Cinema: Hidden Agenda

By coincidence, given the last post on the conspiracy against Chavez, I saw Hidden Agenda (1986) last night on Channel 6. Directed by Ken Loach, I had thought it was about the the Stalker affair and the cover up of the shoot to kill policy in Northern Ireland but while referring to that and being set in the North, it in fact was concerned with a bigger conspiracy - the overthrow of the Labour government of the 70's by a cabal of Conservative politicians, army and security services, both British and American. Shot in the familiar documentary style, the film featured Brian Cox as a policeman sent to Belfast to investigate the murder of an American civil rights lawyer, who had been given a tape recording of meeting discussing the plan to topple the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The cop, on discovering the existence of the tape, vows to track down the conspirators but soon he is being blackmailed and convinced by those involved of the futility of ever trying to bring the covert operation to light. The last scene sees him returning to London as the lawyer's widow, played by Frances McDormand, above, looks on in disbelief. Bleak stuff.