After I, Daniel Blake: The rise of socially-conscious drama

Last Updated: October 30, 2016By
Angela Neville: ‘When the coalition came to power the work almost became the persecution of vulnerable people.’ [Image: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian.]

Angela Neville: ‘When the coalition came to power the work almost became the persecution of vulnerable people.’ [Image: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian.]

This is excellent.

This Writer has long believed that drama is an excellent way to prick the conscience of a nation that otherwise tolerates atrocities.

My argument has been that people respond to drama – why else would TV companies put helpline numbers at the end of soap opera episodes with socially-relevant storylines?

Now, after the attention given to I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s film about a heart attack sufferer who becomes a victim of the Tory benefits system, we’re seeing new drama highlighting the failings of Conservative Britain.

I wish I could have written some of it myself.

I welcome this new play, and I hope you do too.

Angela Neville, 48, is describing events she witnessed as a special adviser in a jobcentre that prompted her to write a play about her experiences.

“We were given lists of customers to call immediately and get them on to the Work Programme,” she recalls. “I said, ‘I’m sorry this can’t happen, this man is in hospital.’ I was told [by my boss]: ‘No, you’ve got to phone him and you’ve got to put this to him and he may be sanctioned.’ I said I’m not doing it.”

Neville worked as an adviser in Braintree jobcentre, Essex, for four years and has written a play with two collaborators, her friends Angela Howard and Jackie Howard, both of whom have helped advocate for unemployed people who were threatened with benefit sanctions by jobcentre staff.

The title of the play, Can This be England? is an allusion to the disbelief that she and the others feel at how people on benefits are being treated, she says. And she unashamedly describes the play, in which she also acts, as a “dramatic consciousness-raising exercise”.

Can This be England? deals with the quagmire that awaits people caught in the welfare system. Scenes are set in jobcentres and in characters’ homes addressing some of what Neville calls the “everyday absurdity” of what occurs, such as when people with disabilities and fluctuating health conditions are wrongly declared “fit for work” inflicting additional suffering in the process. It also examines the dilemmas faced by staff in jobcentres, many of whom Neville believes feel stripped of any power to do good and are crumbling under the strain as managers enforce new rules.

Source: As a jobcentre adviser, I got ‘brownie points’ for cruelty | Mary O’Hara | Society | The Guardian

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3 Comments

  1. joanna October 30, 2016 at 4:41 am - Reply

    You still could!! There is plenty of scope on this subject, and, with this subject being so close to your heart, you would make it fantastic! Also because of your vast knowledge of the subject you could bring up fresh points.

    I would pay to watch what you came up with, because not only do you know about it, you have a measure of experience about all the feelings that come with living through this devastation.

  2. jeffrey davies October 30, 2016 at 6:51 am - Reply

    yet on it goes this aktion t4 culling of the stock by benefit denial yet day in day out new news of deaths caused by this government policys yes more are seeing the governments plans of benefit sanctions but on it goes more abuse more deaths while every one digest the news hmmm

  3. Joan Edington October 30, 2016 at 12:19 pm - Reply

    I hope we see more of this too. as someone who grew up in the ’60s, with all its protest movements, I find it really discouraging how people don’t seem to give a s**t any more.

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