A DAY AT THE RACISTS by Anders Lustgarten
“Cos we made the Labour Party, do you know what I mean? Froze our bollocks off on picket lines, went on strike and lived off fresh air and f***k all for six months at a time. And now we’ve turned to dust in their eyes, ain’t we? We’re the f***ing problem now: chav scum, ASBO meat. A source of laughter. Prime time TV entertainment. I hate them for it. I bloody hate them for it.”
A Day at the Racists is a devastatingly timely examination of the rise of the BNP in London.
Pete Case used to be something – a leading Labour Party organiser in the local car factories. Now he struggles to get by as a decorator as immigrant workers undercut his best mate’s firm, his son Mark can’t get a job or onto the housing list and nobody, from his Labour MP to his granddaughter’s teacher, seems to care.
Then Pete finds unexpected hope: Gina is young, mixed race and standing for Parliament on a platform of helping the local community. She is standing for the British National Party. As Pete’s rage and despair gradually overcome his longstanding loathing of the BNP, he is drawn into the world of Gina’s campaign and finds himself entangled in a nightmare of political machinations that pit his closest relationships – son, best mate, lover – against his longest-held beliefs and newfound aims.
Set in the very Barking constituency that BNP leader Nick Griffin is to stand for in the forthcoming General Election, A Day at the Racists is a uniquely brave and perceptive piece of political theatre that both attempts to understand why people might be drawn to the BNP and diagnoses the deeper cause of that attraction – the political abandonment and betrayal of the working class by New Labour.
A Day at the Racists by Anders Lustgarten
Directed by Ryan McBryde
Finborough Theatre, 2 – 27 March 2010
Book now online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
