“I kind of love Mary Whitehouse for that”: why Ray Winstone was happy ‘Scum’ got banned
It takes many actors a long time of plugging away at their craft before they gain the recognition that elevates them to the next level in their careers, but for Ray Winstone it happened the very year he made his feature debut.
He made his first outing in 1979’s working-class drama That Summer!, which earned him a Bafta nomination for ‘Best Newcomer’, and a month later Alan Clarke’s controversial Scum was released. It was a star-making moment for Winstone, but it wasn’t the first time the story had been filmed.
The star’s Carlin arrives at a young offenders’ institution and soon becomes caught up in the endless cycles of violence necessary to ensure survival, with the social hierarchy largely determined by who establishes dominance through the most violent or disturbing means.
Of course, Winstone was already very familiar with the material having already filmed it with the same director working from the same screenplay two years previously. Originally intended to be a standalone instalment in the Play for Today anthology series, the powers-that-be were horrified with what they saw.
It was determined that Scum was too violent, too graphic, too shocking, and too troubling to be screened for a wide audience, so it was pulled. Even when the same script was filmed again as a feature, ‘Video Nasty’ figurehead Mary Whitehouse ended up taking legal action when the second iteration was screened on television.
Whitehouse won her case after taking the director general of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to court after 1979’s Scum had failed to be submitted for consideration or approval ahead of its broadcasting, with Winstone positively revelling in the backlash that greeted the brutal borstal drama both times.
“The ban was great, I kind of love Mary Whitehouse for that,” he admitted to Shortlist. “But it was kind of crazy, it went against everything Play for Today – which I loved – was trying to put out there. Having said that, I guess it opened all kinds of questions for me about the BBC.”
Ruminating on how the broadcaster was “run by the government in a way,” Winstone even offered a slightly conspiratorial insight on his beliefs over why Scum was banned. “Borstal systems are run by the government, so you kind of think, ‘It’s almost like they’re making a film to knock themselves, and someone’s put a block on it,'” he mused. “But that’s me reflecting back on it now.”
Scum was equally contentious in both of its forms, but Winstone didn’t have any issues with his breakthrough being placed under so much scrutiny. If anything, the notoriety worked wonders for what was only a fledgling career at the time, and playing the main character in such a hot-button drama made him a nationwide talking point.
