Tony Barrell (broadcaster) - The 1980s

The 1980s

Barrell made a four-part radio documentary series in the UK in 1987. Two parts, Welcome to the Post-Industrial Museum and Militants on Merseyside, were about the industrial decline of Liverpool and the control of the city council by the Militant Tendency; and the other two were about the British press. The Wapping Truth was the story of the Wapping dispute that followed the relocation of News International papers from Fleet Street to Wapping, and Nothing Left to Read was an examination of the perceived bias of most British newspapers in favour of the government of Margaret Thatcher. The programmes included interviews with author Linda Melvern, Tony Benn MP and the then-editor of the New Statesman, John Lloyd.

In 1988, the last year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Barrell toured the USA to make a five-part radio series Choice of America which visited Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans, Boston, Washington and New York. Notable interviewees included John Kenneth Galbraith, Jim Garrison (the New Orleans attorney who was later the subject of Oliver Stone's JFK movie), and former New York City mayor John Lindsay. The second part of the series, What Happened to Houston, won an award at the New York Festival.

In 1989, Barrell won the Australian Writers' Guild award (known as an AWGIE) for radio for his play about the American poet Hart Crane, Lost at Sea. The play also featured the Japanese kabuki performer Danzo Ichikawa VII. Both Danzo and Crane committed suicide by jumping off ferry boats—and it explored ideas of synchronicity and the concept of 'dying at the right time' in the context of western and Japanese culture.

In 1989, Barrell was associate producer for the four-part ABC-KCET television documentary series Power in the Pacific, a survey of ongoing impact of the Pacific War and the Cold War in the Asia-Pacific. The series was filmed in Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines (Manila and Cebu), the Marianas (Saipan), Papua-Nugini. The episode he directed, "Japan Comes First", also won a medal at the New York Festival in 1990 and the series was broadcast in Japan by NHK 2.