Hope, the main poirt w made was that the last one — on the General Strike - concentrated over much on the bureaucracy and what they were doing. The feel of the masses was missing.
I think there is a lot of merit in A that criticism, and we were aware of it. Initially when we set off we decided to do the lot in the coalfield, where we'd see the interplay of the rank and file and so forth.
Now visually this is exciting for a writer, and a hell of a lot easier to do. It's.good drama, it shows the rank and file, it's good politics and so forth. But the decision to confine ourselves entirely to what was happening down at the TUC was my decPhoto: BBC Scene from Jim Allen's powerful television play The Lump. IsIon.
The real lesson to be learned is the politics down at the TUC, the backstabbing. We have to lift up a few stones and show the sort of mechanies which move Len Murray today.
People are familiar with the scenes of pickets fighting the police; but they are not familiar with what were the possibilities within that strike as The four-part series Days of Hope, shown recently on television, was one of the finest productions of the year. Carl Gardner went to interview the author JIM ALLEN (who also wrote the TV plays The Big Flame and The Lump) at his home on Langley Estate, near Middleton in Lancashire.
the first stage of a revolution, and the way it was sold out, and the role in particular of the 'lefts' of the day - which have their parallels today with your Foots and Wedgie Benns.
itically important te fetch out that role. We thought that by showing that, we could ring a few bells for that. of the Communist Party and the role was only devote We thought it was crucially polonly learn afterwards. filming. it.
has been big TV wards.....••• today, and draw some lessons from Looking back, we are in agreement that what we should have done half of the film to that, and the other half to the coal-fields. But these are things you Q the impression, not that they I still think that there was were acting under the pressure of the masses but that they were cooking up a deal in isolation. A! think it did come through....
but what you have to bear in mind is our budget. We ran out of money on that programme. People say, why didn't you put this in - what they don't realise is that to have put this in might have meant another week's And another thing you have to be careful of is that you're trying to do drama. You have to be careful you're not making speeches, otherwise it becomes like a bad Unity Theatre production. You suddenly stop the action and say: 'Now folks, the political commercial!' It's bad writing, it's bad art, it's bad drama and you lose viewers. And we did that a couple of times and it makes us cringe when we see The stuff you've done so far projects. But the limitation of TV is that you can't interact with it — unlike a production where you can talk to the writers and actors afterThat's the way these things are A made. Yes, I agree you can't interact with these people but the wider view of the world? Ation to answer, but I don't think Well, I find this a difficult ques workers should be ashamed of taking the material of theit own lives and fashioning it in the same way that the ruling classes over the centuries have used writers and poets to turn their lives into art and drama. In so far as I manage that, well you can call it art, call it what you like.
The motive force is didactic really, to make sense of what's happ ening, to put a dramatic polish on it. I don't like to think I'm just throwing out messages, I could do that by writing articles. Always, always try to create characters as well.
What I was trying to get at is the fact that a working class bloke like you can write, can express his experience in words ....
Aall the important things that is the That is the most important - of most important. The mystique of writing, it's a load of crap ..... and I'm just one of the lucky few.
Society's a big waste machine, it just devours people, talents and so on. And if they ever opened those flood gates we'd have some fucking good writers - but what chance has a man got to be a writer when you spend ten hours a day at a factory bench, and you come home to a house with three rooms and no place to sit? mean privacy is a commodity under capitalism.
They impose their history on us, they impose their culture on us, they impose the fence that we're going to be fenced in, they put the margins and the limits, and say that's where you belong. And I think when we can crash through that and say that we can also do this as well as you and even better, this is very good.
I never get fed up talking about this, because it's vital. There's no mystique, there's nothing great, it's just a job of work and something lots of people can do.
Red Weekly 18 December 1975 Virgin Mary 15