Buoyed by Garnett's enthusiasm and influenced by the Paris events of May 1968, he wrote "Occupations", a stage play about the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci and the Fiat factory occupations of 1920s Italy. The play had been submitted to the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) as early as 1964, but had then been rejected as being "too controversial". Following its premiere in Manchester the previous year, the eventual RSC production in 1971 of "Occupations", Griffiths first full-length stage play, was directed by Buzz Goodbody. Intending to affect "bourgeois theatre" with his viewpoint, Griffiths has described his approach as being "committed to analysing Marxism and to condemn Stalinism without discrediting socialism in the eyes of the world".