Kenneth Griffith - Documentaries and Political Activity

Documentaries and Political Activity

In 1965 Huw Weldon and the then director of BBC2 David Attenborough asked Griffith if he would like to make a film for the BBC on any subject that he chose. This resulted in a series of films on subjects as diverse as the Boer War in Soldiers of the Widow (BBC tx. 27/5/1967), A Touch of Churchill, A Touch of Hitler (BBC tx. 30/7/1971), the controversial story of Thomas Paine in The Most Valuable Englishman Ever (BBC, tx. 16/1/1982), David Ben-Gurion (The Light), Napoleon Bonaparte (The Man on the Rock), Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Roger Casement (Heart of Darkness 1992), and on one occasion a film commissioned by Thames Television on the story of the Three Wise Men of the New Testament, A Famous Journey (ITV tx. 20/12/1979). Griffith was ordered out of Iran by the country's Foreign Minister.

In 1973 Griffith made a documentary film about the life and death of Irish military/political leader Michael Collins titled Hang Up Your Brightest Colours (which is a line taken from a letter from George Bernard Shaw to one of Collins' sisters after his death) for ATV, but the Independent Broadcasting Authority did not permit it to be screened (it was only shown—by the BBC—in 1993). This was seen by Griffith as blatant censorship, as there was nothing factually inaccurate in the film.

In 1974 Griffith took an opportunity to interview surviving IRA members from the 1916 Easter Rebellion: Maire Comerford, Joseph Sweeney, Sean Kavanagh, John O'Sullivan, Brigid Thornton, Sean Harling, Martin Walton, David Nelligan (or Neligan) and Tom Barry are all interviewed at the ends of their lives in a programme titled Curious Journey. Griffith's approach to television and re-creating the past is that of the enthusiastic storyteller who acts out all the parts himself. By doing so, he created a fascinating new way of making documentaries. His special contribution is that he is able to conjure up the emotional spirit of events in history; he treats the viewer in the manner of a confidant, dramatising his point of view.

Griffith's sympathetic portrayal caused some concern given the state of tension in Northern Ireland and ATV boss Sir Lew Grade decided to withdraw the film, which was not shown publicly until 1994. At the time Griffith furiously retaliated by making the film for Thames titled The Public's Right to Know, which gave him, or rather the powers that be, a chance to explain themselves. He took no prisoners. The story on Griffith and his Irish republican sympathies was published in 15 November 1997 edition of the British-based weekly, The Irish Post, as Beating the Censor, written by Martin Doyle.

Griffith's autobiography was published in 1994 titled The Fool's Pardon by Little, Brown. Until the very end of his life Griffith was angered and deeply frustrated by what he saw as the "degeneration" of British television filmmaking and was widely known within the industry as the most banned filmmaker in the country. His references to the various commissioning directors were well documented referring to "those priggish cuckoos" within the BBC. His final estimations on those 'Television people' were their high regard for two things "Hard cash and statistics".

In 1993 BBC Wales presented a retrospective season of five of his documentaries, including the suppressed Michael Collins work, opening the season with a biographical study of Griffith called The Tenby Poisoner (BBC Wales, tx. 1/3/1993) in which talents as diverse as Peter O'Toole, Martin McGuinness and Jeremy Isaacs paid tribute to the quixotic documentarist. In addition to this BBC Wales screened a film on Griffith's life in the "Welsh Greats" Series Two, shown in 2008. In 2001 Griffith was finally recognised for his work by being awarded a lifetime achievement award by BAFTA.

The political troubles left Griffith "a frustrated and bemused figure". Screenonline described Griffith as "a world-class documentary film-maker" who knew that "refusing to compromise his views has damaged his career".

A renowned Boer War historian, Griffith was also a supporter of the Afrikaners in South Africa. Although the traditional left-wing view was that Afrikaners were more tied into apartheid than South Africans of British descent, his take on it in a South African television-funded documentary was "provokingly sympathetic" towards the Afrikaners, implying that the sympathetic attitude of English-speakers "hypocritical"; South African television eventually withdrew its funding. He also made a BBC2 documentary on runner Zola Budd, which purported to reveal injustices done to her by left-wing demonstrators and organisations during a tour of England in 1988.