Our Friends in the North

My main aim for the next month is to avoid posting angry, embarrassing, ill-informed diatribes on facebook about politics. I'll almost certainly fail.

Something, somewhere infected me with the idea that, despite being a son of West London privilege (well, sort of) and having the least down-to-earth job it's possible to have, I'm truly, straightforwardly old Labour. Of the people, for the people. Slightly ludicrous, when you think about it, but that has become where I think I come from.

My parents weren't old Labour, no way - one is loosely liberal and floats slightly mysteriously votewise, but rarely Labour, I think; the other was somewhat horrendously right wing, bless him. But, me, I'm old school left-wing, not some clueless, toffee-nosed idealistic, do-gooding liberal, no, I'm of the soil, of the unions ... where on earth did I get this idea?

I worry that one well-made TV show had a far larger role in this lasting entrenchment than it ought, so perfectly did 'Our Friends in the North' catch this impressionable young fellow as he slipped awkwardly out of a teenage spiritual, gospel-based morality, into a young adulthood which still felt it needed some kind of meaning.

In some ways, I've always been left-wing. By which I mean I'm not a cunt .... no, stop, only joking ... I mean, I can't remember a time where I didn't think kindness and fairness and stuff were good things, but to me growing up it wasn't a political thing. I don't know who I'd have voted for when I was 15. Well, at mock school elections, I voted Communist when i was 12 (in fact, I was the Communist candidate, but I think i was joking) and ... not sure ... when I was 14, probably something silly - the winning parties at my school were Invade Europe Now and The National Front. I thought that was irony at the time, but now I'm not so sure.

But I got political quickly. I began to read the NME and they were all really left-wing by default and always slagging off Tories, and I watched, in early 1996, 'Our Friends in the North'. In case you don't know, it was a nine-part drama about four friends from Newcastle era where each episode was set in a different year, making reference very often to actual events. The years were ... ok, let's see if I get this ... 1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1996 (the present day). The four friends were played by Christopher Eccleston (probably the most high profile at the time, but still a new face), Gina McKee, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig, required to don various wigs and prosthetics (perhaps the show's only weakness!) to stay in character for over 30 years.

Supporting roles were played by various other excellent British actors, Peter Vaughan as Eccleston's father particularly memorably. I don't remember a performance that wasn't gripping though.

It was immediately hailed as a classic, and continues to be so, as one of the finest British dramas of all time. Many of the great shows (mainly American) since have gained strength over many series, but the nature and format of 'Only Friends in the North' meant it could only ever be a one-off series. There were nine episodes to get it right and that was it.

What did it do for me? I can't overstate it. It educated me. It was obviously a left-wing work, but not blindly so, it was brutal on the corruption within the Labour Party and the crushing of ideals, but it told me the truth about this country in a way I had really not been aware till then. Corruption, basically. Corruption everywhere. In politics, in business, in the police, in personal lives, of rising and falling hopes and ambitions.

The four main characters are, in some ways, archetypes - Nicky (Eccleston), the disillusioned left-wing idealist, Mary (Gina McKee) the clear-headed centrist New Labourite, Tosker (Mark Strong), the Thatcherite, Geordie (Craig) the apolitical one, the victim of circumstance. It's funny that apparently Eccleston and Strong did not get on at all - there characters are the most diametrically opposed throughout the film. Nicky is, if anyone is, the "hero", though some found him insufferably self-righteous and flawed.

At some points, it feels like a tragedy, a catalogue of missed moments, bad luck and despair. Good guys get their comeuppance over and over again, bad guys rarely do. The stuff to do with the Met Police in the 60s and 70s is some of the most depressing and brilliant television I've ever seen. It told me that this country is built on lie upon lie, secret circle within secret circle,  no good man on a mission will ever defeat it. Gosh, the more and more true that all seems now.

There are failed families, impossible parental relationships, sins repeated, hard lessons learnt. There are principled right-wingers and horribly corrupt left-wingers, but there is never any doubt, none at all, that the left is the truth, the cause. It's a given.

I'd have been left-wing anyway, of course I would, I probably overstate OFITN in my head, but that's how politics is for me too. Being right-wing seems ludicrous and unhuman to me, contrary to the very essence. It sounds daft in some ways, but I've never really looked beyond that.

I've watched Our Friends in the North three times all the way through and not really tired of it. It's still saddening and enraging - it ends with a bit of personal hope and a great deal of acceptance and resignation. It predates the Blair years ... gosh, if there were three more episodes, what years would they choose? ... Blair, the MP for Sedgefield, is a character ideal for Our Friends in the North - I think they might go for 2003 (Iraq war and protests being a significant backdrop), 2007 (Blair's departure) and 2010 (the end of Labour in power). Though 2015 seems rather a good one for it too, whichever way the next month goes ...