extras, and the sound effect of a distant-sounding crowd. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_12-e1495981454290.jpg\")
This minimalist setting is also used for Crosby\u2019s meeting with Clifton where they discuss a \u201ccommon front\u201d against the fascists; in the original text, this had been in Clifton\u2019s home, but is made more public here. The sad, nostalgic speech Crosby had spoken to Platt on stage is here shared with his Labour opponent Clifton: \u201cI remember long ago when I was a small boy [\u2026] a homely, dainty patriotism\u201d. He is given additional dialogue describing the NF\u2019s \u201cgrisly xenophobia\u201d. This is another move that softens and humanises Crosby, who is presented as fundamentally different from the NF and Rolfe and someone who represents the moderate tradition of engaging with political opponents. The scene has ideologically charged symbolism: a Tory visiting a picket-line for friendly dialogue; though the impact is lessened by the picket line being so empty. Its void-like aesthetic is in the mould of Gerald Savory\u2019s unadorned staging for the maligned Churchill\u2019s People<\/em> (1974-75). Savory described his methodology thus: \u201cA mast, a sail, a few upturned boxes, the sound of the sea and wind is a ship.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_13-e1495981445712.jpg\")
One of the most compelling scenes is of Rolfe mourning his son\u2019s death in Northern Ireland; its setting in Lisburn, Northern Ireland is implied through the addition of a soldier on the door as Rolfe enters. As in the original text, there is a coffin with a Union flag draped over it. The scene is made more naturalistic than on stage with Rolfe\u2019s \u201cYou still won\u2019t see? [\u2026] Will you?\u201d losing its direct address; the change to third-person pronouns makes it more detached and private: \u201cAnd they still won\u2019t see, will they?\u201d Dennis Potter\u2019s glowing review focused especially on this scene: <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_14-e1495981436696.jpg\")
Following this, there is a significant and rare dialogue-less scene, using slow-motion. A striker\u2019s placard bearing the slogan \u201cDON\u2019T SCAB, THIS IS YOUR FIGHT\u201d is framed in opposition to a union jack. As we hear a police siren, we see Paul being led to a cell by the police. This scene creates a greater immediacy. However, the television version often reduces specificity and topicality: for example, removing Platt\u2019s imperative alluding to the Birmingham automative plant, \u201cConcentrate on hards from Longbridge\u201d.9<\/a><\/sup> Crosby\u2019s \u201cRoll on the North Sea Oil, say I\u201d is likewise excised. However, Edgar does keep the oblique reference to David Stirling\u2019s GB75 organisation, as Rolfe and Kershaw discuss \u201cprivate armies\u201d. This scene is subtler on television, with Kershaw\u2019s aghast \u201cNot in England\u2026\u201d replacing the blunter stage dialogue: \u201cYou\u2019re seriously suggesting \u2013 army into Government? [\u2026] In England?\u201d10<\/a><\/sup> Kershaw\u2019s affirmative quotation of R.A. Butler in this scene is deleted, making him less obviously a \u201cOne Nation\u201d Conservative, a mantle Crosby claims in the television version. Rolfe\u2019s dystopian vision is given greater detail with new dialogue: \u201cStarts with unofficial strikes in Yorkshire [\u2026] OPEC countries raise the price of oil\u201d. This locates Rolfe\u2019s paranoia regionally and within 1970s geopolitics.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_15-e1495981427131.jpg\")
Edgar updates his text for its location in 1977 \u2013 a year that was in the future when he wrote the theatre play. To follow Platt\u2019s \u201cSend in the gunboats\u201d, the line \u201cshow the IMF who\u2019s boss!\u201d topically refers to the IMF loan \u201ccrisis\u201d of late 1976, replacing the theatre version’s \u201cSort the Saudies out that way\u201d, which alluded to the Oil Crisis.11<\/a><\/sup> In the NF public meeting scene, Edgar cuts Mrs Howard\u2019s negative references to the Common Market and her mourning the loss of Samuel Smiles-inspired values of \u201cself-help and discipline\u201d, keeping the focus forensically on her regret at the loss of Empire.12<\/a><\/sup> Maxwell\u2019s dialogue in the same scene about capitalists compromising with the Communist East via d\u00e9tente is also cut; perhaps this seemed less germane in late 1977 than a year earlier. This scene also has Liz presciently referring to \u201chome ownership\u201d as a core Tory promise being betrayed and Mrs Howard speaks on behalf of the \u201csilent majority\u201d who, in reality, were won over by Thatcher\u2019s politics, not the NF\u2019s. It is easy to imagine Liz later becoming a working-class Tory voter, following the selling-off of council houses. Notably, the television version omits Bob Clifton\u2019s intertextual reference in the play to the BBC\u2019s most famous fictitious bigot: \u201cLike when I\u2019m on the doorstep, confronting the massed Alf Garnetts of the West Midlands.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup> This lessens the sense of the Labour candidate clashing with a section of the working-class electorate who are said to use words like \u201cdarkies\u201d and who Johnny Speight satirised through Alf Garnett.14<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_16-e1495981417638.jpg\")
The music used at the end, following the Hitler quotation\u2019s delivery in RP-accented voice-over, is a recording of the sombre \u2018March\u2019 from Henry Purcell\u2019s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary<\/em>, first performed at Queen Mary II\u2019s funeral in March 1695. Purcell is perhaps best known for his opera Dido and Aeneas<\/em> (1689) and the song \u2018Nymphs and Shepherds\u2019 (1695), famously recorded in 1929 by the Manchester Children’s Choir with the Hall\u00e9 Orchestra. Purcell\u2019s music has been used in an eclectic range of films: Powell and Pressburger\u2019s A Canterbury Tale<\/em> (1944), A Clockwork Orange<\/em> (1972), Kramer Vs. Kramer<\/em> (1979) and Trevor Griffiths and Ken Loach’s Fatherland<\/em> (1986).23<\/a><\/sup> Purcell\u2019s music, described by Peter Ackroyd as having a \u201cplangent sadness\u201d, is used by Newell to connote a funereal mood at the play\u2019s conclusion, with national decency in jeopardy as malevolent forces unite.24<\/a><\/sup> The Hitler reading maintains the sense of historicity, with the text appearing on the screen, in white font on a blank black background, accompanied by its exact date. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_17-e1495981404102.jpg\")
The sparsely populated room \u2013 and scattered seating pattern \u2013 connotes atomised individuals in contrast to the affable, cordial characters associated with Labour. This scene tellingly portrays the far-right\u2019s organisational amateurism, yet also portrays how skilfully Maxwell draws out chilling, but humanly plausible, resentments from those gathered. Through Attwood, Edgar dramatises the social conservatism of working-class Labour voters, as more broadly depicted in a mainstream sitcom like Love Thy Neighbour<\/em> (Thames, 1972-76). His resentment at immigration is subtly conveyed; Stacy Davies plays the part with negative body language, his folded arms conveying his telling class-based contempt for Mrs Howard. Edgar slightly softens this character for the television version by omitting his dialogue: \u201cI\u2019ll be quite frank about the blacks\u201d \u2013 another signifier of a more implicit approach. This approach is seen later when Maxwell\u2019s original dialogue \u201cRichard, we can reprint Mein Kampf<\/em> if it\u2019ll make you \u2013\u201d is changed for television to: \u201cSome, I suppose [are born to lead]. Meaning you\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_18-e1495981397794.jpg\")
The theatrical text\u2019s long discursive dialogues between characters on the political left are significantly truncated. The Labour Club-set Act 1 Scene 3 in the stage version contains lengthier discussions establishing the political context; this is the fifth scene in the television version. It opens with a \u201cbeer shot\u201d, instantly foregrounding the setting as a working-class milieu. This scene also omits the Cliftons\u2019 darts match and Clifton is dressed in a more formal and less \u201coldish, corduroy\u201d suit than Edgar\u2019s original text stated.35<\/a><\/sup> Sandy\u2019s northern origins are clearly articulated in the original; here, as played by Lloyd, she has a neutral, middle-class accent.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_19-e1495981388806.jpg\")
The television version reduces the lengthy scene in which Bob and Sandy Clifton discuss the campaign. Sandy is given greater agency as she provides an additional story of the discomfort of a \u201cwidow, 64\u201d in the more multicultural Britain. This empathy for the angry, disaffected working-class voters is given fuller reign on television, with Sandy\u2019s dialogue emphasising Labour\u2019s core reliance on these voters. The original play\u2019s later references to racist electors putting a \u201cbrick and a neat little pile of excreta\u201d through the Cliftons\u2019 letterbox are removed, making the Taddley situation less obviously like the charged campaign in Smethwick in the 1964 General Election, where Tory Peter Griffiths had won with an openly racist campaign. However, crucial local context is suggested by how Labour characters refer to Taddley as in \u201cEnoch country\u201d. The television version has much less focus on the Cliftons\u2019 domesticity, removing their home as a setting and removing references to their child Ruth. This change in emphasis is perhaps surprising given the way Edgar so skilfully shows intersections between the personal and political elsewhere. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_20-e1495981379414.jpg\")
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The television play\u2019s final phase contains some notable aesthetic choices. The climactic scene of the by-election count is split into two. It begins with the interior studio sequence of the count; this is much shorter than in the stage version. The Mayoress reads the vote tallies, including the increased Tory majority of 1,736 and Turner’s vote of 6,933 or 23.2% of the vote (this announcement is met with derogatory chants of \u201cNazi! Nazi!\u201d). The vote is 60 lower than in the stage version, but still exceeds by 7.2% the NF\u2019s actual strongest electoral performance: Martin Webster in the West Bromwich by-election in May 1973. Crosby begins his victory speech with an \u201cErm\u201d but the scene is switched off on a television. At the Labour Club bar, Paul sadly mutters about Turner’s \u201cseven bloody thousand\u201d votes. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/BTVD_Destiny_22-e1495981328219.jpg\")
Then, in an effective transition, we move to the play\u2019s second exterior location sequence: this is at night, in a dark urban stairwell, lit by a streetlamp and initially seen from out of a tunnel. Paul and Khera are confronted by Tony and three unnamed NF thugs. Tony makes a racist insult \u2013 \u201cPaul\u2019s pet monkey\u201d \u2013 and, as the sound of a car passes by, a fight breaks out. On stage, this fight had been more melodramatic, as it occurred at the election count itself, with crowds present. The far-right contingent is clearly portrayed as the aggressors, but Paul is far from pacifistic, picking up a broken bottle and chasing one of the men away. Onstage, he used a knife. Khera is given greater agency on television: he uses his own knife to threaten Tony, while uttering the telling dialogue that connotes Tony\u2019s pawn-like status: \u201cTell me. Who do you think you are doing all this FOR?!\u201d The scene is scarier for being in such a forbidding and naturalistically presented location. <\/p>\n