The director Roy Battersby, who has died aged 87 following a stroke, was one of the leftwing radicals who joined the BBC in the 1960s and sought to bring stories of working-class struggle to the television screen. But his overt political activism with the Workers’ Revolutionary party led to his being blacklisted by the BBC, a result of secret vetting carried out on the corporation’s employees by MI5.
The period of his finest work, at a time of political upheaval in Britain as trade unions took on the government, ended with Leeds – United!, a 1974 Play for Today, written by Colin Welland, about an unofficial strike by female textile workers in the north of England whose unsuccessful action was undermined by their own union.
It was based on a real-life strike by women at a factory in Leeds, including Welland’s mother-in-law, fighting to be paid the same as their male colleagues. The militant trade union leader was played by Lynne Perrie, a singer whose naturalistic acting talent had been discovered by the director Ken Loach and producer Tony Garnett – also using television to seek social and political change – when they were casting the 1969 film Kes.
Alongside complaints about the accuracy of the play, which Welland vigorously defended with proof of his intensive research, Mary Whitehouse, the self-appointed guardian of Britain’s morals, complained about swearing by some of the women. But the drama was most significant for Battersby’s directing style. He shot in black-and-white and opened with an aerial shot of a female worker walking along dark, early morning streets while a voiceover spelled out her limited new contract.
Loach, Battersby and Kenith Trodd, the producer of Leeds – United!, were among those who from 1968 – the year of anti-Vietnam demonstrations and student sit-ins – met at Garnett’s house for Friday-evening gatherings to discuss the opportunities for radical politics after feeling let down by the promises of Harold Wilson’s Labour government.
Battersby also joined the Socialist Labour League, forerunner of the Trotskyist WRP, in 1968 and never hid his views or his activism, which included a historical pageant, Two Hundred Years of Labour History, at an anti-Tory rally organised by the SLL in 1971.
In 1972, he was assigned by the BBC’s head of plays, Christopher Morahan, to direct The Operation (1973), about a crooked property developer. As revealed in Mark Hollingsworth and Richard Norton-Taylor’s 1988 book Blacklist: The Inside Story of Political Vetting, MI5 informed the BBC that Battersby was an active member of the WRP. “It was indicated to me that [the personnel department] would be happier if he was not engaged,” said Morahan. “I said he was the best director for the job and I wasn’t prepared to accept it.”
Trodd, branded a “security risk” by MI5, similarly survived a BBC attempt not to renew his contract, in 1976, while Battersby left to work full-time for the WRP for five years (1975-80). He was a member of its central committee (1970-80), and, with his then partner, Liz Leicester, he ran its education centre, White Meadows, in Derbyshire from 1975 until 1978.
After leaving the WRP and returning to programme-making with ITV, Battersby was blocked from working for the BBC – a result of the blacklist. Trodd wanted him to direct Pebbles from My Skull, a play about Italian resistance fighters, but the corporation refused to give him a contract.
It did the same when he was set to direct the series King of the Ghetto (1986), about racial tensions in the East End of London, but Graeme McDonald, controller of BBC Two, overruled the personnel department.
Battersby continued to direct for another 20 years, across channels. Politics rarely invaded his work, but he was handed the meaty, authority-challenging drama he craved when Garnett – reviving his own career to become a hugely successful independent producer – hired him as a director on Between the Lines (1992-94), which starred Neil Pearson as head of a team of officers investigating police corruption.
Roy was born in Willesden, north-west London, to Amy (nee Putman) and Frank Battersby. He graduated in economics from University College London and gained a PhD from the London School of Economics before starting his career in the theatre, behind the scenes at Nottingham Playhouse, in 1960.
From 1963, he worked for the BBC, directing Men and Money, a series about the City of London, the following year, then working as a producer on the first three runs (1965-67) of the science series Tomorrow’s World, making documentary features.
Switching to drama, Battersby directed Some Women (1969), reconstructing real-life stories of female prisoners. The BBC, concerned about the realism, cancelled the broadcast but, following a public campaign, screened it late at night on BBC Two.
Between contracts with the corporation, Battersby made several dramas for ITV, notably Roll on Four O’Clock (1970), written by Welland (a former teacher), about homophobic bullying in a school, again shot in a naturalistic way. Back at the BBC, he directed The Punchy and the Fairy (1973), written by Jim Allen, another leftwing radical.
Following Battersby’s decade with the WRP, the producer David Puttnam told Battersby that he wanted him to direct a big-budget film but could not raise the finance because of his blacklisting. However, Puttnam did assign him to two low-budget films, the romantic drama Winter Flight (1984) and the gentle comedy Mr Love (1986).
Returning to TV, he directed episodes of the police series Eurocops (in 1989 and 1990), Inspector Morse (in 1991) and A Touch of Frost (between 1994 and 2006). He brought atmospheric tension to a three-part Cracker story in 1995 and directed Olly’s Prison (1993), Edward Bond’s only play for television, which starred Bernard Hill.
His film Red Mercury (2005), starring Stockard Channing and Pete Postlethwaite, released shortly after the 7/7 London bombings, proved a bitingly topical drama about British-born Muslims holding hostages in a restaurant.
In 1995, Battersby received Bafta’s lifetime achievement award.
His first marriage, in 1959, to Audrey Chaney, with whom he had two sons, Ben and Frank, and a daughter, Anna, ended in divorce. He married the actor Judy Loe in 1997, after they had been together for 15 years. He also had two sons, Tom and Will, from his earlier relationship with Leicester, and a stepdaughter with Loe, the actor Kate Beckinsale. He is survived by Loe and his children.
• Roy John Battersby, director, born 20 April 1936; died 10 January 2024
• This article was amended on 18 January 2024 to correct details of Roy Battersby’s family.
