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Dramatising the impact of the 1984-85 miners strike, Faith charts the troubled
relationship between couples Michelle and Gary (a miner) and her sister Linda
and Paul (a policeman) in the fictional mining town Newby. Producer Antonia
Bird, who worked in miners' support groups during the strike, sought a script
from acclaimed writer William Ivory, whose acting credits included Bird's Care (BBC, tx. 8/10/2000) and Les Blair's pit-closure drama The Merrihill
Millionaires (BBC, tx. 29/9/1993).
Combining fiction and historical accuracy required "a different discipline"
for Ivory, who started research without a preconceived position - during the
strike, Ivory was a bin man in less 'solid' Nottinghamshire - but concluded that
the coal industry suffered a "premeditated political attack" by Margaret
Thatcher to break unions. Faith displays controversial tactics including MI5
'counter-subversion' and BBC news' misleading editing of 'Battle of Orgreave'
footage (both admitted since the strike), with characters in a civil war
atmosphere illustrating Thatcher's Falklands-referencing condemnation of miners as the 'enemy within'.
However, Ivory's focus is on people. Michelle and Paul are energised by new
roles with campaigners and Metropolitan Police respectively. One of Michelle's
speeches echoes Ivory's sense that Bird was not motivated by "a sense of loss, but of victory" observed in communities and among women whose campaigning
'redefined' their social roles. The extreme situation results in intensified
feeling (Ivory "recording the 'more'"), leading to articulacy in Michelle's
speeches and the sisters' desire not to accept the life their mother settled
for.
The personal becomes political if the system wants miners to 'self-destruct'.
Emotions are expressed through mining imagery: Gary feels a "great empty shaft
of a hole" within - conveyed visually by a previous doorframe shot trapping him
in a narrow shaft of light - which makes his strike support an "act of faith"
unlike Michelle's 'belief'. In the strike as in love, Gary's affair with Linda
shows a mutual need to replace doubt with feeling.
Director David Tucker enhances the script with drama-documentary techniques,
from hectic and ultimately tragic picket scenes to the juxtaposition of archive
footage: 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' potently accompanies images of miners
receiving donations, intercut (on the lyric "thank God it's them instead of
you") with Thatcher addressing the rich. Consequently, a Conservative media
spokesman criticised Faith as "wholly partial and one-sided" and the BBC for
left-wing bias. In its defence, Ivory cited its critique of miners' leaders and
sympathy for a police character.
David Rolinson
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