Boys from the Blackstuff research

[Sandra]

Hi,
I'm a student in Liverpool and Ive been living here over three years now, I love this city. I plan to stay here when i graduate next summer and my sister has been living here for nearly ten years as she decided to stay after she graduated and became a teacher. I was hoping if you could help me, I'm doing some research for university. The title of my question is ' "Gissa Job": To what extent does 'Boys from the Blackstuff' empathise with the plight of the working class male in Thatcherite Britain? ' I was wondering if anyone remembers when the programme originally aired and how you felt about it, do u believe it was a true representation of the working class male in Thatcherite Britain, did it represent the feelings of the city at the time? Any other views and opnions on the subject would be most helpful with my research.
Many thanks

[Ged]

I think it did yes. Many manufacturing industries closed down in Liverpool at that time, many strikes too. The work experience programme was introduced just then and that's what I was on but it could be and would be abused by cheap labour bosses but I suppose in the end it worked for me because I eventually got a good boss. Older people than me on here (like Chippie will no doubt have a better idea of what it was like for the 20-40 year old)

[Waterways]

Originally Posted by Sandra

Hi,
I'm a student in Liverpool and Ive been living here over three years now, I love this city. I plan to stay here when i graduate next summer and my sister has been living here for nearly ten years as she decided to stay after she graduated and became a teacher. I was hoping if you could help me, I'm doing some research for university. The title of my question is ' "Gissa Job": To what extent does 'Boys from the Blackstuff' empathise with the plight of the working class male in Thatcherite Britain? ' I was wondering if anyone remembers when the programme originally aired and how you felt about it, do u believe it was a true representation of the working class male in Thatcherite Britain, did it represent the feelings of the city at the time? Any other views and opnions on the subject would be most helpful with my research.
Many thanks

It was a back-burner BBC 2 series at the time. It became so popular it had high ratings. It was also immediately replayed on BBC 1. The fastest re-run of any TV series, topping the TV rating and a must see series for millions.

It hit the nail on the head. Yozzer was a man slowly going insane because of his own personal unemployment predicament and what added was the despair of the city around slowly crumbling and the people around him in the same situation. No way out!!!!

The character Yozzer dominated the series, however the series was about a group of men - different each week. About how these men were hussling, and lowering themselves, to make a living and survive, and generally failing each time, as the situation at the time was desperate.

The show totally empathised with many people all over the country. It was simply a show for the exact time - see it today and it will not have much affect at all.

We must thank Bleasdale and the BBC for showing such a series at the time, when an authoritarian, spiteful government was in power. Without the TV series I fear matters would have been worse for millions. The impact was powerful.

Where are you from?

[Waterways]

Originally Posted by Ged

I think it did yes. Many manufacturing industries closed down in Liverpool at that time, many strikes too. The work experience programme was introduced just then and that's what I was on but it could be and would be abused by cheap labour bosses but I suppose in the end it worked for me because I eventually got a good boss. Older people than me on here (like Chippie will no doubt have a better idea of what it was like for the 20-40 year old)

The port had declined because of poor management and containerisation. The south end docks closed, yet smaller Garston Docks through an expensively dredged channel further up river was still viable. Manufacturing was never a major industry in Liverpool, but many pulled out, which made the city crumble. Many pulled out because of London based media character assassination of the city.

Liverpool is a mini London. Ask yourself. How does a city with a mixed economy slide so far down so quickly? A city which was the UK second richest in the early 1960s to devastation 20 years later?

Liverpool was a city that turned its back on the land and looked to the open sea and became very rich. Even the manufacturing was heavily marine based to service the shipping industry. When the city turned inland it failed. Its regeneration is partly because it looked again to the open sea. Foreign money came in to start the mini boom. Foreign tourists flock in. Liverpool partly looks elsewhere to sell itself. Americans quite like the accent, unlike southern Englanders who detest it. So, it is not worth selling yourself to people who don't like you to begin with.

[Ged]

Yes, containerisation might have came in with Seaforth but there's more tonnage and profit being made from this method than by the old conventional methods, Shipping is the industry I work in. I was thinking more of Barker & Dobson, Crawfords, Tate & Lyle, Meccano, British American Tobacco, the Mining industry, Bibbys etc - all fell by the wayside - a lot to go in one go though i'm not saying all of it was just the governments fault.

[Waterways]

Originally Posted by Ged

Yes, containerisation might have came in with Seaforth but there's more tonnage and profit being made from this method than by the old conventional methods,

Profit is irrelevant as the old methods employed 1000s of people and the smaller ships required more people to maintain them. The slide was very quick. Poor management of the port certainly contributed that is for sure. Containerisation never came overnight. Since built in 1971 Seaforth Container terminal is only just being extended.

Shipping is the industry I work in. I was thinking more of Barker & Dobson, Crawfords, Tate & Lyle, Meccano, British American Tobacco, the Mining industry, Bibbys etc - all fell by the wayside - a lot to go in one go though i'm not saying all of it was just the governments fault.

Manufacturing was only around 20% of the city's economy and employment. I recall the top of Crawfords in Liverpool when they closed down, on the TV. He was a Scotsman and did not withhold his scorn at the media for the damage they had done to the city and blamed them for many of the pull outs.

At the time Thatcher came to power in 1979 North Sea oil was just coming fully on tap. This was the greatest legacy the country had ever had. Instead of using it to prop up and modernise industries, create new industries, promote education and training, etc, to catapult the country forwards, they used it for unemployment benefits because their half-baked economic theories failed.

North Sea oil revenues were squandered.

I can see you two have got it all sorted out. I can,t add much to that really. I was horrified to think that such a powerful city like ours was at the time, could slowly be turned around.

I remember thinking at the time that I was comparing it to the demise of a powerful empire like the Persian, Mongol, Roman and British ones and how they too just crumble away to being just mediocre places on the map.

I was not a casualty of the "turnaround" as I was working for a multimillion pound American corporation who had fingers in many countries and many brands of items, but many of my family were affected like my uncle Bob who was a rigger on the docks.

When I watched "boys from the blackstuff" I was truely impressed by the way the writer had caught the situation and the mood of the people of Liverpool. Each household had a different effect, everyone dealt with the problems in their own ability, each according to their upbringing or position in life at the time.

When someone or something takes something away from you, you don,t like it. It could be your job, your prestige, your masculinity, your house, your food, your way of life; And these all came crashing down in the 70s turned 80s in peoples lives. It,s one thing seeing injuries of the body, but when the mind is affected, and Yozzer,s was, then 3/4 of the person you once were goes out of your life. And the lives of your partners and your kids. There were even some suicides conected with what went on in that time, but they were swept under the carpet.

I was was a very fortunate person at that time, but, watching the programme made me suffer with the people and their situations and the relation from them to the suffering of those I knew, who I grew up with, in the family and in the street and in the families of some of those I worked with.

Thank goodness those times are past.......for now anyway.

[john]

Unsure if you saw this

Boys from the Blackstuff
By Paul Coslett

Twenty five years after it was first broadcast Boys from the Blackstuff remains a powerful depiction of the despair of unemployment in the early 1980's.

Alan Bleasdale worked as a schoolteacher before turning to writing.

His first success was as a writer of radio drama with the production of the Scully stories for BBC Radio Merseyside. The character would later be turned in to a stage play, two novels and a television series.

When it was first shown on BBC Two on 10 October, 1982, Alan Bleasdale's Boys from the Blackstuff made such an impact that it was swiftly repeated on BBC One nine weeks later. The drama, set in Liverpool, captured the public mood as rising unemployment began to bite across the country.
Following the stories of five unemployed tarmac gang workers as they struggled to find work the series won a BAFTA award for best drama series of 1982. The series established Alan Bleasdale as one of the UK's leading writers and through the character of Yosser Hughes introduced the phrase "Gissa job" into the national psyche.

Boys from the Blackstuff sprang out of a BBC 'Play for Today', The Black Stuff, which was filmed in 1978 although it wasn't shown until 1980.
Bleasdale had already written much of the series of five linked plays by the time it was commissioned, but delays in funding and production led to tweaks and rewrites to include more female characters, including memorably Julie Walter's role as Angie the wife of Chrissie.

The five central characters were depicted struggling to survive and come to terms with the insecurity of life on the dole. Yosser Hughes, played by Bernard Hill, became the most iconic character of the series as he battled with authority and tried to keep hold of his children.

Dixie, played by Tom Georgeson, was the gang's one time foreman whose belief and pride was shattered by unemployment. Loggo (Alan Igbon) seemed the least concerned by unemployment while the character of George played by Peter Kerrigan represented the old trade unionist and docker who felt out of place in the harsh post industrial age.

Chrissie (Michael Angelis) was perhaps the most down to earth of the characters who felt his dignity was destroyed by his loss of work.
Julie Walter's as Chrissie's wife Angie delivered some of the series most poignant lines which were as much a comment on Liverpool as the economic situation at the time.

"It's not funny, it's not fr****n' funny. I've had enough of that 'if you don't laugh you'll cry'
"I've heard it for years. This stupid soddin' city's full of it.
"Why don't you fight back, you b*****d? Fight back."

I remember the programme well, in fact got a copy of the whole series, and was the launchpad for many liverpol actors and other from outside including Bernard Hill (Yosser).
Lots of people identified with the characters and the circumstances they found themselves in thats why it was the powerful success that it became.
Bleasdale allowed the characters to be used in a number of campaigns developing services for the unemployed at the time such as the unemployed centre which stood on Hardman Street.



__________________

[markmck]

i live near where some of it was being filmed ,
and Bernard Hughes became a mate of mine ,
i was only young at the time , and he was telling me to say to everyone
in school "giz a job" coz in 6months time everyone will be saying it ,
i did and 6months later everyone remembered where they heard it 1st ,
i was the collest kid !
HA !

[Ged]

Bernard Hughes may well have been a mate of yours but he wasn't in the series

Only skiddin'. Cameo scene for a young Sinbad too and who can forget Roy Cropper as the dole cheat catcher.