ABSTRACT
The Conservative policies pursued by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s increasingly attracted sharp criticism from politically committed playwrights such as Steven Berkoff and David Hare. The three plays surveyed here shed a new light on their attacks of Thacherism and Thatcherite policies; the Prime Minister's foreign policy is brutally caricatured in Sink the Belgrano, the cynicism of politicians and their lust for power cruelly magnified in The Secret Rapture and in Racing Demon the Church of England appears as an empty shell, devoid of caring purposes.
The originality of the two playwrights is that, unlike other politically committed playwrights of the 1960s and 70s, both Steven Berkoff and David Hare do not appear to campaign for a cause but rather satirize and deride the very aspects of the Conservative Party that made it successful. The cynicism shown by Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet in Sink the Belgrano is paralleled by the lack of real concern for the destitute and the unemployed, and with greed for money in The Secret Rapture. Racing Demon also emphasises the paralysis of the Church of England, stultified by its hierarchy and torn by its internal rivalries.
By turning the Conservative 1980s into an empty shell the three comedies provoke a bitter laughter leaving almost no way forward to a less ruthless society.
