Category: Education

Exploring The Wednesday Play’s Legacy At 60 – 02.02: ‘Sir Jocelyn, the Minister Would Like A Word…’ (BBC1, 13 January 1965)

The Wednesday Play (1964-70, or 1965-70) was a landmark BBC drama series, following ITV’s lead with Armchair Theatre (ABC & Thames, 1956-74) in amplifying working-class voices. Canadian migrant Sydney Newman, from a working-class background, spearheaded both initiatives. After completing a Ph.D. on The Wednesday Play’s successor, Play for Today (BBC1, 1970-84), It’s time to grapple with the legacy of its predecessor in greater depth.

This series of posts commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of The Wednesday Play while exploring its diverse output beyond justly celebrated works like Up the Junction (1965) and Cathy Come Home (1966). I plan to watch and reflect on all existing plays up to Cathy, supported by research. Missing plays will still be covered, but without textual analysis.

02.02: Sir Jocelyn, the Minister Would Like A Word… (BBC One, Wednesday 13 January 1965) 9:25 – 10:40pm

Directed by Stuart Burge; Written by Simon Raven; Produced by James MacTaggart; Story Editor: Roger Smith; Designed by Moira Tait; Music by Dudley Moore

Radio Times cover image

This play appeared just three days after writer Simon Raven had another play on TV, The Gaming Book for ABC’s Armchair Theatre (ITV, 10/01/1965), which concerned a grammar-school educated subaltern’s impact on an army regiment in Germany. This domination of a week’s schedules by one playwright was not entirely uncommon: in December 1970, Colin Welland had two remarkable plays on the BBC and ITV in the same week, after his fine Armchair Theatre Say Goodnight to Grandma in late October. Raven was rather a diametrically opposed figure to Welland, and his employment was evidence of the BBC’s pluralism and that it would engage more conservative voices in drama, however endangered a species they have understandably tended to be within the humanistic Arts!

Raven’s BBC Wednesday Play concerned the ‘petty intrigues of university life’, with dons vying with politicians over what the priority should be when building a new college, with funds being low: a lecture hall or a chapel? (Leicester Mercury, January 1965, p. 16). Coverage indicates there was a typical generation gap theme of youth vs age.

The Leicester Mercury made much of Raven’s roots in the city, being the grandson of the late Mr. William Raven of Portland House, Leicester (ibid.). In a fascinating vignette, Charles Greville interviewed the 37-year-old writer in his bedsitter in a Deal boarding house: ‘An odd environment for a self-confessed Right-Wing reactionary with a taste for the high life’ (Daily Mail, 15 January 1965, p. 4). Raven, possessed of a ‘George Sanders drawl’, is exiled to Deal in Kent as his publisher Anthony Blond agreed to pay his debts if he lived at least 50 miles outside of London! (ibid.). Greville recounts that this Charterhouse-educated writer, also ex-military, earned about £6,000 in 1964 – equivalent to £155,000 today – and is working on the second novel in his Alms for Oblivion series and ‘nurtures a nostalgia’ for Edwardian England:

A self-possessed, but oddly melancholy man – chronicling a world before it disappears (ibid.).

The play generally received far less pre-broadcast publicity than A Tap on the Shoulder, perhaps indicating that its somewhat more rarified milieu was less likely to entice a large audience. Uncanny foreshadowing here of how Malcolm Bradbury and Christopher Bigsby’s Play for Today about academics in a redbrick University The After Dinner Game (1975) followed a week after Philip Martin’s populist urban crime PfT Gangsters. (Both those plays are excellent with very different strengths and limitations)

Notably, the BBC gave this play more of a promotional push than O’Connor’s heist comedy, allocating not just a substantial Radio Times article to it, but featured in on the magazine’s cover, the first Wednesday Play to receive this accolade.

Raven’s play was billed in the Scotsman as a ‘comedy’ (13 January 1965, p. 16) and the Daily Mirror as a ‘COMEDY OF CUNNING’ (13 January 1965, p. 14). A Baroness Cleethorpe (Agnes Laughlan) is apparently a ‘Leftish life-peeress’ on the committee who is strongly anti-chapel and pro-electronic lecture theatre (Daily Telegraph, 9 May 1966, p. 13). Laughlan is one of very few women in a masculine ‘ivory tower’ environment; the cast also includes Michael Hordern and Alec McCowen, featured on the Radio Times cover, alongside James Maxwell, Colin Jeavons, Leonard Maguire, Gerald Cross, Christopher Benjamin, Derek Francis and Steven Berkoff, among others.

George Howe as Torquil Flute and Agnes Laughlan as Baroness Cleethorpe. Image from the Daily Telegraph (11 January 1965)

While I can’t truly assess it, with no copy in the archives and as I’ve yet to locate a script, but I wouldn’t quite say I feel that this play would match The After Dinner Game for ‘polished wit and sophisticated dialogue’, which Tony Aspler in the Radio Times claims for it (9 January 1965, p. 39). Aspler praises its ‘outspoken rakish style’, and ends with a direct quote from an unnamed character to demonstrate the ‘punch [Raven] packs here’:

The trouble with modern life, Sir Jocelyn, is that one’s sense of values is perverted. This is because in a democracy the people must be given what they want, and what the people want, for the most part, is nauseating rubbish (ibid.).

Perhaps in a sign that Not Only But Also… had not quite taken off just yet, little is made anywhere of Dudley Moore performing music for the play. Indeed, when I spoke to designer Moira Tait, she could not recall anything about this aspect, but recalls this black and white production as being recorded live at Riverside Studios and that Michael Hordern was very good in it (interviewed by the author, 11 December 2021).

Audience size: 3.96 million

Share of overall TV viewing audience: 24.2%

The opposition: BBC2 (The Hollywood Palace / The Likely Lads: ‘Chance of a Lifetime’ / Newsroom), ITV (It’s Tarbuck! / Professional Wrestling / The Entertainers)

Audience Reaction Index: 55%

Reviewed in London press publications consulted: 78%

Reception: So, did critics and/or public prefer a play from a melancholy bounder of a Tory to the previous week’s diamond geezer socialist murderer? Not really. The critical reaction was mixed, though there was a fair amount of praise, especially from outside London. A notable fraction of the viewing public took to it, but rather more didn’t, in a classic mixed reaction demonstrating this play found niche rather than widespread support.

One of the most positive critics, Peter Black in the Daily Mail, appreciated a Shavian comedy which exposed ‘ready-made’ attitudes and ‘left you more alert and interested than it found you’, having GBS’s ‘faculty for presenting different points of view with equal eloquence’ (14 January 1965, p. 3). However, Lyn Lockwood in the Daily Telegraph disliked a ‘loosely executed’ play with one of TV’s ‘ubiquitous commentator[s]’ – played by Alec McCowen – though she did admire the performances and how the outcome was uncertain ‘until the very last moment’ (14 January 1965, p. 18).

Mary Crozier in the Guardian found it ‘very amusing’ and invariably ‘fully armoured against every contemporary fallacy’, when satirizing a struggle between progressives and traditionalists (14 January 1965, p. 9). Unlike some reviewers, Crozier welcomed its larger than life cynicism and how a brilliant cast made it ‘as though Lord Snow’s solemn Corridors of Power were heard echoing with laughter and were cut down to size’ (ibid.). Contrarily, an anonymous reviewer in the Times perceived a merely ‘pleasant little comedy’, finding pleasure in Hordern’s performance, but felt the play lacked sufficient ‘intellectual toughness’ and passion, and ‘the sense of a real battle over real issues did not arise’ (14 January 1965, p.5).

Maurice Richardson in the Observer regarded neither of the week’s Raven plays as particularly successful, but felt both were more ‘interesting and entertaining than TV drama average’ (17 January 1965, p. 24). While liking Sir Jocelyn‘s characterisation, Richardson felt the plot and situation lacking, feeling too much like an absurd ‘skit on a C. P. Snow novel’, which would have benefited from ‘a faster, more stylised production’ (ibid.). Maurice Wiggin in the Sunday Times preferred Raven’s ITV play, finding Sir Jocelyn… a silly title, but a splendid idea, but poorly structured and ‘choppy’ with an ‘obtrusive’ omniscient narrator (17 January 1965, p. 44). He felt the satire went ‘way over the border of farce: a sort of Swizzlewick, M. A.’ and bemoaned how ‘Television is rapidly creating the most cynical electorate in history’ (ibid.). Wiggin had earlier mused, with unintentionally amusing portentousness:

Mr Raven’s line of thought is more sobering than most. If one may judge by these entertainments, he does not indiscriminately love the race that bore him; least of all the leading class of which he is by fortune and endowment a member. True, having not been born to it, he cannot but offer leadership [my emphasis], even if he can only offer to lead us out of complacency into perplexity, and perhaps despair. (ibid.)

Frederick Laws in the Listener found much to enjoy in a ‘reactionary’ comedy, and sensed Michael Hordern ‘enjoyed playing Sir Jocelyn thoroughly’ (21 January 1965, p. 117). However Laws felt it was too insubstantial fare: ‘An amusement of an hour and a quarter, but not a play.’ (ibid.). Laws pointedly did not discuss Raven’s other play, presumably as it was on ITV.

E. McI. in the Belfast Telegraph was more positive than most in London, finding its satire ‘penetrating’ and saw this play, ‘which shocked and entertained’, as constituting a ‘rarity’ in TV drama (14 January 1965, p. 9). C.V. in the Leicester Mercury regarded Raven’s comedy as ‘a feast of sophisticated wit’, which made three recent plays about Blackpool’s Golden Mile ‘seem like the mental meandering of a school Boy’ (14 January 1965, p. 9). A week later C.V. countered religious critics of Sir Jocelyn – who criticised its ‘heavy sarcasm’ about religion – by arguing religions are strong enough to withstand freedom of speech (21 January 1965, p. 13)

Peggie Philips in the Scotsman saw it as a ‘delightful urbane and sardonic play’, which nevertheless exposed the ‘selfish’ motives of the dons (14 January 1965, p. 14). It was ‘far superior to the general run’ and Philips praised Dudley Moore’s music as in ‘harmony’ with Raven’s writing and Agnes Lauchlan ‘as a Baroness in delicious baronial hats’ (ibid.). Similarly, N.G.P. in the Liverpool Daily Post praised ‘a fine and spirited flamboyance both in words and characters’ (14 January 1965, p. 3). While they do also go on to praise Stan Barstow’s far grittier Z Cars episode from the same night, they salute Raven in hallowed terms as ‘a television playwright who is not afraid of using the English language in an elegant, eloquent and witty manner.’ (ibid.).

Geoffrey Lane in the Wolverhampton Express and Star called it ‘smart, intelligent if superficial’, imagining Raven, like Moliere, having to explain ‘that he was attacking hypocrisy, not the true religion’ (14 January 1965, p. 13). Peter Quince in the Huddersfield Daily Examiner gave a mixed review which synthesised the whole press reaction: finding it amusing, but veering into ‘gross caricature’; he especially admired Michael Hordern’s ‘superb performance as the chairman who wanted (a) to do right; and (b) the O.M. [Order of Merit]’ (16 January 1965, p. 5).

There was a somewhat lukewarm reaction from an audience sample from what was projected as a fairly small audience compared with others we’ve analysed (BBC WAC, VR/65/24). Over a quarter were strongly critical, finding it excessively talk-driven and ‘a big yawn’ with a ‘thin and unconvincing’ theme (ibid.). Another third of the viewers liked getting a behind-the-scenes look at such University wranglings, but even these didn’t see it as amusing or realistic enough, and bemoaned ‘ludicrous’ characterisation’, or saw it as ‘a pale imitation’ of C. P. Snow’s The Masters (ibid.).

A few stuck up for the narration device as a successful update of the Greek Chorus (ibid.). A group comprising 40% of the sample thoroughly enjoyed an amusing, thought-provoking and ‘telling comment on the contemporary social scene’, with much truth ‘underlying the light-hearted, nonsensical badinage’ (ibid.). Acting was, as usual, largely praised, though Colin Jeavons’s architect’s illiteracy was felt to be unconvincing, and some ‘overplaying’ was censured (ibid.). While the production was seen as ‘competent’, an initial slowness, Moore’s ‘superfluous’ music and the (deliberate) artificiality of Moira Tait’s sets didn’t find favour, which it may be surmised was due to the setting being aesthetically unfamiliar to viewers (ibid.).

Letters to the press that reached print veered more to the positive. Patricia O’Mahony of Tunbridge Wells was delighted with a ‘humorous tilt at the windmills of the Establishment, wonderfully put over by Alec McCowen as the private secretary’ (Sunday Mirror, 17 January 1965, n.p.). Susan Ronnie of Bexhill-on-Sea agreed, finding it ‘brilliant’ and ‘scintiliating’, but A. L. Martin of Littlehampton decried a lot of ”jaw-jaw’, and not one character with a worth-while motive or thought!’ (Radio Times, 6 February 1965, n.p.).

As a coda, the theatre critic W. A. Darlington was critical of the published text of Sir Jocelyn…, finding it strained credulity, with the ‘full preposterousness’ of Mr Flute and his swaying of the Baroness (Daily Telegraph, 9 May 1966, p. 13). Notably, Darlington far preferred Ronald Millar’s recent staging of C. P. Snow’s superficially similar novel, The Masters (1950), acclaiming Snow as a ‘realist’ over Raven, a ‘satirist’ (ibid.).

If you worked on or remember watching this play on TV, please email me at thomas.w.may@northumbria.ac.uk as I’m gathering oral history memories and would love to hear from you.🙂

Book review: Laura Tisdall (2020) A PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION? How childhood changed in mid-twentieth-century English and Welsh schools

Laura Tisdall’s book, published by Manchester University Press, is an aptly comprehensive and deeply thought provoking study of postwar British education. Her work is vastly well read and adopts a probing and careful approach to this unwieldy, mammoth field of study.

The book’s conclusion perhaps undersells its final Chapter’s compelling cumulative argument about the exclusion of people whose identities and behaviours were different from the “normal”. But, this is ultimately a very well researched and argued reflection that the so-called “progressive” era of education in the 1960s and 1970s was a longer term 1945-79 cycle. The overall tendency was to valorise the group over the individual, with utilitarian one size fits all approaches, or expedient “what works well enough” teaching. Tisdall reveals that pupils fitting in and conforming with the crowd was fundamentally encouraged in a preparation for the workplace and to produce people for welfare state Britain. It’s surprising in a way that the historiography here doesn’t include Paul Willis on “the lads” and Philip W. Jackson on the “hidden curriculum” as these ideas very much support Tisdall’s argument.

This non-Utopian progressivism, as defined by Tisdall, is persuasively indicated to be a complex mix of social democratic and conservative ideologies. This may have done some good in some places and been responsive to some local needs, but it clearly discriminated against minorities. This followed a 1920s-30s Utopian progressivism which was more radical, but which didn’t get implemented anywhere near as much. Even this non-Utopian progressivism, largely derived from the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget was piecemeal and only partially believed in and implemented itself by teaches, so was always fused with more traditional chalk and talk methods. But then the promotion of group work and the bias towards producing sociable children did clearly mark a change from the 1940s on, compared to what was there before.

Tisdall grasps complexity: the uneven, varying progressions across time rather than discerning simplistic patterns like some Fleet Street hack would. There’s no definitive indication that progressivism failed, as it was only partially tried. Few, if any, deschooling theories were ever implemented in the 1970s. There’s a sense of a conformist middle ground, where mixed classroom teaching methods were used, with enthusiastic or reluctant incorporation of group work, discovery learning and “child-centred learning”, depending on the school. Tisdall pertinently questions of the related moral panic over teenage delinquency, manifested in “blackboard jungle” fictions and also the later 1960s ‘Black Papers’ claims – or myths – linking radical teaching methods with permissiveness. With no evidence, Cyril Burt et al linked what was basically their dislike of student radical longhairs at University, to earlier 1950s “softer” teaching methods in primary school.

There was more a constructive critique offered by those in the mainstream of teaching, which defended some new methods, but also did pave the way for the mixed blessing of the Thatcher era National Curriculum (1988). Tisdall shows the 1970s as the era when teaching unions got much more militant, understandable given the declining status of a very difficult job. She documents the deeper picture: it’s not simply all a reactionary Black Papers juggernaut conquering all before it, though I feel that key figure Cyril Burt’s role over time needs a bit more ideological analysis and unpicking…

The book’s greatest strength is how Tisdall marshals a vast range of evidence of teachers’ experiences and opinions through oral history interviews and a copious range of education related press publications from the times she is analysing.

Now, there could be more on popular culture’s representations. Such as in pop music, TV (e.g. Scene, Grange Hill), literature and film, or how the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s abstract records were used in classes. The vast area of literature is partially included concerning the Blackboard Jungle myth, and there’s an apt, if brief, citing of Lucy Pearson’s findings about realism. This does get me thinking about the large cohort of Play for Today dramatists who had experienced teaching… Overall, though, this seems an unfair ask, given Tisdall’s focus is squarely on educational history and ethnography, rather than cultural representations.

There could have been more direct evidence of varied people’s memories of teaching styles and approaches in their schooldays, i.e. some interviews and surveys, but also an attention to first-hand diaries, material instances of schoolwork itself and more analysis of documents like individuals’ termly (parents’ evening) reports. The use of HMI reports and other school records is absolutely brilliant, so this would have enabled an even more rounded perspective. this would have assisted the book’s argument, as we do get some crucial findings on people who didn’t fit in, cited via published academic work or reports.

Anyway, this is a fine book, a labour of intensive thought, infused with historical nuance. I’d be utterly flabbergasted if anyone came away from reading this feeling that getting rid of the HMI and replacing them with OFSTED has been a good thing. It also leaves you certain that large class sizes, teachers being overworked and thus relying so often on utilitarian, non-differentiated methods have let the majority of people down who rely on the state system.