The Conservatives have been in power for years, the working man feels disenfranchised, unemployment is rife, and there’s really bad music on the radio. And then Labour’s long-awaited electoral landslide, and all is right in the world! 1997? Not a bit of it. This is 1988 – at least, in author (and former Labour MP) Chris Mullin’s imagination – and leftist radical Harry Perkins sweeps into Number 10 with his agenda of rampant socialism and public accountability. The honourable member from Sheffield wants to nationalise all the goodies, and isn’t shy about taking financial aid from Russian banks. He doesn’t quite change “Cabinet” to “Politburo”, but it’s close. And it probably doesn’t help that – as played by the late Ray McAnally with a bootblack ‘tache – Perkins bears more than a passing resemble to Stalin.
MI5 hits the roof, the stock market goes through the floor, and we’re off to the races in a conspiracy between the right-wing security services (tautology?), the Americans, A Very Powerful Newspaper Baron, and even – gasp! – the BBC, to unseat Perkins at all costs. Will there be blood? Of course not: this isn’t West Africa! No, this will be A Very British Coup.
The politics of this three-part Channel 4 production tend towards the cartoonish, but Perkins is a highly sympathetic character (he’d have to be, viewed from this political distance) and his genuine humanity and humour – and the dastardly ways of his enemies – sustain the tension in a relatively predictable Westminster thriller plot. A recurring irritation is that every scene involving civil servants or spies ends with a close-up on their lips as they moue in a manner significantly more gay than sinister.
This is, at heart, an optimistic work. When Perkins has to roll over on the unions to break an energy strike, for instance, it’s not because they are unions, per se, but because one of the bosses has been got at by the CIA. On the other, politics is politics, and we shouldn’t be too surprised that much of this storyline eventually played itself out, for real, when Labour’s turn came. Mullin’s apparent clairvoyance notwithstanding, though, A Very British Coup stands now as a cultural-historical curiosity: a little time capsule of disappointed Labour ambitions.
It is very good viewing. The DVD has missed a trick with regards to extras, but if you want good background on how Labour went from Tony Benn to Tony Blair – or even just an alternative ending – get hold of Mullin’s original novel, or his latest volume of diaries.
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