A resolutely republican view

In the early 1970s the respected British documentary-maker, Kenneth Griffith, made two controversial documentaries about the Irish War of Independence. The first, Hang Out Your Brightest Colours, was a polemical biography of Michael Collins; the second, A Curious Journey, a series of interviews with veterans of the struggle. Both films are now available on video, and both provide valuable archival material, (particularly A Curious Journey, since all the interviewees are now dead.) But they also represent an unusual and passionate intervention in Irish history by a Welshman who feels so strongly about the subject that he has named his London home Michael Collins House.

Thirty years on, Griffith is unabashed about his purpose at the time: "What I wanted to do was to broadcast what the British had been doing in Ireland for 800 years," he says. "British TV could never think about making programmes telling the truth about Ireland."

Hang Out Your Brightest Colours is a far cry from the cool impartiality affected by most political/historical documentaries. Written and presented by Griffith, the 1972 film is an impassioned sermon on the subject of the life of Collins, delivered direct to camera in a torrent of colourful prose. It's a straightforwardly adulatory portrait of a personal hero of Griffith's, and makes no pretence at even-handedness: the rebels are always noble, the British are totally perfidious; Ulster unionists are almost invisible.

Produced at the moment when the Troubles were at their violent peak, the film, not surprisingly, stirred up a storm of controversy. MPs from the British political parties were invited in to see it (the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the regulatory body at the time, had told the boss of the now-defunct ATV, Lew Grade, not even to submit the film).

"Grade gave the Tories a very good lunch, and afterwards they told me it was `very amusing, old chap'. Michael Foot, who watched the programme with the Labour delegation, described it as `the most powerful film he had seen'."

Griffith speaks affectionately of Lew Grade. "Of course, he was just a businessman, with no political ideas in his head. But, in those days, Jewish people had a lot of say in the running of television in Britain. I think that Jewish people's suffering has sharpened their consciences towards the suffering of other peoples. Certainly, Jewish people rescued me time and again when I was making programmes."

He agrees that A Curious Journey, which includes interviews with Tom Barry and other significant members of the Old IRA, is "the more important film. It took a while, but they all trusted me when they found out I knew what I was talking about".

His republicanism has not diminished with the years - if anything, it has increased. He tells me of an exchange of views he had with Tony Blair. "I said that we must go before the UN and beg to speak for three hours to apologise to the Irish, and also to the Unionists for the way in which we have misused them. We discussed it for a while and I passed it on to the one group of people who in my opinion really matter, and that's Sinn Fein."

Despite his devotion to Sinn Fein, he describes the new, post-Good Friday dispensation as "a fiddle and a blackmail. I would have voted `No', but when I heard that Martin McGuinness said to vote `Yes', well that would have been enough for me."

A Terrible Beauty: Two Films about the Irish Uprising are distributed by Global Visions (London) Ltd, and avail- able from Eason's at £21.99