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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 542
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WCL 542 November 2006
The Man from UNCLE
Some thirty years ago television offered a programme of this name that featured 'good guys' in a series of episodes worsting 'baddies'. That fairly typical offering of popular entertainment had a novel twist. The good guys were working on behalf of the people of the world against the baddies, i.e. for the UN. UNCLE, as I recall, was the United Network Commission for Law Enforcement.
No real politics obtruded. The programme kept largely to 'bang', 'bang' and anodyne mentions of various countries. It did not attempt to reveal the truth that our world was more in danger from the rulers of sovereign states than from any number of bandits, terrorists or other malignants. Technology was brought up to date (but pre-personal computers and all the recent personal mobile cameras, etc.) but the homely facts of good guys and baddies were still set in the old familiar terms of fighting crime, with the difference that the UN had a share in achieving that.
During the past few weeks, however, Britain has been regaled with three TV series that tackled cognate subjects. One, about a feisty political virgin elected to prime ministerial prominence by an electoral landslide, is pivoted on her determination not to lie to the people. She is, of course, likely> to be derailed by events from abroad but in the upshot it is a skeleton in her own family cupboard that proves most damaging.
One other programme, 'The State Within', was more concerned with the machinations of politicians and spies. It began with a U.S. airplane disaster caused, apparently, by a British Muslim. But it indicted the perils, for a democratic society, of allowing the need for 'security' to take total priority over the need for individual freedom. Highly apposite for the present day…
The third programme 'Spooks,' a fictional account of MI5, the renowned (or notorious) British internal spy service, may well be the most significant of the three films. It too is set in today's terrorist times. The law is respected insofar as it does not impede the chase of the 'baddies', who may be 'terrorists', - sometimes of a particular religion - but also on one occasion they turn out to be environmentalists. That is not too far-fetched: we already have Animal Liberation and anti-abortion terrorists, so other groups may well want to get in on the act.
This run of programmes is beginning to shed the 20th century obsession with 'us' and 'them', 'us' being our (national) gang and 'them' being another (national/Marxist) gang. The scripts are recognizing another dimension - that the world as a whole has to be considered. Little doubt we shall soon have the script-writers realising that defenders of the people of the planet against the various 'baddies' who threaten them are the most plausible heroes for future epics.
John Roberts
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