DENNIS Potter died on the day the last issue of Socialist Outlook went to press. Whilst his death leaves the world a poorer place his artistic work has left a rich legacy.
Potter was born into a coal mining family in the Forest of Dean. He won a scholarship to Oxford, and stood (unsuccessfully) as a Labour candidate in the 1964 general election. After working as a writer for the BBC he moved to the Daily Herald, in the mistaken belief that he might "be allowed to express a sort of socialism".
In 1961-62 Potter developed psoriatic arthropathy. According to Potter he first became aware of it whilst reporting on a Young Conservatives conference, though he couldn't quite believe his feeling ill was entirely a result of the speeches from "the usual hard faced, brash, young idiots talking about what this country needed".
Potter's background - and his attraction to and rejection of it - informed much of his work. His first production for television Between Two Rivers was a documentary about the Forest of Dean in which he expresses his desire to find a more cultured world. The two Nigel Barton plays have a centrai character irom a minine family who goes to Oxford and rejects his background.
Backdrop
The Forest of Dean forms a backdrop to parts of the Singing Detective and Blue Remembered Hills. And Potter ended his years in Ross-on-Wye, only a few miles from the Forest.
Potter's work has recurring themes: life, death, sex, love, religion, good, evil and the relationship between them. Most of all he was concerned about the relationship between childhood and the rest of one's life.
For Potter television was the most democratic medium. He believed it was possible to bring art to the masses.
His vehement hostility to Rupert Murdoch and his scathing comments about "croakvoiced Daleks" running the BBC flow from Potter's concepts of what television should and can be. And few people come anywhere near Dennis Potter's ability to grasp the possibilities of television and use it effectively.
Potter refused to be bound by traditional narrative structures and naturalism. He will be remembered for his use of lip-synched songs in Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective.-These were not merely gimmicks: they strengthened whatever point Potter was trying to make. They broke up the narrative, forced people to think, sometimes provided an ironic counter-point to the visual image.
Potter's willingness to break new ground led to controversy. The original ending of Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton had Barton pleading for people to put their cross on the ballot paper and then giving a V-sign to the camera. This last shot was removed.
Brimstone and Treacle was banned for eleven years because of the rape of a physically and mentally disabled young woman by the devil. As a result of the rape the woman is cured. Potter's intention was to show that good can come out of even the most evil situations. The play was denounced as "nauseating, diabolical" - which is, of course, exactly what it was meant to be.
Sexual objects
In Blackeyes Potter tried to show how men objectify women. reduce them to sexual objects. The first episode certainly does this brilliantly. But at times the play itself verges on the sexual exploitation of women, becomes almost pornographic.
Dennis Potter was certainly not a revolutionary, but he espoused certain socialist values, albeit in an often confused and contradictory way.
He was for the defence of the achievements of the postwar Labour government. He passionately hated the destruction of these gains by Thatcher and Major and their backers in the gutter press. He totally rejected the belief that everything can be reduced to its market price.
As long ago as 1965, in Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel.Barton - long before Tony Blair was seeking leadership of the Labour Party - he expressed his contempt for professional politicians who reduce politics to sound-bites.
Fortunately Potter did not die until after completing his last two works, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus.
They will be shown later this year. The Singing Detective will be on BBC in July and Lipstick on Your Collar on Channel 4 in August.
The transcript of his last interview, with Melvyn Bragg in March this year, along with an earlier interview with Alan Yentob and his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture are published in Seeing the Blossom, Faber and Faber, £5.99.
• SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 65, 25 June 1994, Page 11