For better or worse, actor and scriptwriter Colin Welland will always be remembered for the pronouncement he offered on receiving the best original screenplay Oscar for Chariots of Fire: “The British are coming!” The supposed hubris behind the remark was roundly mocked in the ensuing decades, as British cinema struggled fitfully for lift-off, and the flag-waving patriotism of the sentiment seemed to sit oddly with Welland himself, a north-of-England socialist of impeccable credentials.
The same disdain appeared to attach itself to Chariots of Fire itself, a film about British chaps winning gold medals, that was released in 1981 during the first flush of Thatcherism and a resurgent British conservatism. But it deserves to be remembered as a far more nuanced treatment of British identity and achievement: its two central characters are the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and a deeply religious Scottish Christian, and the script makes great play of the exclusion of athletics coach Sam Mussabini (on account of his professionalism) and the stultifying favouritism of the English elites, as personified by the smarmy, slimy Prince of Wales – later to become Edward VIII. As a treatment of the way the imperial British mindset had to be dragged into the modern age, by acknowledging its outsiders, incomers and uprisers, Chariots of Fire is a remarkable, almost miraculous film, one of the great liberal successes of popular cinema.
In hindsight, Welland found it almost impossible to follow Chariots up: he wrote in the Guardian about his failed attempts to get a film about George Stephenson and the Rocket off the ground – “they wanted another film about runners”. But in many ways, Chariots was the summation of his writing career, which had progressed from the angry social comment of the early 1970s Play for Today strand – where Welland found his scripts directed by the likes of Alan Clarke (The Hallelujah Handshake), and Michael Apted (Kisses at Fifty, Jack Point). Arguably his most committed work was another Play for Today from 1974, Leeds United!, which drew on his own family experiences during a rag trade strike in Leeds. As a product of the same (almost entirely male) TV-writing generation that spawned Jack Rosenthal, Alan Bleasdale and Mike Leigh, Welland’s sensibilities were formed in this prolific era – which he was quick to acknowledge in that same Oscar speech. His first major feature credit, Yanks, was an extension of these domestic-scale dramas, providing a role for Richard Gere at the height of his smouldering years.
Welland had a parallel career as an actor, into which he put the same kind of bluff naturalism that ballasted his scripts. He’s still probably best known for his role in Kes, Ken Loach’s 1969 feature that has since become a schoolroom staple: Welland played sympathetic, encouraging teacher Mr Farthing – a stark contrast to Brian Glover’s grotesque sports coach – and created a kind of template for a certain character that has recurred constantly in Loach’s work: a kindly, egalitarian father figure who exemplifies the best aspects of co-operative social living. (In some ways, Jeremy Corbyn must be the latest public manifestation of the ideal.)
Welland’s natural home as an actor was in TV, and he worked to best effect in ensemble teams: I remember being particularly fond of Cowboys, the proto-Only Fools and Horses sitcom about a bunch of useless builders led by Roy Kinnear that aired on ITV in the early 80s; though as a comic foil to the more confrontational class-war shows of the 70s I suspect it hasn’t worn all that well. But possibly his most remarkable role came courtesy of Dennis Potter’s Lord of the Flies-ish Blue Remembered Hills, in which Welland’s innate affability was put to tremendous use as a seven-year-old child – a coup de télé that saw the entire cast of schoolkids played by adults. (Potter, of course, had done it before, in a more limited form, in Stand Up, Nigel Barton.)
But it was Welland’s sheer relatability – on display in this Youtube clip of him chatting with the audience at a bowls tournament – that ensured his enduring popularity. He had an ability to connect, in a peculiarly British way, that would put any politician to shame. Even if the work became sporadic after his triumphs in the 1970s and early 80s – perhaps the industry itself looked askance at his incautious Oscar remark – he benefitted from a groundswell of genuine, unfakeable affection from the public. It’s just a pity it didn’t translate into more, and bigger, films.
