Written by Alan Janes. Tx 8th January 1982
Gripper and Denny continue to extort money from Roland, but he’s far from their only victim. Jonah and Zammo are also targeted and both (reluctantly) pay up. Jonah doesn’t seem too bothered – ten pence a week seems a small price to pay for not getting your head kicked in – but Zammo sees the bigger picture. If they give in now then Gripper will always be there and his demands will only increase. Zammo briefly considers taking Gripper on, but quickly admits that it wouldn’t be an equal fight. Neither seems to consider that if they find Gripper’s other victims there would be safety in numbers.
This episode provides us a good opportunity to stop and examine how proactive the school was at dealing with Gripper. Jonah and Zammo tell Mr Hopwood about Gripper’s demands for money, but he seems initially disinterested – as it’ll be their word against his how can anything be proved? However he does decide to ask Gripper to turn out his pockets – and finds a considerable amount of change – which does back up the boy’s story. Hopwood warns Gripper to cease his actions (threatening him with physical violence in a way that wasn’t unfamiliar in the early series of Grange Hill) but that’s as far as he goes. Surely experience would have told him that Gripper wouldn’t give up that easily?
Roland’s experiences are even more interesting. He’s skipped school several times (in order to avoid Gripper) and most disturbingly of all deliberately cuts his hand with a chisel in woodwork. He hopes to be sent home and is clearly upset to be told that the nurse will be able to deal with it by putting on a plaster. Whilst this foreshadows the more extreme measures he’ll take later in the series to escape Gripper, it should have sent alarm bells ringing amongst the staff. Mrs McClusky does want the boy to see an educational psychologist, but it’s plain that they consider the problem is purely down to Roland’s attitude. Even after he’s told them that he’s been systematically bullied they don’t seem interested in finding out if his story was true. Is it that they simply believe he’s making up tales to explain his bad behaviour?
Elsewhere, there’s light relief as Annette attempts to gain revenge on Jonah by throwing a stink-bomb at him. She indirectly does him a good turn – he and Zammo were being threatened by Gripper at the time and the smell is enough to drive the older boy off. Leaving us with the immortal line from Jonah. “Cor Gripper, you’ve done something in your trousers”!
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The lack of understanding and empathy from McCluskey, Mooney and Roland’s Mother here is astonishing. After telling them he’s being systematically bullied and handing money over to the same boy every day they laughably ask him “why don’t you like school”. His Mother also seems to be an enabler, constantly giving him food and offering to buy him a “Fruit and Nut” bar to ease his distress. No surprise really that she completely ditches him and his father a couple of years later and leaves them to fend for themselves. An awful person.
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I like the way they deal with an outcast-type child like Roland without slapping on a diagnosis like ADHD or autism. Roland managed to survive 6 years of Grange Hill without becoming involved with drugs or dropping out of school (he even stayed on in the sixth form), that shows that one can get through school without needing to go through regular assessments to define some label that follows them around the rest of their lives (or school life at least). I wish I had of just seen an educational psychiatrist at school to help support me with settling in at school, rather than put me through 4 years of endless appointments and clinics and therapists to diagnose me with something that made me feel more singled out from the other kids than if I had of just been left alone by adults and given time to settle in in my own time, which I most likely would have been capable of doing with just a little bit of support (an educational psychiatrist). Or is it educational psychologist? But you know what I mean.
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In fairness these conditions were not well known about at the time even amongst educational professionals. Without diving too deeply into the history of diagnosis, autism seems to have only been formally identified in 1978, ADHD didn’t come under that name until the late 1980s and Asperger’s was similarly not a formal diagnosis until 1994. And that’s just at the top level – it would take a lot longer for these terms to reach school staffrooms. I am reminded of Jonathan Lambeth’s comments that Danny Kendall would be much more understood today than in the 1980s because of what people now know.
Much later on the series goes down the route though I don’t think the terms are ever used with Kevin Jenkins (introduced 1995) but with Martin Miller (introduced 2001) the term “Asperger’s” is discovered online and Miss Carver hasn’t heard it before, which rings true to common understanding in that era.
Whilst I appreciate the problems of labels being applied to pupils, I do also feel that a better understanding of these conditions in my day would have meant staff at least would have taken a proper approach rather than simply labelling children difficult.
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