Cambridge Film Festival’s Thatcher’s Britain strand got into its stride with NO SURRENDER, a 1985 comedy-drama penned by Alan Bleasdale.  Famous for his gritty Northern comedies made for BBC TV (such as BOYS FROM THE BLACK STUFF), this is one of his few forays into cinema. The setting might appear to be dystopian: it is one of burnt-out cars, boarded-up streets, shifty muggers lurking in graffiti-strewn filthy underpasses. But this is no fantasy world – it is the real Liverpool of the mid 80s. Bleasdale, well served by director Peter Smith, knows how to do bleak.  The city is portrayed as decaying and utterly impoverished, an urban greyscape where only the brutal can succeed. This was Thatcher’s Britain alright.

If all this sounds thoroughly depressing, think again: Bleasdale is the master of the witty one-liner and madcap scenario. Here, a party of ardent Orangemen and women are erroneously booked to share a new year’s night out at a seedy cabaret club with a group of equally intolerant Irish republicans. The Ulster troubles are played out against the terrible cabaret acts booked for the cheapskate night out. Central to the plot is Billy (played the late lamented Ray McAnally) – a loyalist gunman gone straight and now a pillar of the Liverpool expat community. Against his better judgement, he is forced to assist a former colleague on the run from the police. On the green side, the IRA-supporting scousers are led by Paddy, a belligerent old boxer (now blind) who wants nothing more than to have fisticuffs with his one-time nemesis Billy. As the two parties arrive at the crumbling cabaret hall, the scene is set for battle.

Decaying and utterly impoverished, this is an urban greyscape where only the brutal can succeed.

That ever-reliable Merseyside actor Michael Angelis provides the calm heart of a very noisy movie.  He plays Mike, a decent young man whose first day as manager of the club is the very day when all hell is let loose. He is caught  in the eye of a very destructive storm. Not only contending with the Irish dynamic on his club floor, he has to deal with a some very dark goings-on in the back office. With a prescient taste of Tarantino, the former manager is being tortured and beaten by a smooth-talking but brutal business Mr. Big (for Bleasdale, one suspects, the true face of Thatcher’s capitalism).

Perhaps the most satisfying part of this troubling satire, almost Swiftian in its savagery, is the relationship between Mike and the club bouncer, Bernard (pronounced, Bernaard) wonderfully captured by Bernard Hill. Dim but good hearted, he makes a perfect foil for Mike’s quick-witted and calmly long-suffering persona.

Bleak though this movie’s setting may be, the film does draw on a rich tradition of British satirical humour. Thirty years on, it is surprising how much has dated – a pensioner blacking up as a ‘native’ and a group of mentally disabled folk portrayed less than sympathetically. That said, this film with its climatic violence but redemptive message shows that serious social issues can be portrayed in comical ways. This is definitely a period piece but one whose message continues to ring true.