The Political is Personal
Bill Brand on DVD
Bill Brand, the 1976 political drama written by Trevor Griffiths, has lately appeared on Network DVD. With consummate synchronicity, it seems uncannily relevant to the here and now. Of course, there are no mobile phones to be seen on screen, no Blackberries frantically consulted by MPs, no party-political gossip mischievously blogged. When the chief whip Maddocks (Peter Copley) has to round up support, he sends the newly-elected Labour MP for Leighley, Bill Brand (Jack Shepherd) off on a sprint, and pulls up his landline phone to start dialling numbers. It’s a different world – one where actor Albert Moses features in the end credits with his ‘character’ described simply as “Pakistani”, and where Reichian theory is discussed as a form of liberation. But for all that, in some ways it’s still fundamentally our world, despite the differences in technology, prejudice, and suit fabric. For example, the International Monetary Fund gets a mention; Labour politicians debate whether capitalism can be left to capitalists to manage, or whether politics can make a difference; Britain is depicted as an “impoverished sovereign state” whose sovereignty is about to be dictated to by international capital; and rising unemployment is a necessary (but unspoken and unadmitted) instrument of economic management on the government’s part.
Intriguingly, then, Bill Brand is an economic drama as much as a political drama – something that is rarely, if ever, named as such in the annals of TV research and in the discussions of audiences. Surely its time is now and in England (as well as further afield). But, I wonder, will the BBC or ITV be broadcasting anything as sharply critical as this drama – in 10+ primetime episodes – sometime soon?
Brand’s intelligence and political nous are gripping: this is not a political thriller – the genre which most frequently wraps politics in its reassuring TV grasp – but it is certainly thrilling. Without the sub-prime paraphernalia of conspiracies and murders it fixes the audience’s attention on parliament and government. And it does so by representing politics as ordinary, not just as the stuff of shadowy cabals and exotically distant elites. By the time Griffiths’ narrative concerns turn to electioneering and real politik deal-making, we have seen enough of the key politician characters to view them as people rather than ciphers – Brand, most especially, who seems defeated in his private life even as he holds to his principles in public.
Tensions and resonances between public/private selves lend the proceedings an occasionally soap operatic air; debates over abortion, for instance, find themselves abruptly counterpointed by the situation of Brand’s colleague Winnie Scoular (Rosemary Martin). And there are several moments where the public and the private are strikingly intertwined. Episode four, for instance, focuses at one point on Brand’s lover, Alex Ferguson (played by Cherie Lunghi). Alex is shown giving a political speech on sexuality and oppression, and as she speaks we slowly dissolve to an image of her making love with Brand, her contorted face ghosting across the public, consciousness-raising event. It’s a startling conjunction from director Michael Lindsay-Hogg; an essayistic montage asking us to consider whether public and private selves can ever really be separated out. The political is personal, and vice versa. Another such moment of deliberate, extreme contrast comes at the start of episode seven, ‘Tranquillity of the Realm’, directed by Roland Joffé. This time, parliamentary prayer runs on the soundtrack over images of Brand’s family life with his children and estranged wife, Miriam (Lynn Farleigh). Brand’s family will shortly come under threat as a result of his political statements on an anti-terrorism bill, again refuting any division between public and private life.
Whatever the etiquette may be on spoilering a TV drama that’s 35 years old, I’m going to discuss the series’ conclusion now and in the next paragraph, so consider this your three-and-a-half-decade late spoiler warning. Because if Bill Brand is a rare TV instance of economic drama, it is also something else exquisitely rare; truly dialectical television storytelling. Employment Minister and great socialist hope David Last (Alan Badel) reminds Brand that all is dialectical: nothing is pure, instead containing its own opposite or negation. As such, life is a whirl of contradictions. In early episodes, though, it seems as though Griffiths is interested in a rather sixth-form exercise – the construction of a fantasy of ideological purity, where Brand is the one true champion of socialism whilst all around him desert their principles, whether it’s the Journal group shifting its bloc vote as a result of semantics; the Constituency Party and Alf, Bill’s agent (played by Alan Surtees) selling out for election votes; leading socialists accepting the collective responsibility of Cabinet in order to get power, and so on. It is Brand who continues to act as an emblematic socialist, ever devoted to fighting the good fight.
The eventual outcome of Brand and Last’s alliance? The thorough defeat of socialism within the Labour Party, and the acension of its greatest enemy, a revisionist Left bent on claiming the centre ground (here, Griffiths anticipates the Blairite “third way”). Socialism is dialectically defeated by itself, and by the manipulative strategy that Last uses to split the Party’s centre ground – a high-risk gamble that lets in his fiercest opponents. Though episode one is entitled ‘In’, with Brand being returned to Parliament as an MP, by the series’ end he is effectively “out” as a Parliamentary Private Secretary, just as Last and other remaining socialists have all been compelled to resign from the Cabinet. The very end of episode eleven could be taken as somewhat open or ambiguous – suggesting that Brand’s fight goes on – but the parliamentary struggle has been lost by this point.
Rather than a juvenile fantasy of ‘pure’ politics, Bill Brand is ultimately a drama of disillusioning dialectics, where we defeat ourselves, in public and in private. Suddenly, seemingly without warning, Bill asks Winnie why they never got together (the script seems to suggest that she would be the best-suited partner for him). He doesn’t understand, doesn’t have all the answers. Nor, mind you, does Trevor Griffiths, for the tackling of feminist ideas here is far less developed than the engagement with socialism. Brand talks on the topic of gender inequality at Ruskin, and we’re shown an agitprop group late in the drama who pillory Miss World contests, but female characters are still far less well developed than male, and actresses less well served than actors. Arthur Lowe puts in a wonderful turn as the Prime Minister, whereas Stephanie Cole has a few meagre lines as a secretary. Brand’s ex-wife remarries, but we’re given little insight into her inner, emotional life. Even Alex’s radicalism is not as significantly explored as it could have been, as the central focus is instead on politics in a man’s world.
However, the iconic Thames ident which precedes each episode still seems strangely apposite, its reflected doubling of Big Ben and St Paul’s Cathedral putting one in mind of today’s politics surrounding St. Paul’s, and the doubling of Parliament – then versus now – that’s summoned up by watching Griffiths’ 1970s’ work in 2011. Rather than politics and economics being coded via thriller conventions (State of Play; The Last Enemy; Burn Up; The Shadow Line etc) or via demographic-chasing gimmicks (Party Animals), today’s British TV drama commissioners should watch Bill Brand and ponder their own strategies, just as audiences might well ponder how many of the 1970s’ economic faultlines depicted here are still pressingly with us now.
Bill Brand is available on DVD exclusively from Network.
