John Godber and Thatcherite Britain

John Godber was a drama teacher in Thatcherite Britain, how does this influence the theme and theatrical style of the play Teechers?

John Godber was a drama teacher in Thatcherite Britain and this influenced the play Teechers in various ways,  the play had subtle messages behind it, for example when Mr Nixon was talking to Mr Bashford.
 Below are the main aspects of his past that i think might have affected the theme of the play whilst John Godber was a teacher in Thatcherite Britain.

Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s Conservative party leader and then became the first woman to hold the position of prime minister in 1979. She was prime minister for 11 years (1979 -1990) and was nicknamed “Iron Lady”. During her three terms, she cut social welfare programs, reduced trade union power and privatized certain industries.

 Thatcher was first subsequently appointed the cabinet as secretary of state for education and science - This could have affected the theme of the play because there was little political support for the arts because it was undervalued and there was lack of resources and funding in comprehensive schools.

 In March 1984, the National Coal Board proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000 - this made two thirds of the country's miners down their tools in protest, which also led to the strike being declared illegal. - John Godber was a son of a miner which meant that his father went through these struggles as well in a time of austerity and living in a recession period. He experience the cut to the welfare state and a lack of funding in the arts,so he knew about what was going on and how it affected people. Setting the play in this time period might be to make the audience empathise and relate to the plight of the working class.
However, in March 1985 the government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines and by 1992 a total of 97 mines had been closed and the rest were privatised in 1944.tens of thousands of jobs was lost. - A lot of people were poor and living under the poverty line which meant that they didn't have money to send their children to private schools like st George’s so they had to go to comprehensive schools, were there was lack of funding and resources.

The play is set during the recession period of austerity. The play portrays the idea of lack of resources in schools.,Perspectives of the underdogs,Working class Educational status, etc. All of these problems portrayed in the play were real life problems people were dealing with.Whilst the miners where in an unpaid strike, this meant that they would be poor due to lack of government funding for the miners and it will affect their children academically (what type of school they go to etc) . John Godber only wrote about things he knew which link to the theatricality of the play which is self-conscious because of the change of characters on stage, this can be linked to his past experience as a drama teacher and how the working conditions in the schools were accustomed to teachers, sometimes he wouldn't have a room to teach in and would only have like four students (other times more) to teach because of the bad behaviours and working conditions in the school and attitude towards drama.This can also be linked with the idea of multi rolling and how he had to multitask when he was a teacher, trying to find a room for the students to work in and also making sure the students are doing the work, dealing with other teachers whilst trying to conduct a lesson.

The stylistic choice made by John Godber was to make the set for the play minimal in order to portray the idea of the lack of resources in the school, this could have been used in order to reflect the harsh reality of teaching in an environment when funding was limited.

 So in conclusion I think living in / being a teacher in Thatcherite Britain influenced the themes because of the status of the students (working class background) and what was going on around that time period. Godber felt he needed to portray the social, political and economical problems in a subtle and enjoyable way through the play in order to get his views and opinions across to all members of the society on how living in Thatcherite Britain affects their children. He was able to do this by setting the play in that particular time period.