Fanfare For The Common Man

Neil Clark writes:

I was very sad to wake up a couple of Sundays ago and read on Teletext that Angharad Rees, star of the 1970s drama series Poldark, had died aged just 63. Earlier in the year my wife and I bought a video box set of Poldark at a charity shop.The series was hugely popular when first broadcast in the 1970s, attracting around 15 million viewers. Watching it again today, I can understand why. There's gripping storylines, great acting and characterisation. Not only that but it has a profound message too. The anti-greed, pro-worker values which the series promoted reflected the progressive values of Britain's most left-wing decade.

Ross Poldark is a man committed to helping the poor of Cornwall and getting the mining industry going again to employ people. But at every step of the way this socially enlightened individual faces opposition from the wicked Warleggan family, who are wealthy bankers. All they care about is maximising their profits - they actually don't want the mining industry to succeed as they are speculators. The Warleggans are all-powerful in Cornwall and think they're above the law. Sound familiar?

There's one memorable scene in which the prospects of war with France are being discussed. "War is good for business," the unbearably smug and arrogant George Warleggan declares.Poldark, an ex-soldier, responds: "Some of us know what war means - there is no profit in death." To which Warleggan sneers: "There's none in sentiment."

Ross Poldark rescues - and later marries - a street urchin named Demelza, played by the late Angharad Rees. His marriage to her exposes the snobbery of the upper and upper middle classes. Again, the way in which someone from the "wrong side of the tracks" is championed is par for the course in the egalitarian 1970s - a decade when the gap between the rich and poor in Britain was reduced to the lowest in history and when working people were more empowered than at any time before.

Poldark was not the only popular progressive drama of the '70s. When The Boat Comes In - watched by 15 million viewers at its peak - showed us the harshness of working-class life in north-east England in the inter-war years. The Onedin Line - which ran from the '70s to the '80s - also had an unmistakably humanitarian message. Compassion for the poor - and distaste for greedy capitalism - runs through the whole series. The series was created by Liverpool bus driver Cyril Abraham, who had once served as an apprentice on a sail-training ship.

In his book British Television: An Insider's History, Peter Graham Scott - The Onedin Line's producer - says he saw the series as "a chance to expose the cruel hardships and ruthless ambition that dominated Victorian life." As in Poldark the villain in The Onedin Line is a greedy banker - the scheming Josiah Beaumont.The '70s television dramas weren't just progressive, they were incredibly high-quality programmes. In fact it was the mix of progressive values and high quality which defined much of the decade's art and culture. In a recent Top of the Pops 1977 - repeated on BBC4 - you could see Emerson, Lake and Palmer perform Fanfare For The Common Man in the Montreal Olympic Stadium. Today, in Coalition Britain, we have a Fanfare For The Very Rich.

The reality is that the modern equivalents of George Warleggan and Josiah Beaumont - despicable characters we booed and hissed at in the '70s - got their own back on the rest of us in the '80s. Privatisation was a bonanza for the rich and in particular for the bankers. It was one of the most outrageous financial scams ever perpetrated - we were encouraged to buy shares in national assets which we already owned - in the knowledge that the small shareholders would soon be dwarfed by the big corporate shareholders who would take control of the companies. And the banks made a mint in the process.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Thatcher's deregulation of the City in 1986 paved the way for hedge fund traders, investment bankers and other parasitical financial speculators to emerge, like cockroaches creeping out from underneath a stone. These "free-market" reforms turned Britain from a democracy - an accurate description of the country we were in 1979 - to a bankocracy. And the working class, which had claimed its rightful role at the head of the table in the '70s has been pushed aside as the upper middle and middle classes - the ones who'd be Olympic champions if there was a competition in the use of one's elbows - have taken over.

Just look at the social backgrounds of the three party leaders today and reflect on how much power the working-class has lost over the past 30 years. Watching '70s dramas like Poldark in the neoliberal, privatised Britain of today makes one nostalgic for the time when greedy capitalists were seen for what they were and when bankers did not call all the shots. But it should also make us more determined than ever to rein in the power of capital and get our country once more back on a progressive course.