that counts - the class war."
ber, 2 October at 9.25 on BBC1).
The films promise to be more than a view of decade of working class history. They are not just about the working class. They are of the working class. the turbulent years from 1916 to the 1926 General Strike when Britain was closer to socialist revolution than at any time before or since. And the issues they raise - the 1914-18 imperialist war, the Irish rebellion, the miners" struggles, the capitulation of the first Labour Government, and the General Strike - are of burning relevance to the problems facing the working class today.
The producer Tony Garnett explains: We start with the idea that history is contemporary, and that each generation invents its own history - that history is not some final fixed thing — and we therefore pick out a historical situation which, in the tension between present and past events, may throw a useful and positive light on the future.' The style of the first film, '1916 - Joining Up' was tight and spare. There was no flashy camera work, no didactic statements of principles just the camera rolling and cutting away in documentary style from one scene to the next already perfected by Allen, Garnett and Loach in previous films like Cathy Come Home, Kes and Family Nevertheless, the message was ble. dramatically brought home.
CONSCIENCE
Set in a Northern rura commun ity in the period immediately after the Act introducing conscription, the major figure is Philip Hargreaves, a Quaker. The Quakers, like most members of the Independent Labour Party, opposed conscription solely on the grounds of individual conscience.
Right through the film, Hargreaves is faced with the question What makes you so bloody special?' His father-in-law tells his son Ben, who though only 17 is anxious to join I'm no pacifist. I'll fight in a war. But I'll fight in the only war These are the words of the revolutionary unknown soldier in the first of four historical films entitled Days of Hope being shown on television (18 and 25 Septemthe Army, that Philip's 'brain's a bit too active - that's what comes of reading too many books. But the judge who sends him into the They cover Army is not so sympathetic. He the trade union officials who bless the war sit at home in safety, Hargreaves is subjected to the stupefying brutality of the British Army home, then tied with others to posts in no-man's-land at the front auxiliaries.
ves' response is undeniably brave. a cecumigue doing.
says: 'Conscience makes cowards of us all. What you need is discipline'.
Whilst the judges, the priests and dragged through an assault course at Marxism.
because they have refused to act as Compared with the sheep-like response of most workers, Hargrea This is beautifully expressed when Philip Hargreaves (right) meets up with the revolutionary unknown soldier New delegates have been elected from Bethnal Green & Stepney Trades Council Battersea & Wandsworth Trades Council, Sheffield Health Students Union, Bath Trades Council, South West Region of the Trades Union Congress, Oxford BOHSE, Cardiff COHSE, Eastbourne Labour Party, NALGO Kings College Hospital and Sheffield ASTMS Steel Branch. With over four weeks to go, 51 delegates have now the camera moves back from the platform at the recruitment rally to linger on a pen full of real sheep However it is this individual mor conscience, divorced from the class position held by the revolutionary soldier, which proves Hargreaves' un When ideals begin to fade - Hargreaves thinks there is 'something of the divine in every human being' - moralism is replaced by cynicism; and this is to be Hargreaves fate later on when he becomes a Labour MP. He is in fact typical of many of the early Labour pioneers, who are often said to have owed more to Non-conformism than to Hargreaves' brother-in-law Ben Matthews, on the other hand, com pletely lacks any such individual religious commitment. Along with millions of other working class people he is thus open to a much more thoroughgoing radicalisation by the experiences of the war, the Russian Revolution, and the post war struggles of the working class. Already the first film shows the con trast between his aspiration - to tight the Germans - and his actual assign ment - to repress the Irish.
The British Army, then as now, comes over clearly as an army of occupation in Ireland, resented by everyone from the girl who puts the groping soldiers to shame by singing a rebel song, to the 10-year old boy who leads a soldier over a land mine. For the first time Ben is being forced to think about his actions and his experience.
Hopefully the remaining films will help us to learn why those 'Days of Hope' for British labour, whien were born in the radicalisation of millions like Ben, never reached fruition in the British socialist revolution - and the lessons those ex periences hold for us today. James Drake
WEEKLY NE