A Very British Coup
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A Very British Coup is a 1982 novel by Chris Mullin, and a 1988 British television adaptation of the novel, adapted by Alan Plater and starring Ray McAnally. The television series, first screened on Channel 4, won Bafta and Emmy awards, and was syndicated to more than 30 countries. The journalist Johann Hari has cited the novel as offering a valuable contemporary insight into the thinking of the Bennite faction of the Labour Party at the time it was written.
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[edit] Plot
Harry Perkins, an unassuming, blue collar, very left-wing Labour politician is elected Prime Minister, much to everyone's surprise, after Margaret Thatcher. The priorities of Perkins' government include the break-up of all newspaper monopolies, removal of all US bases on UK soil, unilateral nuclear disarmament and real open government. There is immediate scheming to depose him, with the U.S. playing a key but covert role.
[edit] Analysis
The book was written around 1982-83, at a time when the Labour Party was in deep trouble and there was much debate about the direction in which it should go. It also has strong echoes of the persistent rumours that have circulated over the years about attempts by the British and American security services, and other wings of the British Establishment, to undermine and depose Harold Wilson's Labour government of the mid-1970s. This first became widespread public knowledge around 1986 with the controversy around Spycatcher, after the publication of the novel but before the broadcast of the TV version.
Perkins' plans for unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from NATO are actually the sort of policies that analysis agree cost Labour the 1983 election.
The endings of the novel and the television version are significantly different.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- A Very British Coup at the Internet Movie Database
- Chris Mullin, The Guardian, 7 March 2006, "When the threat of a coup seemed more than fiction"
- A Very British Coup at the BFI's Screenonline
| Preceded by Tutti Frutti |
British Academy Television Awards Best Drama Series or Serial 1989 |
Succeeded by Mother Love |
