Ian Lilley's dramatised documentary reconstructs the key moments in the work and trial of 1970s urban guerilla group The Angry Brigade, who terrorised the British establishment.
DIRECTOR INTERVIEW
BBC Four: The Angry Brigade seems to have fallen out of many people's recollections of the 1970s. Why do you think that is?
Ian Lilley: It fell out of people's recollections because they really couldn't understand what they were fighting for. In many ways they represented a view that was held by quite a lot of people in the 70s who were fed up and disillusioned but The Angry Brigade took it one step further.
Later of course it was swamped by other acts of terrorism. The IRA came along not long after that so it became a much bigger and scarier thing to worry about than what were in effect quite small and symbolic bombings rather than the outright terror that came from the IRA.
BBC Four: Do you think they had any lasting political significance?
Ian Lilley: I think they did in the sense that they made mainstream politics sit up and think how they handled people who weren't very attracted to the way society was going at the time. In many ways it marked the end of a period of innocence where it was assumed that everyone was on the same side. What we have here is a general rejection of many firmly held views and standards that society held at the time. That was quite shocking in many ways. Up to that point the threat had come from other countries.
BBC Four: Did they damage the effectiveness of the counter culture in Britain?
Ian Lilley: They probably did. The counter culture was seen to be something you could believe in. What you had here was something that most people found difficulty in supporting. Although they supported many things that The Angry Brigade associated with they couldn't understand the group's specific demands. It was hard to pin down what The Angry Brigade stood for because their communiqués were quite unintelligible. Clearly, they didn't like a lot of society but it was very hard to work out what they wanted to put in its place.
BBC Four: Did you encounter much resistance from former members to be interviewed?
Ian Lilley: We don't know how big or small The Angry Brigade actually was. What we do know is that there was a core who were involved in many aspects; whether they were the people who were prosecuted or not, that's always open to doubt. We attempted to contact all the people who were prosecuted. Most of the people involved have never talked to the press. The only person who has spoken to us is Jake Prescott, who I think was probably the hardest done by. He had one of the hardest sentences and also wasn't really part of the core thinking behind it.
BBC Four: Why did you opt for the docu-drama approach?
Ian Lilley: One reason is there is not a good deal of archive and there's certainly no archive footage of the thinking behind it, which you really need if you want to understand what this group were like. Secondly, what you have here is a very good story. With Jake we had one man's perspective on what happened. Like many stories that's a very good way of telling it, it's the best clue we have as to what was going on behind there. We got an insight that you're not going to get from a more straightforward documentary approach.
