World Refugee Year 1959-1960
A new play by John Heron and Maureen Quiney.
Adapted by Troy Kennedy Martin.

Tonight's play is concerned mainly with love. If love was not only a private necessity (which it certainly is) but also a political virtue (which it is not), there would be no refugee problem at all. While we in this country often get upset when one individual is hurt, we don't seem to care when whole sections of a national community are jettisoned from their homes to float and wander between twin poles of conflict - such as East and West or Arab and Jew - until, settling somewhere, they are left to rot. And by rot I mean to rot without love the way plants rot without light.
You can feed a refugee, clothe him and house him, but if you do nothing else. the 'him' soon becomes an 'it,' a statistic and a bore. It looks as if we would like to pay money to keep him where he is, because we don't want him to share in our own good luck.
I could understand this if we were at war or if our economy was on the rocks. But it isn't. And we can act fast: witness the speed and efficiency with which the Hungarian refugees were resettled. But this only highlights just how slow we have been to help the others.
In Europe, refugee camps are open places; and we like to think our own countries are open places too. But between their camps and our countries are lines of defence as efficient as any military installation, only instead of bunkers and barbed wire there are quotas and red tape. These were set up, no doubt for good reasons, to keep out the criminal, the lazy, and those with whom our economy cannot cope. But I often wonder whether these restrictions, now, just keep out everyone.
In this, the World Refugee Year, our own country of fifty millions has taken in six hundred refugees. This is considered very good going. Is it good enough?
The Price of Freedom is set in one of these camps of the loveless, the lepers of our modern political society. It shows how they scratch for the little love that is around them to help keep themselves alive. Naomi Capon produces and she and the cast, which contains many ex-refugees, have tried to show the humanity these people have, despite the fact that it has been frayed by the long years of waiting. John Heron and Maureen Quiney wrote the original script and I was glad to adapt something so close to my heart, as part of the BBC's programme for the World Refugee Year. (Troy Kennedy Martin)
Tonight at 8.0