20 years on, it’s still easy to remember how deeply the Cold War and Thatcherism permeated our culture

The Paul Richards Column

Last week I wrote about the pop music that influenced me, and many others, in the Labour Party in the 1980s. Since then, I’ve been reflecting on the television dramas which guided a generation towards left-wing politics in the same decade. For me, there were three BBC dramas which stood out in the decade that gave us Breakfast TV and Treasure Hunt.

For a generation of Labour activists whose party had been out of power for a decade ‘A Very British Coup’, shown on the BBC in 1989, was a huge morale booster. It was set in a not-too-distant future when there was a Labour government. It was based, loosely, on a book by Chris Mullin, but with Alan Plater’s screenplay it came alive. Harry Perkins is the Labour Prime Minister. A former Sheffield steel-worker, unilateral nuclear disarmer, and trade unionist, Perkins represented the Bennite’s dream: a genuine proletarian left-winger with a northern accent. Surrounded by plots and betrayal, Perkins delivers full employment and starts to dismantle Britain’s nuclear arsenal. But the forces of the CIA, civil service, media and right-wing of the Labour Party combine to force his resignation. As he is about to read his resignation statement live on air, he throws away the prepared script and calls an immediate general election. The drama closes with the ominous sound of helicopters, suggesting a military coup is being launched.

‘A Very British Coup’ starred Ray McAnally as Perkins, with appearances by Keith Allen (now perhaps better known as father of Lily) as a scruffy former journalist-turned-spin doctor in the mould of a Alistair Campbell or Joe Haines, and Tim McInnerny (from Blackadder) as the super-smooth MI5 agent determined to bring down the Labour Government. It played to the general 80s sense of paranoia about ‘the establishment’ and the ‘Tory press’. It depicted, at the height of the ‘policy review’ reforms under Kinnock, an uncompromising left-wing Labour Government, bailed out by the National Bank of Moscow, which somehow was also popular with the voters. The scenes of Perkins’ victorious journey from Sheffield to London by train having won an election were a tonic to real Labour members who had just lost three in a row. When asked by the press if Labour would abolish first-class travel, Perkins answers that he intends to abolish second-class travel. The action rose and fell to the sound of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, which added to the dramatic impact.

Labour Party members loved it. You could buy ‘Harry Perkins for Leader’ badges in the Labour Party’s shop at our Walworth Road headquarters. Hard to believe that Labour ran a shop, a library and a magazine in those days.

When scriptwriter Troy Kennedy Martin died in September this year, his obituaries mentioned his masterpiece ‘Edge of Darkness’. It was aired in the winter of 1985, and had an immediate impact. The story was about the murder of a policeman’s daughter (played by Joanne Whalley) but really it was a dark warning about the perils of the nuclear energy industry (Ed Miliband take note). Bob Peck played the cop who ends up on the side of the environmentalists who had attempted to expose a fictional nuclear firm, and were drowned in a deep mineshaft. Bizarrely, Michael Meacher appears in the first episode, playing a left-wing MP addressing a student union (so not much of a stretch). Tim McInnerney pops up in this one too, as a Trotskyist paper-seller and police informant. He ends up sharing a bath with an electric toaster. Joe Don Baker steals the show as Jedburgh, the rogue CIA agent who sees himself as a teutonic knight, defending good against evil. ‘Edge of Darkness’ was perfect for its time – the cold war, Thatcher in no. 10, the miners’ strike a recent memory. Like ‘A Very British Coup’, it appealed to the lefty world-view. It also introduced environmental themes to a mainstream BBC audience. I watched it again on DVD the other day, and it’s still brilliant viewing. And Michael Meacher hasn’t changed much either.

‘Threads’ was single-handedly responsible for terrifying a whole generation of youngsters, me included. It was the War Game for our generation. It showed what would happen to Sheffield in a nuclear war. The build-up to war is hardly noticed: the Russians invading Iran, the US retaliating with battle-field tactical nuclear weapons. The people of Sheffield don’t really notice until the Russians drop a large nuclear missile on them. It won’t be giving too much away if you haven’t seen it if I tell you everybody dies; some straightaway, some slowly, in ludicrous shelters made from doors and sandbags. The council officials, in their bunker under Sheffield Town Hall, try to keep civil order, until they realise they are trapped under the rubble of the town hall. Their bodies are discovered weeks later.

‘Protect and Survive’ was the official advice brochure, and I seem to remember you had to paint your windows white to deflect the blast, and remember to pack a tin opener. The most terrifying part of ‘Threads’, which was aired in 1984, was a glimpse into the post-nuclear future, where a tiny population of survivors is engaged in subsistence farming, blighted by hideous genetic deformities. Barry Hines (who also wrote Kes) won a BAFTA for the screenplay. As a true son of Barnsley, it was Sheffield that Hines gets nuked!

The cold war cast a huge political and cultural shadow over the 80s. Like most people growing up in that decade you were aware of the threat of nuclear war. You doodled mushroom clouds on your school books. Only when the Berlin Wall came down, 20 years ago this week, did the immediate sense of impending doom diminish, but before the final blocks of concrete had hit the ground, we all had other things to worry about.

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