The Loneliness of the Long Distance Toerag

Many years ago I bought a secondhand first edition of an AlanSillitoe novel. I can’t remember which one but after reading I was unimpressed enough to pop it into a charity bag. However, not so long ago we took a trip down memory lane by watching The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. 

Wikipedia has the official middle class view of the film.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a 1962 film based on the short story of the same name. The screenplay was, like the story, written by Alan Sillitoe. The film was directed by Tony Richardson, one of the new young directors emerging from documentary films, a series of 1950s filmmakers known as the Free Cinema movement.

It tells the story of a rebellious youth (played by Tom Courtenay), sentenced to a borstal ('Approved School') for burgling a bakery, who gains privileges in the institution through his prowess as a long-distance runner. During his solitary runs, reveries of important events before his incarceration lead him to re-evaluate his status as the prize athlete of the Governor (Michael Redgrave), eventually undertaking a rebellious act of personal autonomy and suffering an immediate loss of privileges. The film poster's byline is "you can play by the rules...or you can play it by ear - WHAT COUNTS is you play it right by YOU...". The notion is echoed by other contemporary films, such as a rapid series of three contemporary Lone Ranger films.

The film depicts Britain in the late 1950s to early 1960s as an elitist place, bleak for working- to middle-class people. Sillitoe was one of the angry young men producing media vaunting or depicting the plight of rebellious youths. The film has characters entrenched in their social context. Class consciousness abounds throughout: the "them" and "us" notions that Richardson stresses reflect the very basis of British society at the time, so that Redgrave's "proper gentleman" of a Governor is in contrast to many of the young working class inmates.

I don’t think so. The film is well made and quite watchable but of its era and only interesting for that reason. Colin Smith, the “rebellious youth” is a feckless toerag, an idle thief and philanderer who seems to think the world owes him far more than he is prepared to offer in return. The film panders to this attitude as if none of Colin’s mean and stupid actions are his own responsibility. As if his entire life is the responsibility of someone else.

To my mind it is a watershed film, a clear indication of things going wrong because too many people were not clear-sighted and honest enough to see them going wrong. A washing away of personal responsibility in favour of a political blame culture where those who dare to take any responsibility are responsible for everything bad and nothing good. An incoherent nihilist ideology which has been at least partly responsible for where we are now.