Television Review: Timewatch

ONE LINE by the American epigrammatist Jenny Holzer that has always stuck in my head is: "Abuse of power should come as no surprise." It came back to me twice this weekend.

The first time was watching Timewatch (Sat BBC2). "A Very British Mutiny" dealt with an interesting-ish story: the largest wartime mutiny in the British army. At Salerno in September 1943, 191 soldiers of the Eighth Army, 190 of them with previously spotless records, began a sit-down strike. Their motivation was primarily regimental loyalty: all the men had been separated from their units while being treated for wounds or illness, and had been led to believe they were going to rejoin them. But, due to administrative error, they were sent off to Italy as reinforcements - a decision they weren't informed about until they were halfway across the Mediterranean. The strike was an expression of resentment at the way in which they had been deceived; many were, in any case, unfit for active service.

Their court martial was badly mismanaged (the defence counsel didn't even bother asking his clients for an account of what had happened), and the verdicts harsh, with several sentenced to death. All punishments were suspended, but a number of the mutineers later absconded.

As I say, the story was quite interesting (though definitely overstretched at 50 minutes); and you got the sense that the British army could have behaved a little more sensitively. But I couldn't drum up much sense of shock or outrage: of course armies suffer from bureaucratic muddle, and of course they aren't particularly compassionate or fair institutions, especially in wartime.

And what was so British about this story? The inefficiency? The relatively light penalties eventually inflicted? The commentary, emphasising that it was officers who made the mistakes, seemed to imply that what was British was an element of class antagonism. But the point about class in this country is that it doesn't involve big dichotomies. What sets us apart is the subtlety of shading, the pervasiveness of tiny social distinctions. That's why it has been such a long time since we've had a revolution.

That fact also seemed to escape Green and Pleasant Land (Sun C4), the weekend's other programme about predictable abuse of power. To listen to the commentary, you'd think that rural Britain in the 1930s was a little cauldron of class struggle.

The anecdotes collected here, though, add up to a more complex story through telling small details - a lady's maid envious of the rich folk's soft underwear, a beater at a shoot recalling spent shot dropping on his head like hail. There were some striking moments of snobbery, though: Lady Maureen Fellowes said, "You weren't ringing them [the servants] all the time unless you wanted to be tiresome; you only rang them when you needed them." That "unless" was deeply strange.

Later, Lady Maureen talked about the way people - her sort of people, that is - would say anything in front of the staff, "as if the wretched servants were part of the furniture". Then a former maid added her point of view: "You weren't even a part of the furniture." Fascinating, but no, it doesn't come as a surprise.