Murder on the High Seas (1986)

Theatre Review from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you are looking for a contemporary indictment of super-exploited jingoism, Sink the Belgrano, a play by Steven Berkoff (Mermaid Theatre) is a devastating exposé of this ferocious and lethal cancer.

Britain 1982, demoralised by the effects of economic recession, looks to its leaders for guidance. They could provide none. Conveniently and for not dissimilar reasons, the Argentine Junta decided to raise the international stakes. This allowed "Maggot Scratcher" (Margaret Thatcher) to play the patriotic card and so manufacture a badly needed consensus around which the bourgeois political opportunists in Westminster could cluster, like flies on dung.

From these heaving decks of collective insanity the play ignites into a searing attack on one of the most obscene episodes of the Falklands Campaign, targeting the manipulations of power politicians with such precision that they are contemptuously blown out of the water. Gotcha!

Harvey Harwood