Say goodnight Duke

ONE OF the only decent series of plays done by commercial television since the Armchair Theatre of the late 1950s was the collection produced by Kenith Trodd for London Weekend.

Spread over two years the series came to an end with the resignation of Trodd and other executives from LWT over the sacking of Michael Peacock last year.

One of the first plays done though was a script by Colin Welland, called 'Bangelstein's Boys'.

Directed by John Mackenzie this was Welland's first script for television.

It concerned northern amateur rugby club and its annual trip, to London for a match and a night on the town and the beer. The film was a good hard account of the tension and sublimated misery within the club, where so much of what passes for fun reflects realities n lives ottside. the need to forget the It also caught some of the humour, strength and real power of the players and therefore the class of which they are a part.

Last week (in the series still called Armchair Theatre) Welland's third play was transmitted. I missed the second, but last Tuesday's, 'Say GoodGrandma' (Thames) was another script which stood head and shoulders above most of what passes for television drama.

It concerned a visit home to the North by a young couple with their new baby.

They arrive at his mother's house, semi-detached and immaculate, to find her mother there waiting too. Some preliminary skirmishes between the two grannies leads to the retreat in pained anguish of the girl's mother.

She has been defeated in the ruthless struggle for possession of the new family and its youth by a well-aimed blow at her religious convictions on birth control.

The young husband is the prize now, in a battle between his mother and his wife. "The battle rages over tea and into his being manoeuvred into a carefully prepared spontaneous booze-up at home with his old mates-just like they used to do five or ten years ago.

During this the mother fights for supremacý, for Oedipal dominance, but above all competitively for the love 'of her son.

She fights by laying on beer and sandwiches in vastly excit• Leon Trotsky Is Britain Going?

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New Park Publications SEA Claphám High St.. SWA ADVANCE NOTICE FRANK CARTWRIGHT TV COLUMN ing amounts as though from nowhere—just like mums are supposed to do and wives never can.

WEAPON

The wife fights back with the weapons of youth. Frank sexuality and a young body completely win the empty hearts and full desires of the 'boys' away from mum and her beer and sandwiches.

hother 1s deteated. force o let go of her son, forced t become grandmother to the baby, forced to give up any illusions of youth, forced to accept what she can get.

The 'boys' too are made to give up any dreams they are harbouring about being young and free.

The bird, after all, is their mate's wife; they too are married and. weighed down with the load or lonely as bachelors.

Welland's play was, precise in, its, blows, but. always compassionate. The way relationships are forced into sterile and twisted moulds, the artificial forms taken by deep human conflicts and needs 'in thịs society, were all there.

FUNNY

The longing for friendship, for filial closeness, for contact, are so often perverted into crippling pantomimes. Much of this came through the play, often implicitly, behind very funny dialogue.

The performances were all very good, especially by Susan Jameson and the author as the wife and husband. A serious attempt had been made too catch the claustrophobic atmosphere and enclosed space of the house; occasionally, though, it was difficult catch key lines because of the loose shooting.

But an excellent piece. THERE WAS another event of the television week though.

"The Country We Are Making' (BBC-2 October 26) was ostensibly concerned with the destruction of the environIt turned out, with the Duke of Edinburgh at the helm, to be a plea for the protection of tacities or old England, under the huntin' the guise of democratic concern, of course.

BLAME

'We' were blamed for fouling everything up, and when it wasn't 'us' who did it, it was 'our' fathers.

The sewage workers now on strike were blamed for polluting the rivers (tactfully, 200 years of destruction by capitalist production • was forgotten) and the climax of the show came with jolly references to the Tory Prime Minister's new boat getting some oil on it.

For me, the real highlight, though, was the sight of the Duke advocating the need for more central control to deal with the 'problem' against an old fashioned laissez-faire director of the Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation.

FEBRUAI ALEXANDRA PALACE Wood Green London, N22 Marvellous television too • • reaction and distraction disguised as enlightened concern.

There's a Feiffer cartoon which was issued for the Earth Day celebrations held in New York earlier this year.

A hard-faced business man faces a young and naive chap. The faces remain the same, the dialogue changes.

Business Man: Vietnam is dead as an issue. The real issue is ecology.

Young Man: But what can we do about it?

B.M.: We have to control the environment.

INTERVIEWED about the decision to expand the Territorial Auxiliary and Voluntary Reserve on BBC radio's "Today' programme last Thursday, Lt. Col. Colin 'Mad Mitch' Mitchell was wildly enthusiastic.

He mentioned the TA's 'civil duties' and elaborated to the extent of referring to their ability to 'back up the police'.

'In these violent times,' he said, 'this is very useful for internal security.' Now, what do you think he had in mind? Protection of Aberdeen cattle against rustlers? Anti-poacher patrols on the grouse moors? Traffic duty on the road to Inverness?

Mitchell's activities in Aden lead to the conclusion that he was thinking of more directly political action for the TA&VR, which, incidentally, is to have an armoured car division.

He was only revealing a little of what Heath implied in his UN reference to 'civil war'. The Mad Mitches of Britain see their role more and more involved with preparation for action against the working class.

Let's hope he more often.

Young Socialists and All Trades Unions Allia GREAT NATIONAL RALLY AGAINST TORYISM ITE Author of the play Colln Welland in a scene trom day Gooanigas to your cranad • that?

Y.M.: But that?

B.M.: We industrial wa Y.M.: But that?

B.M.: We ism.

issue.

have have ite.

CABINET PAPERS recently made available show that gathering between the union chiefs and the government during the stormy years of 1920-1921—referred to in the articles by Jack Gale-were always polite and often cordial affairs.

Ministers were particularly sympathetic with the difficulties of the treacherous Jimmy Thomas, leader of the railwaymen and spokesman for the Triple Alliance.

'We quite understand you were overruled by NUR conference which cided on strike action,' told him.

But even the lefts like Robert Williams were treated with true English courtesy. He never saw the secret reports on 'revolutionary organization' circulated to the Cabinet once a fortnight, in which his speeches often featured.

While the meetings were proceeding on the Sankey Commission — the trick by which Lloyd George helped the union leaders to betray the miners-quite different kinds of discussion were going on inside the Cabinet.

These not only involved preparation for strike-breaking activities, including military action in the event of a Triple Alliance strike. They also inWe have to control Oh, you mean social-' Ecology is dead as an that dethey PROTEST strikes staged throughout Spain yesterday by the clandestine trade union organizations underline the phoney character of the Trade Union Law now before Franco's puppet parliaEven the Catholic bishops have been forced to condemn the Bill. When all the elaborate Fascist phraseology is chipped away it gives nothing in the way of concessions to the working class.

Genuine trade unions are illegal in Spain. After the civil war they were dissolved and replaced by 'sindicatos' in which all workers were compulsorily enrolled.

Some of the key clauses in the 'consultative document' put out Carr-style by the Franco regime after four years brooding over the Bill give an indication of its real meaning.

Defining the bodies which come within the law, Article three states: "Professional organizations are Unions and Councils having as their object to represent social and economic indian one worker in long, to them.

"They shall be represented at all levels by freely. elected representatives and will recognize the right to hold meetings speak and act within the limits laid down by law.?

Now you see it, now you don't.

Since the law effectively forbids all conspiracies to raise wages or fight for better conditions, outlaws strikes and forces workers into the same 'unions' as their employers, freedom within the law is simply an empty phrase.

Nor. is Franco going to get the sindicatos free from government control.

The Minister for Sindical Affairs, a government nominee, will have the absolute right to sack any functionary or dissolve any organization he sees fit.

He is specifically enjoined by the law to make sure that the sindicatos conform to the 'basic principles which inspire the Spanish Sindical Organization'— namely, the principles of the Fascist corporate state.

Armed with these wide powers, the Minister will vet the sindicatos' rules and regulations (Article 23), nominate the LABOUR'S House of Commons front bench is rapidly transforming itself into a kind of unsolicited - and unheeded — advice bureau for the Tories.

: Wagging her finger at Employment Secretary Robert Carr after his announcement that the Prices and Incomes Board is to be replaced by a new • Office of Manpower Economics, Shadow Minister Barbara Castle warned:

"This is bound to toughen the determination of workers to presidents of the various 'unions' and preside over the Sindical Organization and the National Congress (Articles 26 and 31).

Just to ensure that only outright Fascists get to the top: nobody who has been deprived of civil rights, been in jail or been declared 'incompatible with the principles Nacional, Of the Movimiento (Franco's Fascist party) can become president of the Sindicato Nacional.

This rules out representatives all genuine working-class parties, all of which are illegal in jucges press for higher pay increases, particularly where those workers are low-paid.' Perish the thought!

Presumably it is fear of this dreadful determination which in the last five weeks has held back not only Mrs Castle but every other leading member of her party from lifting a finger to encourage Labour councils to settle the council workers' claim for higher pay.

Offspring

Her indignation is of course a convenient cover for not discussing the real implications And to add insult to injury, 'The members of the Executive Committee, the presidents of the sindicatos and national federations, the Directors of. Works and Services and the Provincial Delegates of the Sindical Organization' must 'swear allegiance to the Head of State, to the Principles of the Movimiento Nacional and the Fundamental Laws of the Realm'. (Article 49).

No wonder the Spanish workers are up in arms about Franco's proposals.

This outright Fascist law is only another indication that the Stalinist and social-democratic perspective of democratic reform has no future in Spain and that the overthrow of Fascism can be carried through effectively only by proletarian revolution.

Besides helping Carr produce favourable pay reviews for judges, senior civil servants, army top brass, and other similarly low-paid workers, it will in fact carry on the PIB's propaganda work for speed-up and redundancies in industry-without any hypocritical nonsense about keeping down prices.

'We have made clear', Carr says, 'the best protection for the consumer both as to prices and wages is to be found ... in the processes of competition'.