Made in Britain

A couple of months ago I saw Alan Clarke’s Made in Britain (1983) for the first time. Knowing that I was looking for something vaguely gritty, from the 1980s breed of made for television plays (remember those?), it took hours of internet searching to find the right candidate for the role. And here it is. If you know of any others, do let me know.

The play follows a day or so in the life of Trevor, the teenage skinhead played with frightening intensity by a young Tim Roth. It begins with his incarceration in an Assessment Centre, developing his point of view as the plot progresses through acts of minor criminality, racist abuse, to a final violently celebratory night which involves urinating on files, stealing a van, and eventually handing himself in to the police.

It is gripping in that grainy, grim, soulless, desperate 1980s way. It reminds me of Threads in that all the colours are faded and dim, the buildings we see either functionally dreary (JobCentre), or physically dreary, with a high emphasis on shots of corridors, walkways, and other lifeless, sleepless places. The people who inhabit this world are either largely shabby but have their hearts in the right place, or slightly snappier but wicked. The police are evil. The Steadicam follows Trevor claustrophobically, until he seems to be screaming out of the television at us.

Yet something bothers me about it. It is at its best when giving vent to Trevor’s articulations, but it only serves to stir pity or an understanding for this kid who has been betrayed by an establishment he knows to be cynical and brutal. His racism, loudly and viciously expressed, would normally mean that the character cannot be empathised with at all in twenty first century television (after all this is a world where even history books for adults feel compelled to gloss the British Empire by adding sententiously "This is racist" - Norman Davies of all people). Yet we do, a bit. Just enough to make us feel guilty. He is vicious and vile. He is intelligent too. And he has been systematically betrayed since he was a child. We are accustomed to liberals telling us to be sympathetic towards young offenders, but towards racists? Not. Very. Often. That the audience is actually treated like adults is enough to shock as it is.

I am not sure whether to be convinced by the swearing. You know it is old television when characters say "fuck" a lot but not the other one. A lot of people are "wankers". But the swearing is too varied, too artistic to be real. Trevor’s articulation is meant to indicate his intelligence; despite being able to communicate perfectly well, no-one has ever understood him - another sign of decaying Britain. By contrast, in Threads, the world ends and someone only says "fuck" when they find a packet of prawn cocktail flavour crisps.

The plotting is patchy and moves from the kind of extended discussion we expected from plays, to a more telescoped narrative where the character’s act of changing, or resolving, is shown by a series of stares he gives: into a shop window, or a school, before returning to the speech laden conventions at the end. Here too the narrative reminds me of Threads.

That shows a literally blasted Britain, though you could read it as a metaphor for the 1980s, especially with its focus on no longer industrial Sheffield. There is nothing culturally enjoyable or successful about Trevor's Britain either. Everything has gone to hell - except banger racing, which Trevor quite enjoys and which is the main extended metaphor sequence in the film.

Finally the system shows itself to have been hell for a while, as Trevor takes a truncheon in the bollocks and grimaces to camera. So he proved his point and the system is cynical and brutal and it was just pretending to be nice. At least he survives. In Threads the system destroys the world without ordinary people knowing much about it at all. So why should he pretend? He knew it all along. In Threads no-one can really speak by the end; in Made in Britain, speech is stopped by a blow to the groin. And Trevor is Britain: brutal, white, racist, with a sense and an intelligence deliberately hidden from view in favour of a violence of soul that will only ever destroy.

Whatever happened to that Britain?