2011 © Hector MacMillan | Terms & Conditions

Honorary Fellow: Association For Scottish Literary Studies

“If we investigate only by physical and chemical means, we can only get physical and chemical answers.”

Sir Alister Hardy, FRS

Solidarity

Bought by BBC Scotland TV.

Broadcast BBC1 TV, London, 1972. Director Pharic Maclaren.

Written on spec at the time of the historic Upper Clyde Shipbuilders 'work-in', the 30-minute play set out to focus issues and develop arguments beyond contemporary news-media coverage. It envisaged what might happen in a later, post-UCS dispute, in the run-up to a television programme featuring opposing leaders.

Submitted to the Drama Department of BBC TV Scotland, who passed it to Alistair Milne, the new Controller. Bought within weeks and immediate production planned.

On the morning rehearsals were due to start I arrived at Queen Margaret Drive, Glasgow, to be told by Reception that the Assistant Controller [Alistair Milne was off-work ill] would like to see me in his eyre. In a rather bizarre interview I was advised that the production was being rushed, the play would suffer, and that I really should welcome a proposed postponement. Subsequent enquiries lower down in the building established that my agreement to this delay was not at all required. Before their flight from London was due to leave that morning leading actors had been advised not to bother travelling. I learned that the director for the play had, by 10.30am, also called it a day and gone home.

Some time later a new production date was set. Minor modifications to the script were requested [the unions, it seemed, were threatening action if they were to be misrepresented] but finally rehearsals did take place and a recording completed. Then the problems of a possible Transmission date arose, and for a time these seemed insoluble.

Frustrated by the delays, Alistair Milne finally took the can of video-tape with him the next time he went to London and asked the Controller there, Paul Fox, to look at it and if he liked it provide a transmission date. Paul Fox arranged for the play [originally scheduled for BBC Scotland-only transmission] to have the prime Sunday TV Omnibus slot from London two weeks later.

'Excellent example of the half-hour TV play - tight, concise and immensely absorbing. It was another feather in the cap of BBC Scotland' Birmingham Post

'half an hour of hard-hitting drama' Daily Record

'It's a long time since I've been so totally immersed in a play' Evening Express.

'too crudely portrayed. These pressures come in discreet memoranda well before the programmes get on the air' Listener.