Two by-elections: Gideon's Way (1964) and Clacton (2014)

One of the more interesting episodes of Gideon's Way is The "V" Men, which deals with a right-wing political party - the Victory Party.

As Archive Television Musings, a blog that shares my recent obsession with the series, writes:

Although this was made some fifty years ago it could just as easily been set in 2015. The Victory Party has several aims (which appear to have been designed to alienate as many people as possible) – keep Britain white, kick out the financiers (especially the Jews) and also deal harshly with the pacifists.

In my first post on Gideon's Way I suggested the lead character was something of a liberal.

One reason for that conclusion is this episode and Gideon's obvious dislike or mistrust of an officer who says of the left-wing demonstrators who are confronting the Victory Party:

“I’m sick and tired of these people trying to push everyone around. Why don’t we shove the lot of them into jail?”

That officer is played by Allan Cuthbertson, who you will recognise from dozens of film and television appearances, including gourmet night at Fawlty Towers.

 I also wrote in that post that:

Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.

You can see the young Giles Watling in the clip above.

As well as being a Conservative councillor in Tendring (he won an open primary to be the party's candidate against Douglas Carswell in the Clacton by-election), Watling is still an actor. He appeared regularly in Bread.

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Famous faces in Gideon's Way

I have now watched all 26 episodes of Gideon's Way on Youtube. As I said in my first post on the subject, one of the pleasures of the series is the regular appearance of actors who later became famous in other roles.

So it is that in one episode (Boy with Gun) you will find both Sir Oliver Lacon from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Wally Batty from Last of the Summer Wine.

That first post showed you John Hurt and Michael Cashman. Here are some more familiar faces.

A young Donald Sutherland in The Millionaire's Daughter.

Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs as a criminal boss in Big Fish, Little Fish.

Harry Hawkins from Softly Softly was on of my first TV heroes. Here is Norman Bowler in Morna before that (and long before Emmerdale).

Mr Lucas from Are You Being Served? appeared as a Constable in The Reluctant Witness...

...while Private Walker from Dad's Army was an Inspector in A Perfect Crime.

And here, before Heartbeat, before Yes Minister, before even Basil Brush, is Derek Fowlds in The Nightlifers.

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Famous men behaving badly

Today the Supreme Court overturned a decision by Court of Appeal and ruled that an injunction banning the naming of a celebrity involved in an alleged extra-marital relationship should stay in place.

Over to John Hemming, the former Liberal Democrat MP:

The logical conclusion of this is that gossip about anyone with children will become a criminal offence subject to a potential penalty of 2 years' imprisonment. 

It is important to note that the injunction covers people talking in pubs, gossiping over the garden fence, or twittering on the internet. All of these could potentially see an application for committal for contempt of court. That comes with large amounts of legal costs and up to 2 years imprisonment. One would assume that it would not be assumed that this would only apply to claimants who have a large amount of money, but also everyone else.

And all this despite the fact that anyone who wants to find the identity of the celebrity, or of the married actor who slept with a prostitute and has taken out a similar injunction against the British press, can easily do so.

Delivering the court's judgment, Lord Mance did at least say:

“It is different if the story has some bearing on the performance of a public office or the correction of a misleading public impression cultivated by the person involved."

But there are those who question even that.

Over on Liberal Democrat Voice, Caron Lindsay has argued that there is "nothing of public interest in lurid headlines about SNP MPs".

I find this creeping doctrine that everything printed in a newspaper must be "in the public interest" rather sinister.

Who decides what is in the public interest? Somewhere in the shadows I detect the presence of a committee of the great and good - a retired cabinet minister, the headmistress of a leading public school, a celebrity chef and Dr Evan Harris - deciding what we should and should not be allowed to know.

At its lowest, the argument against the spread of this public interest argument is that laughing at the follies of rich and powerful has always been one of the consolations of the poor and weak.

At its highest it is that character matters immensely in politics. To many voters it is more important than the parties' detailed policy platforms, and I am not sure those voters are mistaken.

The spread of privacy law in recent years has been very much a judge-led initiative with little involvement from parliament. As John Hemmings says, it is time the politicians stepped in and set sensible limits on it.

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Gideon's Way at Uxbridge Vine Street

The Londonist video on the lost GWR line to Uxbridge Vine Street shows that today there is nothing left of that station, which closed to passengers in 1962 and to goods two years later.

But it was still standing when a 1967 episode of my new favourite programme, Gideon's Way, was shot there.

The photo above is a still from How to Retire Without Really Working. The location is identified by Avengerland.

There are many more photos of Uxbridge Vine Street on Disused Stations.

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Discovering Gideon's Way

I have a new weakness - or rather I have revived an old one.

The Gideon stories were a series of police procedurals written, under the pen name J.J. Maric, by the extraordinarily prolific John Creasey between 1955 and 1976.

For some reason I took to them while I was at school even though they were already dating markedly by then.

Now I have discovered that the whole of the Gideon's Way TV series has been uploaded to Youtube. There were 26 of them made for ITV and broadcast in 1965 and 1966.

John Gregson took the title role, playing him as a world-weary liberal who sometimes had to reign in his keener subordinates - a sort of prototype for Morse and Wexford.

Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.

One of the pleasures of Gideon's Way is spotting familiar actors in unfamiliar roles. I have watched only a few of the shows so far, but already I have seen Inspector Wexford masterminding a bullion robbery, Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs running a gang of pickpockets and fences, and Arthur Daley committing arson,

Then there are the pleasures of spotting actors on the way up.

This, for instance, is a young John Hurt on the run from prison. (You can see an even younger Hurt on this blog as an undergraduate in The Wild and the Willing.)

And this young man is now in the House of Lords. It's Michael Cashman, formerly of EastEnders and the European Parliament, in his first role. At this stage of his career his chief means of conveying emotion was hunching his shoulders.

Above all, though, there are the pleasures of the location footage. This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.

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