Two of my favourite postwar British plays are about local government corruption: The Workhouse Donkey by John Arden (1963) and Brassneck by David Hare and Howard Brenton (1973). Even if this docudrama by Gregory Evans about Shirley Porter and the “homes for votes” scandal of the 1980s is not on that epic scale, it offers a chilling reminder of the horrors of social cleansing and gains an extra potency from being seen at a new west London theatre close to Grenfell Tower.
Since the case is now half-forgotten, Evans has to remind us of the basic facts. Porter, an ambitious politician, was leader of Westminster city council from 1983 to 1991. Her initial campaign for civic tidiness soon turned into something more radical.
First the council sold off three cemeteries for a derisory sum, allowing offshore companies to make vast profits. Horrified by the haemorrhage of Tory seats at the 1986 local elections, Porter initiated a scheme by which poor residents of eight marginal wards were compulsorily rehoused and their homes sold off to more sympathetic voters. Alongside the deportation of the homeless and disabled, it gave a new twist to the term “gerrymandering”, in that electoral geography was being manipulated for political ends.
Evans rehearses the story in a way that is brisk, informative and enlightening. What seems especially shocking is the way Porter was able to coerce council officers into becoming tools of a partisan policy. But although Evans, who has expanded the piece from his own 2009 radio play and who acknowledges the influence of Andrew Hosken’s book Nothing Like a Dame, has clearly done his homework, he ducks the story’s larger implications. He suggests that Porter, as the daughter of a onetime barrow-bow who became the founder of Tesco, was driven by a desire to replicate her father’s success. What he does not explain is the extent to which Porter’s policies were a byproduct of Thatcherism and its belief that any form of socialism was an aberration.
While Evans has wittily described Porter as Richard III in “a pink velour leisure suit,” he overlooks one crucial difference. Initially we find Shakespeare’s Richard engaging because we become complicit in his power games: it is hard, however, to find any point of sympathy with Porter. If we heard more about her childhood or anything about her campaign against golf-club antisemitism, it would help. As it is, she emerges as a forceful bully who believed that any tactic was legitimate that kept Westminster in safe Tory hands.
In Anthony Biggs’s whirlwind production, the role is dynamically performed by Jessica Martin, who gives the impression of a crisply tailored, unstoppable powerhouse. Jack Klaff as her free-swearing deputy, James Horne as a primly censorious district auditor and Amanda Waggott as an appalled Tory wet all lend impressive support.
It is salutary to be reminded of the Porter story and, although we hear shocking accounts of the homeless being shunted into asbestos-riddled tower-blocks, it is wisely left to us to deduce contemporary parallels. But while I enjoyed Evans’ play, I wish he had placed Porter in the broader context of what you might term the “maggiemandering” 1980s.
- At Playground theatre, London, to until 16 June. Box office: 020-8960 0110.
