|  Edgeways caught up with
Jimmy McGovern, one of the country’s most sought after screen
writers, when he appeared at the Rose Theatre, as part of the second
international conference Imaging Social Movements, hosted by Edge
Hill’s Social Movements Research Group.
In Conversation with Jimmy McGovern, chaired by Dr Mark McGovern,
was an illustrated discussion of the critically acclaimed and controversial
writer’s work, with an audience of conference delegates, students,
staff and members of the public. Clips of Cracker, Hillsborough
and Sunday were interspersed with discussions based on the writing,
background and production of some of McGovern’s most contentious
TV dramas.
Jimmy McGovern began his script-writing career working on Brookside
in the 1980s. At that time the soap was renowned for tackling difficult
social issues and Jimmy’s TV script writing apprenticeship
was spent penning politically loaded lines for the Grants and the
Corkhills. As the first anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster
approached, Jimmy was keen to mark the occasion by writing a scene
that involved Tracy Corkhill ceremoniously burning a copy of the
Sun newspaper, a suggestion that didn’t go down too well with
the production team.
“That was the last big row that I had at Brookside. Frank
Cotterill Boyce and myself argued the point but the producers felt
the scene was too risky. It was time to leave Brookside.”
Cracker was Jimmy’s next project and one episode in particular
touched on subjects that he knows only too well.
“Up until the age of 18 I was a racist. I was born in Everton
and went to a Catholic Primary School. We were always taught that
when black babies died they went to limbo. Many people of my age
from a similar background learned racism. I am not racist now but
I was then, brought about largely by ignorance. I was touched by
racism and I know that world well.”
Jimmy’s portrayal of Albie, the psychotic serial killer and
Hillsborough survivor was complex and hit a raw nerve for many.
It was during research for this episode that Jimmy met the families
of the Hillsborough victims.
“I kept in touch with the families and then one day two of
them came to my door and said: ‘tell our story’.”
Jimmy is passionate about
many things including football and politics, and finding the truth
behind the headlines is a common theme in his work.
He applauds Professor Phil Scraton, formerly of Edge Hill, whose
book, Hillsborough: The Truth helped to tell the story of the Hillsborough
disaster after the TV drama hit our screens.
Critical acclaim for Hillsborough was a bitter-sweet experience
for Jimmy, who picked up a BAFTA award for it. He bitterly regrets
the fact that the families were never invited to the award ceremonies
and vowed that it would be different with his next project.
Dockers was the result of a series of writing workshops with the
Liverpool men who were sacked for standing by five dock workers
fired for refusing to work overtime with no pay. Co-written with
Irvine Welsh, writer of Trainspotting, the two-year ordeal was brought
to life with startling reality; not least because of the contribution
of the real life dockers who helped develop the script.
“It was hair shirt altruism that inspired Dockers. The process
of empowerment for the real life dockers was incredible to witness.
At the end of it I felt more enriched than I’d ever been in
my life. The dockers said that there was no room for a scab in the
drama and I had to convince them that you must give the devil the
best tunes. Drama comes alive with moral dilemmas. You have to try
to get into the psyche of all your characters including the rapists
and child killers. I wrote the first speech for the scab, but the
heart and soul of the scene came from a sacked docker.”
In contrast to McGovern’s accolades following Hillsborough,
the dockers themselves were invited the BAFTA award ceremony when
the drama was nominated for an award.
Sunday, written in 2002, commemorated the 30th anniversary of the
Bloody Sunday massacre in Derry. It was a film Jimmy had wanted
to make for a long time:
“Fear stopped me from making this film. I admitted to the
families that I was scared but I promised them that I would do it.
I spent two years interviewing the families of the victims in their
homes in Northern Ireland and had no official co operation from
the British Army.”
It was during this time that Jimmy met Edge Hill’s Dr Mark
McGovern, co author of Ardoyne: the untold truth, a book that tells
the stories of the lives and deaths of the 99 people killed as a
result of the conflict in Northern Ireland. The research for Sunday
was carried out in a similar way to Dr McGovern’s book, through
a series of oral interviews with the people who had been directly
affected by the conflict.
Jimmy was accused of bias for Sunday and was attacked in the British
press, but hailed in Derry:
“The accusations hurt. I believed that I was being honest
and truthful, as my drama was based on eyewitness accounts. But
I had to distance myself from Irish Republicanism. I’m not
an IRA supporter, I’m a Brit, but I can still understand the
plight of the families who were victims of Bloody Sunday.”
Recurring themes of injustice, prejudice and intolerance continue
through to his next project, a musical retracing the history of
cotton, linking the northern English cotton mills with the slave
trade in the American South. And fans of Cracker will be pleased
to hear that another episode is in the pipeline. This one promises
to be just as hard hitting, complete with the McGovern treatment
of the response to the 9/11 attacks.
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Edgeways
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