Versatile writer and actor known for left-wing views

When Colin Welland, who has died aged 81, was handed the Oscar for his screenplay of Chariots of Fire in 1982, he waved it in the air like a battle mace and declared: "The British are coming!"

In fact, it was some years before another British film received an Academy award. But Welland as a screenwriter had certainly arrived.

Hollywood recognition for Chariots of Fire, which was based on the true story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics, gave him immense satisfaction. He later wrote that the initial American reaction to the idea had been: who wants a story about two runners from long ago? "When we showed it at Twickenham, a Hollywood producer left after 10 minutes, came back at the end and said that they wouldn't have anything to do with it. When it won four Oscars, I don't know where he hid himself."

Welland's own reputation was based on his versatility as an actor and writer in theatre, television and film. As the English teacher Mr Farthing, in Ken Loach's film Kes (1969), he won a Bafta for best supporting actor. He became a popular figure after three years (1962-1965) in the television police series Z Cars. It was, he recalled, "written by the best writers and had the best directors" – including Loach.

Welland’s reputation grew alongside the rise of the political left in the 1970s; his views were inspired by a personal background that he saw as limiting and unfair.

He was born Colin Williams in Leigh, Lancashire, and grew up in Liverpool, the son of Jack, a keen left-winger and trade unionist, and his wife, Nora. His father refused to fly the Union Jack on Empire Day, as was common practice at the time. Sometimes theirs was the only house in the street not to do so.

Grammar school

Welland attended grammar school in St Helens in Lancashire, but he disliked selective education and later said that grammar schools were “the epitome of bad education”.

He became an art teacher but also took on odd jobs in the theatre. He would joke that not only had he played the lead in Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, but he had also swept the stage and managed the props between speaking his lines.

He also presented the BBC news programme North at Six. He was told to speak informally, as if to friends, but listeners in Cheshire accused him of not being able to speak the Queen's English and he lost the job.

He took on film work, playing a detective in the film Villain (1971) opposite Richard Burton as a gangster.

In the late 1960s he wrote his first play, Bangelstein's Boys, a comedy about a rugby club outing. Stage impresarios, Welland said, had laughed out loud at the script but then said it was too vulgar to be staged. It was eventually successfully adapted as a television play by ITV.

Bawdy humour

Further TV success came with

The Hallelujah Handshake

for the BBC and

Roll on Four O’Clock

, drawing on his experiences as a teacher, for ITV. Another TV play from that year,

Say Goodnight to Your Grandma

, was turned into a West End success in 1973, its blend of political militancy and bawdy humour making it highly fashionable.

The 1980s and 1990s were not the most fruitful ground for Welland, whose political stance was seen by some as having become old hat, but following on from his writing successes with Yanks (1979), directed by John Schlesinger, and Chariots of Fire, he pulled off memorable adaptations for the big screen: A Dry White Season (1989), based on a novel by André Brink and starring Donald Sutherland and Janet Suzman, and War of the Buttons (1994).

He continued to appear in films as an actor. On stage, he starred in Howard Brenton's 1988 Royal Shakespeare Company "deconstruction" of Winston Churchill, The Churchill Play. In one of his final TV roles, he played the Everton manager Harry Catterick in The Fix (1997).

Welland's columns on sport for the Observer and the Independent proved popular. One included a resounding denunciation of snobbish rules imposed by golf clubs and was headlined "Beware the Bores and Bigots".

Welland married Patricia Sweeney in 1962. She survives him, along with a son, three daughters and six grandchildren.