Between the Lines: East Enders (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard 

East Enders

 

There are three views which can be arrived at about EastEnders (BBC1, Tuesday and Thursday. 7.30pm). One is that it is an insultingly nasty caricature of London workers. Indeed, at times the producers of this series seem to be stuck in the rut of the My Fair Lady image of working class existence: decent folk with ruddy cheeks who say "Gawd blimey", need looking after and aren't too bright. The producers' assumptions that East End workers spend their lives fluctuating between the small talk of the semi-conscious and the violent dramas of deranged maniacs may contain a grain of truth, but the ultimate picture derives from superficial caricature rather than serious social characterisation. For example, the long scene in which Angie attempts to seduce Lofty (5 September) owes more to the remote observer's image of how the uncouth and immoral proletarians carry on than to likely reality.

The overwhelming image given out by the programme is of life as experienced by people who are too dull-witted to cope; thank goodness for Dr Legg who is always there to keep the hapless wage slaves on the straight and narrow — not to mention the escapee from Dock Green. Detective Quick. (Who thinks up these names?)

Secondly, one can see the series as a realistic portrayal of members of the working class whose lives are full from day to day with endless problems. We are shown it as a reflection of our own lives. Arthur's long search for a job. the repeatedly failed efforts of the three young lads to succeed as entrepreneurs in the knitting business. Den's need to trade in stolen goods in order to supplement his income from the pub, the lack of facilities for the young unmarried mother, the fear of the old women who dare not walk in the streets.

All of these problems flash before us and we are expected to accept complacently that "this is reality" as we watch the victims of the system crawl out of one contradiction and into the next. It is possible to imagine a person living in a future socialist society, watching video recordings of EastEnders and asking how such miserable lives could be offered as entertainment. After all. at least in Shakespeare's tragedies the audience was not expected to share the same fate as the fictitious victims; but the point of "reality" drama like EastEnders is that the viewer is supposed to relate through experience to the wretchedness on the screen.

There is a third point to be made about EastEnders: that it is nothing more than an attempt by the BBC to beat their ITV rivals in the soap-opera audience ratings war. TV programmes are like other commodities and TV companies are out to win viewers; EastEnders was devised by a gang of BBC whiz-kids whose prime aim was not to entertain or to convey a message, but to push up the ratings. If this could be achieved by screening performing jugglers, then that is what we would be shown.

Capitalism — the system which prides itself on providing for individual needs — is not interested in programme schedules which satisfy such needs, or high dramatic standards, but in putting on whatever will draw a mass audience.

The BBC is succeeding in this aim: EastEnders has now more than once beaten Coronation Street to the top of the ratings league. It will be interesting to see whether C4's Brookside, which was devised originally by its producer, Phil Redmond, as the soap with a social conscience, will be able to maintain its tendency to be more honest in its depiction of social reality than the mainstream soaps. The series certainly succeeded in this in its early days (especially those episodes written by the very able Jimmy McGovern) but, as C4 finds itself increasingly under IBA pressure to win in the ratings' war, it is significant that there has been a recent tendency to abandon realism for populist sensationalism, for example the July siege of the nurses' house and the sentimentalised saga of Edna's protracted death. One more piece of evidence. perhaps, that there can be no escape from the market even in the comfortable fantasy-land of the soaps.

Whose vision on our telly ?

Sounds of scandal and indignation from Broadcasting House as news of the activities of Room 101 is leaked. The NUJ protests. This is the thin end of the wedge, proclaims Vincent Hanna, who usually makes a living out of calling people extremists for getting hot under the collar like that.

Can it be true that M15 is vetting the job applications of BBC journalists? Can it be true that any BBC journalist with a modicum of political intelligence could have imagined up to now that MI5 was not vetting them? Of course the state will do its best to ensure that the right workers are appointed to the important jobs of telling its lies and distorting social reality. It is the function of the state machine, as the instrument of class rule, to see that the social order is upheld without interference from subversives.

Socialists do not call on the government to cease such secretive and undemocratic practices at once — to do so would be to express a degree of naivete which we do not possess. As long as the bosses are allowed to own and control the means of wealth production and distribution, which includes the means of mass communication. they will exercise their control to the advantage of minority class power and to the detriment of democracy. The task is not to democratise the BBC. as the NUJ might wish, but to revolutionise society: nothing less will do.

In a speech by George Howard, then chairman of the BBC. at Hull College of Further Education on 26 April 1982. the following quotation from the BBC's Charter and licence Agreement was quoted: "The Secretary of State may from time to time by notice in writing require the Corporation to refrain at any specified time or at all times from sending any matter or matters of any class specified in any such notice; and the Secretary of State may at any time or times vary or revoke such notice. The Corporation may at its discretion announce or refrain from announcing that such a notice has been given or has been varied or revoked". In other words, a government minister may force the BBC to refrain from putting out certain messages and the BBC authorities, appointed by the government, are free not to tell viewers that this has been done.

George Howard made the point, in his published speech, that such a provision in the Charter "would make a nonsense of our independence if. in fact, he (the minister) ever attempted" to use it. But how are we to know that it has not been used, for according to the wording of the provision it can be implemented and revoked without the BBC ever being under an obligation to tell the viewers. Now. there's something for the NUJ to think about.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note: 

According to this short piece about state vetting of BBC personnel during this period, it was Room 105 rather than Room 101.