Spend The Night On: The picket line

The Angry Silence (1960. Dir: Guy Green) / I’m All Right Jack (1959. Dir. John Boulting)

The legacy of the Thatcher Government was the stripping of union power in British industry. But recently there’s been rumbling and unfurling of banners as trade unions once again find their voice. The relationship between the work and the union has been a favourite subject one for film makers, but unlike American and continental films which tend to squarely back the worker, British films on unionism have tended to paint a broader, although not necessarily more accurate, picture. In ‘The Angry Silence’, Richard Attenborough gives a powerful performance as a factory work sent to Coventry by his work mates when he refuses to join a strike. The issue makes the national news and is taken advantage of by the Communist Party. At the centre being torn both ways is Attenborough tormented by his principals about his duty to his family at home and comrades at work. The question the film begs of you is to decide whether he’s simply a scab or an individual refusing to have his mind made up for him? It’s thought provoking stuff, although it fails on an emotional level and takes itself very seriously. Producer Brian Forbes and Richard Attenbourgh would work together again on the delightful Whistle Down The Wind. I’m All Right Jack, released a year earlier, took a similar subject to The Angry Silence, loaded it with satirical dynamite, lit the fuse and stood back to see what happened. The resulting explosion revealed far more about the relationship between industry and it’s workers and Britain’s class structure directly after the Second World war.Jack is to all intents and purposes a sequel to the Boulting Brother’s ‘Private’s Progress’ in which a nice but dim upper class student (Stanley Windrush, played by Ian Charmichael) is exposed to wide scale double standards, scams and shenanigans at every level of the British Army during the fag end of the war in Europe. In Jack, Stanley has been de mobbed and enters into industry to work at his uncle Bertram Tracepurcel’s arms factory. Windrush is persuaded to start at the bottom and work his way up in order to understand the business. But the truth is that the management have a hunch that Windrush’s arrival on the shop floor will not be taken kindly to by the workers, an ensuing strike means that Tracepurcel can pass a large order of missiles for an Arab country to his partner for a higher price and clean up on the profit. The shop floor, led by union leader Jack Kite (brilliantly played by Peter Sellers) do indeed take exception to Windrush, who somehow quadruples production at the factory just by making some naive observations, and a strike is called. But things don’t quite go as Tracepurcell or his nemesis Kite would like. As a satire I’m All Right Jack captured exactly the stand off between industry and the unions directly after the Second World War. The excessive buffoonery and greed of the fat cats of industry is shown up in a way few film-makers had dared to portray until now, but there is also little sympathy shown for the union leadership who are exposed as impotent, obstinate idealists who know who to work the system better than their own jobs.

The Food: It’s hungry work on a picket line but if you’ve got a brassier burning on full heat you could make up some kebabs and let them cook over the flame. For pudding you could stick some marshmallows on the sharp end of your placard and toast them.

The Drink: A few frothing pints of ale is the perfect overture to seizing the means of production and overthrowing the bosses.