First things first, the clock on the blog is well out of sync. According to me - at this moment in time, it is 8.31am on a Monday morning but the clock still has me placed in Sunday. I'll get the clock sorted later rather than sooner.
The political party I am a member of, The Socialist Party, has always been split into two wings: One wing who consider that William Morris was the greatest ever socialist to emerge from British society, who through his revolutionary political activity coupled with his lifetime commitment to the arts and crafts movement was the personification of all that women and men could become once we class consciously use political action to end the current pre-history of class divided society; and then there are the rest of us who couldn't get past the second chapter of News From Nowhere cos it's a bastard of a dull read.*
I've always felt a bit guilty for being in the non-Morris wing of the Party, so when browsing through the TV section of TV Quick in the queue for the till in Sainsbury's on Saturday I saw that there would be a one hour programme on William Morris on Sunday night on BBC1 at 7pm as part of the 'Brilliantly British' series - no, I hadn't heard of it either - I promised myself that I would check it out to see what the fuss was all about.
The blurb on the Beeb website for the programme stated: "William Morris was one of Britain's most influential designers and a truly great Victorian. Best known for his exquisite wallpapers and textiles, he revolutionised the way we think about design.
His passion for Nature, for medieval craftsmanship and for Arthurian legend, drove his creative life but also shaped his hatred of industrialisation. He believed that by making art available to all he could stem the tide of raw progress and create a better world.
In the third of this new docudrama series exploring the lives and work of Britain's greatest craftsmen, Antiques Roadshow expert Hilary Kay explores Morris's epic struggle to find the perfect outlet for his creative genius and fulfil his romantic vision.
With the help of new evidence and computer generated graphics we recreate the lost interior that inspired him to become a designer. Using drama reconstruction we trace the public triumphs of his creative life and the private pain of his shattered domestic dreams."
To put it bluntly, the show was shite. I knew that the main focus would be on Morris's Blue Peter moments and the politics would be relegated to the back, but a major part of the programme was focused - and seemed to suggest a large part of his artistic motivation - on Morris being a cuckold in a three way relationship between himself, his wife and Rossetti.
His political commitment, when it finally did get a mention - was reduced to wrongly stating Morris was politicised in 1883 with him joining the Socialist League (the programme makers seemingly being ignorant of the fact that Morris broke from bourgeois politics as early as the late 1870s over the Eastern Question); failing to mention that the Socialist League formed from a split in the Social Democratic Federation and, as well as Morris, the Socialist League's formation involved such substantial political figures as Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling and Belfort Bax, and was encouraged by Frederich Engels himself; and the programme trying to draw a line under Morris's revolutionary socialist political commitment as early as 1887 when Morris withdrew from political life when he faced the same schisms, disputes and personal recriminations that, according to the programme, seemed to echo episodes from his creative life.
In the thick headed shorthand of TV journalism, a full life was truncated and reduced to join-the-dots cod psychology which was employed to put Morris safe and secure in a box marked 'Nice wallpaper, shame about the politics and the messy domestic arrangements.' I'm probably being a bit harsh on the programme makers and their intentions, with my hyperbole temporarily getting the upper hand but it is like-with-like with their piss poor attempts at making a programme on someone who led a fuller life than Warren Beatty's fingertips.**
Sorry if I coming across too much like a Disgusted of Spart Central type. My reason for this stream of consciousness angry man rant is because it actually still shocks me when you find out that the bods that make the news in both print and in television can get it so spectacularly wrong. Despite bluffing my way through many a conversation on Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, I still have this naive notion that programme makers and journalists know what they are talking about. I'll file this one under I'll know better next time.
Poor old Morris, if it's not the case of one his better known quotations*** being used by New Labour when first coming into power to sell it's wageslave seeker allowance policy, his wallpaper designs are being bought by a Middle England who gets its interior design tips from the Changing Rooms and its politics of fear and hatred from the leader columns of the Daily Mail and Daily Express. I still won't be able to get past the second chapter of his novel but I will look upon him more kindly in the future.
* There is further minor-constituency in the anti-Morris wing of the Socialist Party: Those members permanently tramautised for having to use William Morris style wallpaper to cover their text books at school and thus getting the pissed ripped out of them for being soft as shite for the rest of their schooldays.
** A royalty cheque is winging its way to Woody Allen for the use of his joke.
*** "One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman; two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I agree together, it is we who have to answer that question." For the Blairite version. click on the link.
