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‘The traditions of the labour movement were inadequate to take the struggle further’
LYNNE WALSH celebrates the prescient political dramas of Trevor Griffiths, playwright, screenwriter and Marxist, born April 4 1935; died March 29 2024

WORKING-CLASS idealist, scholar of Marx, Gramsci and Trotsky, cradle Catholic and lifelong socialist, Trevor Griffiths produced plays that managed to be deeply controversial and highly popular.

There cannot be many of us on the left, with knowledge of the English language, who have not been touched by the writer’s work. As visceral as it was erudite, his writing brought class analysis, criticism of factionalism, and profound empathy to the theatre and TV screens, from the 1960s to the present day.

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