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Send to PO Box 50, London N! 2XP Linda Bellos Peter Heathfield Marc Wadsworth Betty Heathfield Diane Abbott Bill Etherington Alan Meale Ann Pettifor Vladimir Derer Ken Livingstone Jude Woodward African National Congress .. tickets for 'Building an Alliance for Socialism' • places in the creche for children aged Topics include *Which way for the left? *Labour Left Liaison *Which way for women in the Labour Party? *Black Liberation *Defending the unions today *Justice for the miners *Lesbian and Gay Liberation *Campaign Group of MPs *Fighting the witch hunt *The Anglo-Irish Accord NATO, US bases out of *Solidarity with Nicaragua and El Salvador *Zionism ******************* terested in cellently put.
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The Leslie Titmus Mortimer himself all be midale class.
free of class analysis So else changes.
al vuilt?
• Paradise evenings at 9pm.
Pathfinder £8.95 £3.95 Ruth Blackett reviews John Mortimer's Paradise Postponed on ITV.
IT WAS a good idea — a TV drama about the high expectations people had in 1945 for the brave new welfare state world that we were going to get, but didn't, after the war. Clearly a series that socialists would be inwatching. We might not agree with the analysis but I looked forward to seeing how they would deal with it.
Well, what a disappointment! As the TV rimes said, Paradise Postponed (may) sound like some head-clutching political parable. It isn't ExFar from disagreeing (or not) with his analysis of the postponement of classless, full employment paradise, I can't actually see much connection between what Mortimer says he set out to do, and the final product.
picture of society from top to bottom', he Only it is rather top heavy for the 'story about England since the war' which he was asked working class is represented solely by (snivelling urchin turned Tory minister), and his parents - rural proletarians of almost forelock tugging variety. Indeed the whole thing has an anachronistic air about it. I am sure that villages and people such as those in Paradise Postponed did still exist in 1948, but they hardly represent England at that time.
As well as the odious Titmus and his unattractive parents, most of the other characters are also rather unsympathetic. The so-called socialist vicar owns a brewery and sends to public Indeed we have no evidence that he is a socialist beyond being told that he is. His wite is a prig and his sons are creeps. The local gentry are all clearly mad in one way or another.
The only likeable character is the doctor who Mortimer describes as his own favourite. And what does the doctor represent? The good solid values of the liberal 'middle class' people like Mortimer doesn't like the upper class (among other things he thinks that is where the left now resides, while the Tories have become more working class). And he doesn't like the working class. In short, he doesn't like class and he wishes we could Which is how he manages to write 'a story about England since the war', jam packed with references to class, and completely what do we discover about the developments of the 50s and 60s? That people marched against the bomb. That abortion was illegal, although possible if you had a hundred quid. (And safer if you were really rich and mummy could send you to Geneva. That fast food was on its way. And — the single example of the supposed paradise that was to come - working class kids like Leslie Titmus could get to grammar school.
Maybe that is Mortimer's intended message: human nature is human nature, and if you give the working class a chance all that happens is that its most talented members become capitalists in place of the old fading aristocratic upper class. Nothing I could forgive him this reactionary rubbish if Paradise Postponed was as entertaining as Mortimer's previous work, Rumpole of the Bailey. But the fact is that it isn't really all that good. It has perked up slightly since the beginning but resembles an upper class Crossroads more than Postponed is on ITV on Monday Other Books The Other Book's mail order service offers a wide selection of socialist, anti-imperialist and radical literature.
The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power (Documents, 1918-19) (Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Radek, et al)
Fidel Castro: Nothing Can Stop the Course of History (Interview by J. M. Elliot and M. M. Dymally) Pathfinder £5.75 Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women (Hansen, Reed) Pathfinder Cheques and postal orders payable to Other Books Orders with payment should be sent to: Other Books, PO Box 50, London N1 2XP. If the total value of books ordered is over £10, then simply add 15 per cent for postage and packing
Socialist Action 10 Oct 1986
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Initial speakers include Martin Collins Jeremy Corbyn John Lang
Paradise at the Crossroads