[5] Following its premiere in Manchester the previous year,[6] the eventual RSC production in 1971 of Occupations, Griffiths first full-length stage play,[6] was directed by Buzz Goodbody.
Intending to affect "bourgeois theatre" with his viewpoint, Griffiths described his approach as being "committed to analysing Marxism and to condemn Stalinism without discrediting socialism in the eyes of the world".
[3] This critique of the British revolutionary left featured the National's artistic director Laurence Olivier in his last stage role as the Glaswegian Trotskyist John Tagg.
His television play, Country (BBC, 20 October 1981), set just before the Labour victory at the 1945 general election is "a not wholly unsympathetic study of a Tory family".
[14] He created a screen adaptation in 1981 for D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers and in 1990, Piano, a stage version of a 1977 film itself based on Anton Chekov's play, Platonov.
Only a newspaper campaign led by Griffiths and the leading actor Brian Cox caused the BBC to relent, and it was finally shown in a late-night slot on BBC2.
[4] In November 2008 Griffiths participated in a discussion on "The Writer and Revolution" with the World Socialist Web Site's arts editor David Walsh at the University of Manchester.