Why not today?

"On a political level, the serial began with Harold Wilson's election campaign of 1964, and it was finally scheduled to be broadcast at a time when the country was once again poised to restore an idealistic, revitalised Labour party to power.

The cycle of positivty leading to seemingly inevitable cynicism may be Flannery's way of predicting the ultimate demise of traditional idealology as the driving force of British politics. This is an assumption that would have seemed unthinkable when the play was originally written, but now seems a realistic possibility in light of 13 years of New Labour and a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.

In 1996 Flannery admitted he would be voting for Tony Blair's New Labour in the forthcoming election. "I'd love to believe that a New Labour victory would start a clean-up in politics, but I'm afraid they'll be trapped by the very institutions that support them."

The lasting message of Flannery's serial is, however, clear and positive: betrayals by our institutions and politicians may be inevitable, but the society built on friendship surpasses and transcends them all."

Marcus Hearn, Our Friends in the North: Viewers' Notes

Local History

A Walk in the Wilderness

“This is a rumour you hear occasionally around Teesside, whether it's someone who knows someone who used to work in the canteen at ICI Billingham who remembers serving that aloof woman with the hair, or someone who sits proudly in the pub and proclaims, "Of course, Thatcher used to work here, you know. Only stuck it for a couple of weeks."

It was only when we spoke to Julian Phillips, a former ICI employee and local company historian, that we found our explanation.

Margaret Thatcher never worked for ICI, because when she applied, she was deemed "not to have the right attributes". Furthermore, as Julian explained, "She never worked for ICI and it isn't even a Teesside myth, it's a Runcorn myth."

Yes, youmay have heard that Margaret Thatcher once worked at ICI in Billingham, but infact she was turned down for a job with the company, and the job she appliedfor wasn't even in the North East, anyway. It was in Merseyside.”

 

Zero Tolerance

“In Middlesbrough, the largest town in the Teesside region, 10.7 per cent of people were officially unemployed, though the real ‘jobless’ total (including unemployed claimants, those on training schemes, and those ‘economically inactive’ who would take jobs if they were available) amounted to about 35 percent. In addition to that, existing high levels of crime (notably burglary and car crime) had been exacerbated by the rapid expansion of heroin use. By 1997 Middlesbrough had the dubious distinction of having the cheapest heroin in Britain available on its streets. Such was the extent of the town’s accumulated difficulties that the right-wing polemicist, Charles Murray, controversially identified Middlesbrough as the home of Britain’s ‘new rabble underclass’. The existence of these accumulated problems, combined with the appointment of Detective Superintendent Mallon as Head of Middlesbrough CID, led to the introduction of ZTP in 1996.”

 

A Fact of Economic Life in England

 

The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, tonight experienced the bitter taste of defeat after the north-east overwhelmingly rejected his dream of an elected regional assembly on his doorstep.
Over three-quarters of voters showed themselves unwilling to test out devolution, voting against the proposal by a majority of 499,209 on a turnout of 47.8% of the region's 1.9m electorate.
696,519 (77.93%) voted against devolution, with only 197,310 (22.07%) voting in favour of an elected regional assembly to give the region a stronger voice.

…

A disappointed John Tomeney, chairman of the Yes 4 The North East campaign, said that the result reflected "something bigger" than the rejection of a regional assembly.
"It is a growing breakdown in the belief that political institutions can affect people's lives for the better. This should concern us all."
He added: "While many people in the north-east feel more prosperous than ever, the north-south divide remains a fact of economic life in England. Successive governments have failed to resolve it. It needs to be addressed."







Least Resilient




"The reason there's a north-south divide is because we lost our major industries in the 80s, like steel and shipbuilding, and jobs from those sectors went into the public sector.
"We recalibrated the economy along those lines to the benefit of the North East."

Sir Stuart said the government was making a "fundamental" mistake in thinking that the private sector would step in to create jobs.
He added: "You don't go from the public sector to the private sector, you go from the public sector to the dole queue."





She Would Have Sunk By Now, If She Hadn’t Already Hit the Bottom of the River





There are ripped-out doors and shattered glass everywhere. John says the ship is being stripped for scrap: "They're smashing the portholes just to get the little brass knobs off. They've stolen miles of cables. They're spending whole weekends on board. We've found sleeping bags. A few months ago you could have started the generators, stocked the bars and run it as a club. She would have been up and running. Now look …"
It really is a shambles. The decks are strewn with debris. Mangled cables cascade down from the smashed ceiling tiles. The mirror balls are missing their mirrors. The thieves have stolen so much they've gone right through to the water. She would have sunk by now if she hadn't already hit the bottom of the river.
"All this …" John waves his hands across the devastation, "has happened in the last fortnight."

…

"They had this vision," John says. "This place would be second only to Dubai. All these multibillion-pound futuristic buildings." The plans were incredibly elaborate. There would be a primary school in the shape of a spelling block, a cinema designed to resemble a Rubik's cube, apartment blocks inspired by Prada skirts, a hotel in the shape of the game KerPlunk, a brand new college and an Anish Kapoor sculpture.

The scheme was launched at the Venice Biennale. The Middlesbrough mayor, Ray Mallon, ceremonially handed his excellency a Middlesbrough football shirt. Part of the deal was that the Tuxedo Royale had to go.

‘Politics = criminality’

Mr Mallon said: "I am satisfied that these attacks are linked and that the victims were deliberately targeted because they are councillors.


"There is a tiny minority of political obsessives in this town who believe they can intimidate and bully councillors out of office, but in this instance it seems their obsession has spilled over into criminality.


"This is an outrageous attack on democracy by people who prefer the petrol bomb to the ballot box.

One of the great documents of our time

Loose Connections

State of Play (2004) is an isolated, functionalist, view of 21st century Britain. The characters of State of Play are reporters, editors, politicians, police, PR executives, and their families. Only a few characters not of this political-media world are depicted: a family of, in the view of the characters, mostly irrational annoyances; or an ex-soldier and hired assassin. These characters only appear when they are being investigated for crimes or raw journalistic material (and raw focus group material in real world terms). All of these elements, police, politicians, and journalists, are part of one holistic system of government that keeps the mass of the population at arms length.

Consider the character of the MP Stephen Collins and G.B.H.'s Michael Murray. One of the first scenes Murray appears in he is being applauded by his supporters, but Collins' are never seen. We learn about Murray's past and previous occupations, but Collins, like many post-Blair politicians, is impossible to see as having a background, or at least a background comparable to Murray's working class origins (even his name doesn't call back to anything, whereas Murray's is suggestive of a) his father, a prominent socialist, who shared the name, and b) his Irish immigrant background). Collins' world is also a very close one that demonstrates the fluidity of the new corporate order: it is is the death of his researcher that alerts the journalist Cal McAffrey to the story, McAffrey being his former campaign manager, and Collins' wife Anne being somebody he met on his political campaign.

Functionally State of Play is about the smooth operation of the political-media-police infrastructure that administrates Britain: it is sophisticated in that regard that it acknowledges many thing once though extraordinary are now systematic. A teenager is executed on the streets of London; a conspiracy to tailor government policy to the requirements of energy companies (Edge of Darkness symmetry). All of these events are unremarkable. In one of the stranger details the gunman is cornered a shot dead by police without warning: nothing is ever made of this for the rest of the drama.

The glitch occurs when the disconnected, corporate world of modern Britain is exploited by somebody who knows how to play the rules for personal gain. 'Honest' capitalism (or honest governance), or fair play, is what should be paramount. Reactions to the Financial Crisis of 2008 are variously focused on convincing the public that the financial world really is honest. It is interesting to note that if one explores the world of management there is a lot of fear about psychopaths: Paul Babiak and Robert D. Hare's Snakes in Suits outlines the variously nightmarish ways a psychopath could be in YOUR company (though there is a tone of admiration throughout the work on psychopaths, after all they do get 'it' done, even if it's at the expense of everyone else in the organization). The character of Stephen Collins finds an assassin to murder an former lover. Whilst the government-energy conspiracy is treated as unremarkable, this personal failing involves a complete breakdown of Collins as a character. He is a threat to the smooth flowing of power.

Charles Stross has an astute analysis of what's gone wrong here. The world of 21st century British politics is a dehumanized, disconnected, alienating institution: in a way this has infected many areas of British society. Underneath the veneer of rational colonist institutions, it becomes clear that the disconnection allows the rot to fester under the shiny surfaces, provided it doesn't become to much of a bother.

I Vow to Thee My Country