Alan Clarke sought to suss out the grim underpinnings and corruption within Britain’s national institutions (namely juvenile corrections and primary schools) to display the bankruptcy not only of the Thatcher regime’s detached, nostalgic politics, but also of the common sense understanding of how society coheres. While films like Derek Jarman’s Jubilee captured the dawn of the Thatcher era and the ushering in of a new conservatism in the moment, it was never intended for broad audiences. As a TV director, Clarke aimed his sights on the Republic, and suffered the consequences.

Having been banned from airing Scum at the height of the punk hysteria, pro and contra, Clarke released a less provocative version into theatres three years later. However, not being satisfied, Clarke continued to air Britain’s dirty, neo-nationalist laundry publicly, producing Made in Britain (with Tim Roth in his first starring role as a neo-nazi matriculating through social services). Although Made in Britain sometimes flounders in the mawkish moral swamp that became the de facto mode of liberal discourse on social issues, the film nevertheless demonstrates the persistent hopelessness among those victimized by an underperforming economy, seeking to exercise power in what little way they can, elements often combining as fascism’s raw materials.

Alan Clarke’s later films, The Firm (about English soccer hooligans banding together) and Elephant (later remade by Gus Van Sant), continue in this vein, revealing to those in denial that the values upheld by Britain’s “Greatest Generation” were violated daily by their defenders, and perpetrated against their children, all in the national interest. The lurid portraiture depicted in these films undoes the mythology present in the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S., while both governments remained in denial of their most pressing social issues throughout the 1980’s as a dictate of policy.