How Norman Tebbit tried to kill off Casualty

Derek Thompson and Cathy Shipton in 1998
Derek Thompson and Cathy Shipton in 1998 Credit: PA

Thirty years ago, two young writers, Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, pitched the idea of a new medical drama to the BBC. The pitch started with a manifesto: “In 1948 a dream was born, a National Health Service. In 1985, the dream is in tatters.”

The drama in question, Casualty, is still running today, a ratings winner and a year-round staple of the schedules, but back then it was a political hot potato, a series created out of idealistic passion.

“We were preposterously young and arrogant,” says Unwin. “What we were trying to do was to write about the NHS as a fatality, and the casualty department was the stage in which all the drama was played out. We thought we could make a series which could change people’s perceptions and show how important the NHS was.”

Casualty was filmed in Bristol and focused, initially, on the working lives of 10 staff members of a busy A&E department. These included male charge nurse Charlie Fairhead (Derek Thompson) who is still on the rota today, matriarchal Irish nurse Megan (played with a strong vein of emotion by future Oscar winner Brenda Fricker) and young, capable staffer Duffy (Cathy Shipton).

The cast of Casualty in 1986
The cast of Casualty in 1986 Credit: BBC

Shipton, who has recently returned to the show, remembers that those early days felt “wild and dangerous” with its open criticism of Margaret Thatcher’s cuts to the Health Service. “We knew that we were going to be a thorn in the Government’s side,” she says.

The maverick approach of these Young Turks probably didn’t help the BBC which was in a beleaguered state in 1986. Alasdair Milne, the Director General, was under pressure from the Government who were wary that the corporation was becoming a mouthpiece for leftist ideologies. 

Norman Tebbit would send terse memos to Milne if shows were felt to be too overtly biased and there were plenty of those. 

Ian Curteis’s controversial Falklands Play was shelved. A documentary featuring Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein was accused of giving him the oxygen of publicity. Alan Bleasdale’s drama, The Monocled Mutineer, about the First World War deserter Percy Toplis, came under fire for fabricating a historical lie. And Edwina Currie, then a junior health minister, raised questions in the House of Commons, accusing Casualty of being propagandist.

But the show wasn’t mere tub-thumping agitprop. The early series were praised for their realism and Shipton believes that this was largely due to the involvement of the acclaimed director Antonia Bird.

“She really kicked the series into touch, brought it an urban quality. I remember that, in one episode, Duffy was hit in the face and spat at. Antonia wanted this to be an illustration of how NHS workers take the flak. There were some objections but she refused to make it palatable. She had a bare-knuckle approach to her work.”

Pam St Clement guest stars in the 30th anniversary episode of Casualty
Pam St Clement guest stars in the 30th anniversary episode of Casualty Credit: BBC

Unwin explains that there was, initially, some resistance from within the NHS about how its members were being portrayed. “It led to some quite big concerns from nursing unions and so we went to a Royal College of Nursing conference in Nuneaton and were asked to speak. We were put on stage and our producer, the great Geraint Morris, asked the audience if they knew any nurse who had had a drink on duty. A third of the nurses put their hands up – it seemed that we were endorsed in our youthful excitement.”

Unwin says that the BBC was supportive of the series, although, being in a pre-watershed slot, he was occasionally asked to tone down graphic scenes. He cites, in particular, one episode in which the team wanted to film the body of a child drowning underwater.

Susan Wilkins, a writer for the early series, encountered rather a different problem. Like the rest of the cast and crew, she was asked to shadow real staff, in her case at a “depressing old-fashioned hospital in south London”.

She explains: “There wasn’t a lot going on and the nurses were sitting around, when all of a sudden this great big overweight rocker came in. ‘I’ve got a terrible pain in my chest, I think I’m having a heart attack,’ he said, and the charge nurse put him in a cubicle. She told me that he was just after drugs, that he wanted diamorphine. Eventually they put ECG monitors on him and discovered that he had, in fact, had a massive heart attack and was about to die. So the crash team came rushing in and only just managed to save his life.

"I thought it was a great story and so I took it to a script meeting and said it would be a good example of where nurses got it wrong. I was told that this would never happen and I was like, ‘But I’ve just seen it!’ In the end I had to deliver a watered‑down version which made the nurses look a bit better.”

Despite this, Wilkins stresses that she was given a lot of freedom on the show to generate her own ideas in a way that would be unthinkable now.

“It felt like a writer’s industry back then,” she says. “You could slip something subversive under the radar. Now I believe that, at the BBC, there is an overarching management structure where an idea for a series has to go to commissioners and controllers who try and manage the risk. I’m sure they are anxious about whether the Government will get upset.”

Casualty today may lack the same ideological fervour but, at its heart, the show is still very much about the NHS. “I think we’ve made people realise that the people who help are human, we’ve made them see the charity and compassion,” says Unwin.  

Nurse Duffy’s combination of ordinariness and professional brilliance has played a large part in that shift. 

“In a crisis, we all want to dial 999 and have a Duffy at the other end,” says Shipton. “The Charlies and the Duffies of this world are the real stars in our society. They are the unsung heroes and I am proud to represent them.”

Casualty's special feature-length episode will air on Saturday 27th August on BBC One at 8pm

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