Britain’s First Socialist Film?

(and where you can watch it for free!)

by Christopher Draper

I GREW UP addicted to TV and loved “Robin Hood”, “Play for Today”, “Boys from the Blackstuff” and “The Monocled Mutineer” but kicked the habit long before the emergence of shopping channels, Ant & Dec and Jeremy Kyle. If Britain’s Got Talent it’s not evident from TV – the opium of the people.

Radical Cinema

RADICAL director Ken Loach was on telly in the 1960’s but as the medium grew increasingly idiotic shifted to cinema, where for decades he’s almost single-handedly kept alive the fragile flame of Britain’s socialist film culture. Loach wasn’t our first socialist director yet so little regarded is political cinema in Britain that lefties are more able to identify radical foreign film makers like Eisenstein, Vigo or Bunuel than any British pioneer.

Socialists and Film Makers

THERE were four decades of film making in Britain before in 1933 a trio of iconoclastic activists created the Socialist Film Council (SFC) with the intention of producing politically conscious films for public showing. The leading lights were Rudolph Messel (1905-1958), Raymond Postgate (1896-1971) and George Lansbury (1859-1940) with Messel the prime mover. Postgate was a writer and founder member of the British Communist Party and as a left-wing dissident, he was one of the first to resign in 1922 for refusing to follow the Moscow line. During WWI Postgate had been expelled from university, gone on the run and been gaoled for conscientious objection. George Lansbury was President of the Socialist Film Council and leader of the Labour Party, a role he’d accepted in 1931 when Ramsey MacDonald “ratted”, allied with the Tories, formed a “National Government” and imposed savage cuts and the “Household Means Test” on the unemployed.

As a Labour activist and accomplished amateur film maker Rudolph Messel was a key player in bringing socialist politics to the big screen. Like Postgate he’d enjoyed a privileged upbringing but was much slower to embrace socialism. At Oxford he’d participated in the notorious “Hypocrites Club” whose membership included Evelyn Waugh, Terrence Greenidge, Anthony Powell, Tom Driberg and Roger Hollis. In 1924 Messel and fellow hypocrite Greenidge jointly produced an amateur film entitled, “Big Dog”. The club was closed down by the University authorities the following year after staging an outrageous “Nuns and Choirboys” event. Messel’s friendship with Greenidge endured and in 1926 the pair jointly produced and directed “Next Gentleman, Please!” featuring their hypocritical associates in a film exhibited in Oxford’s “Super Cinema”. During the 1926 General Strike Messel, still firmly enamoured of the louche lifestyle, pitched in on the government side but educated by the experience he moved ever closer to socialism and developed a particular interest in Soviet film making. After visiting Hollywood in 1927, the following year he wrote “This Cinema Business”, described by his publisher, Ernest Benn, as “the first comprehensive and serious study of the Film in our language”. In 1929 and 1931 Messel stood unsuccessfully as a Labour parliamentary candidate and in 1932 was a member of a prestigious Fabian Research Bureau group that enjoyed a two month long “fact-finding” tour of the Soviet Union.

Socialist Film Council

RAYMOND Postgate and novelist Naomi Mitchison accompanied Messel touring Russia and on their return all three contributed chapters on their observations to a compendium volume, “Twelve Studies in Soviet Russia” edited by Margaret Cole and published by Gollancz. They also collaborated in producing the Socialist Film Council’s first film “The Road to Hell”, written by Postgate and directed by Messel. The film depicts the devastating effects of the National Government’s austerity policies upon a working class East End family. The novelist Naomi Mitchison, in the words of the Daily Herald critic “acted beautifully” in the role of the mother of the family. Postgate played the role of the father. Messel also appeared in the guise of a drunken playboy while fellow “hypocrite” Terrence Greenidge played the part of Freddy, the family’s elder son. Daisy Postgate, Raymond’s wife, and George Lansbury’s daughter, played Freddy’s girlfriend. With many of the domestic scenes filmed in Lansbury’s 39, Bow Road home it all made for an accomplished though economical production. Premiered in London on Friday 28 July 1933, Lansbury himself attended the show and a couple of months later introduced the film to delegates attending the Labour Party’s annual conference in the White Rock Pavilion, Hastings. Although the film was generally well received where shown it proved impossible to secure a general release. Cinemas were dominated by Hollywood and ultimately controlled by local authority licensing committees eager to ban Socialist Film Council films as did Birmingham Council in 1935.

Watch “The Road to Hell”

DESPITE Lansbury’s influence the labour movement gave little material support to the SFC and although it managed to complete one more film this spark of socialist cinema would have been extinguished if it had relied entirely on the organised labour movement. Fortunately a few isolated though determined and largely forgotten individuals did successfully produce politically radical films into the 1960’s when Ken Loach memorably lit the “Big Flame”. I’ll post more on these overlooked directors and studios in future NV posts but for now watch and be inspired by “The Road to Hell” on the British Film Institute website (no charge or registration required!)

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The REAL HONOURS LIST! by Christopher Draper

TWICE a year, Buckingham Palace bestows royal recognition on hundreds of celebrity nonentities and local minions. For centuries the Crown and its serially sycophantic governments refused to release the names of the honourable men and women who declined the blandishment of these trinkets and tawdry titles. It eventually required the Freedom of Information Act and the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office to enable me to compile this select list of our most truly honourable citizens.

1) L S LOWRY (1887-1976) Refused OBE 1955, refused CBE 1961, refused Knighthood 1968, refused Order of Companion of Honour 1972 and 1976.

Salford painter Laurence Stephen Lowry holds the supreme honour of having turned down more pathetic baubles than anyone else. The Establishment initially upped the ante from MBE, through CBE until it reached the level of Knighthood in 1968 and when that failed to impress they tried another tack, attempting, twice, right up to the year of his death, to lure Lowry with offers of the more modest title “CH” but he never succumbed to such unworthy blandishments. Respect!

2) KEN LOACH (1936 - - - ) Refused OBE 1977 – “I turned down the OBE for several reasons; it’s not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who’ve got it… As a republican, I can’t accept anything from the Queen… It also meant I would be receiving something in the name of the Empire, which as an anti-Imperialist I don’t see how anyone can accept.”

3) HOWARD GAYLE (1958 - - - ) Refused MBE 2016 – the first black footballer to play for Liverpool FC declined “for the reason that my ancestors would be turning in their graves after how the Empire and Colonialism had enslaved them.”

4) KINGSLEY MARTIN (1897-1969) Refused Knighthood 1965 – Conscientious Objector to WWI. Martin was a journalist with the Manchester Guardian before editing the leading left-wing magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960, where “Martin positively relished being a perpetual critic of the Labour leadership”. In 1957 he chaired the founding meeting of CND and in his books “The Magic of Monarchy (1937)” and “The Crown and the Establishment (1962)” Kingsley Martin put forward the first modern arguments for British Republicanism. “The Monarchy…is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment.” In a cynical and ill-judged attempt to undermine Martin’s reputation, in 1965 he was offered a Knighthood which he rapidly rejected.

5) ALBERT FINNEY (1936-2019) Refused CB 1980, refused Knighthood 2000 – “Knighthood is a disease that perpetuates snobbery… Maybe people in America think being a 'Sir' is a big deal but I think we should all be misters together.”

6) IORWERTH PEATE (1901-1982) Refused OBE 1963 – joint founder of “St Fagan’s Museum”, Wales’ national folk-life collection. After registering as a Conscientious Objector in 1941 Peate was sacked as Curator of the collection but later re-instated by the museum’s Board of Governors. Uninterested in joining the English Establishment and committed to studying, preserving and promoting the culture, language and everyday artefacts of the people of Wales, in 1963 Iorwerth Peate creditably refused to be appointed an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire”. Da Iawn, ti!

7) BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH (1958- - - ) Refused OBE 2003 – Rastafarian performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah comprehensively rejects everything the honours system represents - “I get angry when I see the word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.” Benjamin deserves an extra honours point as his eloquent shaming, live on Channel Four News, of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, MBE not only prompted her to guiltily return the bauble but transformed her in into a vociferous (if belated) critic of these cringeworthy awards.

8) HONOR BLACKMAN (1925-2020) Refused CBE 2002 – Acclaimed actor, self-declared republican and Liberal who opposed Monarchy and Margaret Thatcher, “She was merciless…she did damn all for empowering women… I’m not too happy about the Falklands either…” Honor by name, Honour by nature!

9) J G BALLARD (1930-2009) Refused CBE 2003 – Novelist James Graham Ballard was contemptuous of the honours system, “It is exploited by politicians and always has been…I think it’s deplorable when leftwing playwrights like David Hare who have worn their socialist colours on both sleeves for so many years, should accept a knighthood… The honours system is a Ruritanian charade that helps to prop up the top-heavy monarchy… It makes us look a laughing stock and encourages deference to the crown.”

10) BOB HOLMAN (1936-2016) Refused MBE 2012 – In 1987 Christian Socialist Bob Holman abandoned his comfy life teaching “Social Administration” at Bath University to put theory into practice and work on community projects in Easterhouse, one of the most deprived parts of Glasgow. Spurning the condescension of royal recognition in 1987, Holman comprehensively excoriated the honours system not just to explain his own action but explicitly to incite others to decline: “The unelected monarchy reinforces and sanctions inequality. The BBC and most of the press pour undiluted praise on the royals whilst imposing a virtual gag on the views of republicans. No senior politician has the courage to question the continuation of the monarchy…Refusing a royal honour is a small step but one in the right direction.” Amen brothers and sisters!

(This is the third and final part of Chris’s series on the British Honours System – previous articles are archived and available on this NORTHERN VOICES site)

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Ken Loach forced out of charity competition following Zionist lobbying!

Film Director Ken Loach

The 83-year-old film director Ken Loach, has been forced to withdraw as a judge in the 2020 School Competition run by the anti-racism charity 'Show Racism the Red Card'(SRtRC).

At the beginning of February the charity announced that Ken Loach and the former children's laureate Michael Rosen were to judge this year's competition which involves thousands of schoolchildren from various schools, producing poetry, drama and films, and other creative work, on combatting racism. The Chief Executive of the Charity and its trustees, said that both Loach and Rosen, were ideally qualified to choose the competition winners.

Rosen and Loach were then subjected to a torrent of abuse and an aggressive campaign - both on-line and in print - making allegations of baseless anti-Semitism, particularly directed at Ken Loach, who for decades through the medium of film, has consistently campaigned to expose inhumanity, inequality, and injustice, in films like 'Cathy Come Home' (1966), and 'Kes' (1969), and more recently, 'I Daniel Blake' (2016).

Among those who demanded the removal of Ken Loach as a competition judge, was the 'Board of Deputies of British Jews'. But during discussions between Loach and SRtRC, it became evident that the charity had been the subject of an aggressive campaign to persuade trade unions, government departments, football clubs, and politicians, to cease funding and supporting the charity and its work. It is understood that behind the scenes pressure threatened to wreck not only the competition and the charity's existence, but the reputation of Ken Loach. It is also alleged that members of the charity's staff were insulted and threatened along with members of Loach's family who were subjected to personal abuse on-line.

More than 200 eminent public figures, including Eric Cantona, Sir Alex Ferguson, Sir Mark Rylance, the film director, Mike Leigh, and Steve Coogan, have come out publicly in support of Loach. Steve Coogan said:

"His entire career has been to shine a light on the plight of the dispossessed and the disenfranchised. His films give a voice to the voiceless...Ken Loach's legacy will remain long after his critics have gone."

The allegations made against Ken Loach, stem from his support for pro-Palestinian Labour party members who have been accused of anti-Semitism and are directly linked to the attempt to redefine anti-Semitism and conflate it with any criticism of Zionism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people, as the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, seeks to do.

For decades, Loach has been seen as something of an hate figure for Zionists and a thorn in their side. In 1987, the play 'Perdition', written by Jim Allen and directed by Ken Loach, which dealt with the alleged collaboration between the Zionist movement in Hungry and the Nazi's, was cancelled on the day before the first preview performance at London's Royal Court Theatre, following outside pressure on the theatre to cancel all performances of the play. Loach told a newspaper that he "hadn't tangled with the Zionist lobby before" and "what is amazing is the strength and organisation and power of the lobby."

'The Dead Don't Die' in Cannes

 Review:  Zero Hours Comedy

DIRECTOR Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty have come storming back to Cannes with another tactlessly passionate bulletin from the heart of modern Britain, the land of zero-hours vassalage and service-economy serfdom – a film in the tradition of Loach’s previous work and reaching back to Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. It’s fierce, open and angry, unironised and unadorned, about a vital contemporary issue whose implications you somehow don’t hear on the news.

Like their previous movie, I, Daniel Blake, it depicts the human cost of an economic development that we are encouraged to accept as a fact of life. Like I, Daniel Blake, it is substantially researched through many off-the-record interviews, and rich in detail. But I think this film is better: it is more dramatically varied and digested, with more light and shade in its narrative progress and more for the cast to do collectively. I was hit in the solar plexus by this movie, wiped out by the simple honesty and integrity of the performances. Yet my emotions were clouded by my feelings about a certain toxic political issue. Of this, more in a moment.

The drama concerns Ricky (played by Kris Hitchen) a former construction worker in Newcastle who lost both his building work and his chance of a mortgage after the economic crash of 2008. He is a hardworking, affectionate guy with a bit of a temper and a liking for drink. Now he is renting with his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood), a contract nurse and in-home carer who has to visit dozens of disabled, elderly and vulnerable people every day for their meals, baths and “tuck-ins” – jargon for an eerie formalised version of maternal intimacy. It’s a workload that over the years has left no time for her to tuck in her two kids at the end of the day. They are Seb (Rhys Stone), a stroppy teen who has artistic talent but is in trouble with the authorities, and his smart kid sister, Liza Jane (Katie Proctor).
Ricky’s mate persuades him to get on what looks like a nice little earner: van driving for a big delivery company. But the firm’s hard-faced manager Maloney (Ross Brewster) – a bullet-headed guy with a number-one cut – brusquely tells Ricky that he will be employed on a quasi-freelance basis, with none of the benefits of conventional employment. He has to buy or lease his own van, or rent one from the firm at a ruinous daily rate, and meet strict targets for deliveries. These are set by the all-important scanner, worryingly called a “gun”. Particularly important are the “precisors”, customers who have paid extra for precise delivery slots. Maloney shouts things like “Let’s get the cardboard off the concrete!” when all the packages are being loaded: a telling real-world detail. But Ricky has no time to go to the lavatory and has to carry an empty plastic bottle with him, a necessity which is not just mortifying but makes him vulnerable. And Maloney has not told him everything about the insurance situation.

So Ricky persuades Abbie to sell the car she needs for her work so he can buy the van that is going to be their route out of financial misery. He is hired – or in the firm’s sinister terminology, he is “onboarded” – and Laverty creates a subtle resonance when a caring and careworn copper tells Seb he has a great family and that he should “Take that onboard”.

Read more:   http://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/16/sorry-we-missed-you-review-ken-loach

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Political Righteousness at the Oscars

Ryan Gosling star of La La Land elbowed out during upset at the Oscars

KEN Loach’s film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, against expectation in the UK, failed to get nominated for an Oscar.

Why?
I suspect that it was too plebian and didn’t fit-in with the current sub-prime politics or the now fashionable alphabetic soup: LTBQI or the requirement for what one of my fellow workmates in the local foundry use to call ‘a compulsory Coon’*.
The day before the Oscars were awarded, Damien Thompson in the Mail on Saturday predicted that ‘Moonlight’ ticks ‘every conceivable box, the story of a black child – living in Miami with his crack-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) – who grows up gay. Cue an examination of the difficulties of homosexuality in the ghetto.’
None-the-less, last year the Los Angeles Times reported:
‘Its another embarrassing Hollywood sequel: For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated an all-white group of acting nominees.‘
In 2016, the civil rights film ‘12-years a Slave’ also failed to land a slot on the director list, spurring the social-media movement #OscarsSoWhite and a pledge from the academy to do better.
This year, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC), which has organised the Oscar balloting event for the last 83-years, has had to apologise for mixing up the envelopes:
‘We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.’
It is worth mentioning that during the Miner’s Strike of 1984-85, Price Waterhouse Cooper was the company of accountants which did work for the Thatcher government in tracking down the funds of the National Union of Miners (NUM). The Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom has posted evidence from Cabinet papers about the links between the security services MI5 and Price Waterhouse in the pursuit of NUM funds during the Miner’s Strike:
‘Government-backed legal action to seize the £8.5 million that had been transferred to banks overseas was so successful that law officers had to advise that a case involving the sequestrators might have to be abandoned because of fears that the scale of the surveillance would be revealed in open court.
‘Assisted by highly-accurate intelligence about the NUM’s clandestine operation, chartered accountants Price Waterhouse managed to freeze secret accounts in Luxembourg, Zurich and Dublin without the union’s knowledge and before further withdrawals could be made.
‘When senior civil servants realised that evidence of widespread telephone taps had leaked out to lawyers, the Cabinet Secretary warned the Prime Minister that her government would have to be careful.’

'PwC' would seem to have better at pursuing the NUM than managing the Oscars.
*   A coon is a black actor or actress, who takes roles that stereotypically portrays black people. They think theyve made it but they are slaves to the same images.

'I, Daniel Blake' Snubbed by US Oscars

KEN Loach's film 'I, Daniel' Blake'* was been overlooked  in the 2017 Oscar nominations.  The picture which was filmed in Newcastle, and starred the Geordie comedian, Dave Johns, had been expected to grab the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science.
Since winning the Palme d’Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, two awards at the British Independent Film Awards (Dave Johns for Best Actor and co-star Hayley Squires for Most Promising Newcomer), last Sunday the film got five Bafta nominations.
It got Best Film - where it will be up against the all singing, all dancing and very lovely La La Land among others - and Outstanding British Film, the list of Bafta possibilities also includes Best Director for Ken Loach, Best Original Screenplay for Paul Laverty and Best Supporting actress for the aforementioned Hayley Squires.
So, you can see why everyone expected the film, which tells the terrifying tale of two people thwarted by the bureaucractic British Benefit's system, to be among those read out during the big reveal of the nominations, which came direct from Los Angeles last Tuesday afternoon.
Jessica Cripps discussing  I, Daniel Blake‘s controversial exclusion from the Oscars on 'epigram' wrote:
 'Successful cinema leaves an impact on its audiences. I, Daniel Blake reached parliament when MP Jeremy Corbyn recommended Prime Minister May watch the film as an example of the government’s ‘institutionalised barbarity.'
She concludes by saying:
'The gritty realism may have failed to create a buzz in Hollywood, but the honesty has touched the hearts of audiences worldwide; it lives on in political ripples rather than in an Academy Award.'
 
*  The indie winner: I, Daniel Blake It won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, comes from a beloved British auteur and has garnered critical acclaim, but would Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake prove too tough a sell for cinema audiences? If UK distributor eOne had any qualms, they have surely evaporated now that I, Daniel Blake has opened with an impressive £404,000 from 94 cinemas, and £445,000 including previews. Stripping out the previews, site average is a very robust £4,298.

'Always Look On The Sour Side of Life'

How Ken Loach Renders Reality on Film

Reviewing  'I, Daniel Blake' & the impact of 'Social Realism'

by Brian Bamford

Reverend David Grey, a former friar, at Ashton Jobcentre

THE film Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake' had the biggest domestic opening of its director's career with receipts of more than £2 million after its first three weeks.  Audiences predictably have been massive in Newcastle where the film is staged.  But also on social media, where the hashtag #iamdanielblake took off.   It is to be released in the USA on December 23^rd.

The Euro-septic MP, Iain Duncan Smith at one point complained that the film was unkind to the staff at the job-centres and benefit offices, who were enforcing the sanctions which is central to the film's message.

As things turned out audiences in this country have been flocking to see the film, which portrays the difficulties experienced by a Newcastle joiner with an heart condition trying to make sense of the British benefit's system. 

Working class culture has a rich tradition in many post-war British films.  In 1996 I interviewed Jim Allen, one of Ken Loach's screen-writers and a former building site worker, who had just collaborated with Loach on the film 'Land & Freedom' about the Spanish Civil War, and had previously worked with him on 'Raining Stones' (1993). 

At that time in an essay entitled 'Rendering Reality on Film: art and the emotion racket' (The Raven, Spring 1996), I wrote:   

'... in Raining Stones in 1993 (based on a council estate in Middleton, Greater Manchester), they are  concerned with the problems of survival on the dole in Britain today.  How to get by on a council estate amid the loan sharks and drug pushers.  Making out and leading a decent family life, in the aftermath of an era of social blight and desperation for the poor that shows  no sign of ending in the near future.'

Loach himself is uneasy about being identified with 'social realism' because he thinks it pigeon-holes his films puts off the public, he has said:  'It's a way for critics to isolate someone's work... As a film-maker you just want people to come with an open mind.'

Some doubt the accuracy and truth of the events in the film, although Mr Iain Duncan Smith has given a radio interview in which he said:that the film showed 'the very worst of anything that could happen'.

The benefit agencies and jobcentres have long been held responsible for inflicting suffering upon people at the bottom of society's pile.  Only last week the National Audit Office which found that  the Government spent £147 million more on administering the system than was saved through sanctions.  In my capacity as a Trade Union Council Secretary in Tameside, Manchester, I recently wrote to Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS union that represents jobcentre workers:

'...  the protests at Ashton Jobcentre are now in their second year...  During the last two-years, staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, have made numerous complaints that they have felt threatened by protests taking place outside Ashton Jobcentre.  While this has often led to police intervention, no protestor has ever been arrested, cautioned, or rebuked in anyway.  The police have often considered these complaints, as time-wasting or baseless...  You may be interested to know that on one occasion, the Reverend David Grey, a former friar from Gorton Monastery, entered Ashton Jobcentre dressed in clerical vestments (see picture) to offer staff spiritual guidance and counselling..  We were later told that the Jobcentre had summoned the police on the pretext that staff felt threatened and intimidated by this man of God.'

This kind of corny confrontation between the British benefit bureaucracy and the claimants has been going on for as long as I can remember.  It's an authentic long-running farce played out daily up and down the country.  Towards the end of the film, Daniel Blake asks to sign-off as a claimant saying that applying for work with a heart condition like his was just wasting everyone's time and only served to humiliate him as a claimant.   The film critic Antonia Quirke has written:  'Very few people can hit you in the thoracic cavity like Loach.  Of course I cried, as I always do...'.

This is what my mother would have called a 'tear jerker' or Bertold Brecht the 'emotion racket', but while social realism may scare some off the cinema Danny Leigh in the Financial Times suggests:

'That is the essence of modern social realism – a place on the screen for people often seen as statistics'.

The film has already won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and has scored as  a hit at the British box office. 

Is Freedland's claim of antisemitism on the left, aimed at undermining Jeremy Corbyn?

Guardian Journalist - Jonathan Freedland

Labour MP's on the right of the Labour Party, are continuing with their relentless campaign to discredit and undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the party, in spite of him being elected twice by a massive majority of Labour Party members in all three categories. Under his leadership, there have been accusations of bullying, misogyny, homophobia, sexism and anti-Semitism. The latter charge led to the Labour Party setting up an inquiry into anti-Semitism chaired by former Liberty director, Shami Chakrabarti, who was given a peerage and elevated to the shadow cabinet.

Many people remain dubious about these claims which they see as tendentious and aimed at smearing Corbyn's  leadership of the Labour Party. Among those who have been most vocal against Corbyn's leadership have been the virulent anti -Corbyn' hater and Guardian journalist, Nick Cohen, who speaks of Corbyn's 'gun club', which he insists, his targeting Jews, lesbians and homosexual's for de-selection. Fellow Guardian journalist, Jonathan Freedland, has also claimed that anti-Semitism is rife on the English left. However, a recent cross-party home affairs select committee report, stated that there was no reliable evidence to suggests that anti-Semitism was greater in the Labour Party than other parties.

Although many Jewish people oppose the racist policies of the Israeli government  vis-a-vis the Palestinian people and Zionism in general, there is a subtext which lies behind many of these accusations of anti-Semitism by the pro-Israeli lobby.  What it seems to say to many, is that if you oppose what the Israeli state is doing to the Palestinian people, then you are an anti-semite and pro-Palestinian activism, is anti-Semitic. Or anti-Semitism is whatever we want it to mean! As Noam Chomsky says: "Whoever captures the language captures the argument."

Many people may have objected to Ken Livingstone's remark that Hitler supported Zionism in the early 1930's,  but did this automatically make him an anti-semite ? Jewish representatives from the Board of Deputies, certainly thought so and called for his expulsion from the Labour Party. Jim Allen's play 'Perdition', also alleged collaboration between Zionist leaders and the Nazis. Just 36-hours before the opening night, the play directed by Ken Loach, was cancelled at the Royal Court theatre. By the late 1980's, Loach couldn't get anything commissioned or shown.

Over the years, there have been accusations that the English writer George Orwell, was anti-Semitic, because in April 1945, he wrote in the 'Contemporary Jewish Record' the following:

"Many Zionist Jews seem to me to be merely antisemites  turned upside-down."

Likewise, in his 'The Lion and the Unicorn', Orwell also wrote:

"Sir Oswald Mosley, a man barren of ideas- hollow as a jug. He (Mosley) started his movement with Jews among his most prominent followers."

Although a staunch anti-Fascist, this hasn't stopped the accusations against Orwell that he was antisemitic, misogynistic, and homophobic. Now-a-days, with no-platforming, safe-spaces and trigger-alerts, it is doubtful Orwell would have got published or even Evelyn Waugh.

We are publishing an article by local Tameside health campaigner and Labour Party member, Rod McCord, which is a response to the article written by Jonathan Freedland and which deals with some of these matters in more detail. To read the full article click on the link - READ MORE.

Barnsley Labour History Festival

BARNSLEY FESTIVAL OF LABOUR HISTORY 

Saturday October 15th

10.30am   The Yorkshire Rising of 1820    Malcolm Chase
11.45         Readings from John Hugh Burland’s “Annals of Barnsley”
12.50 – 2pm       Dinner.   There is a solidarity protest for the Kinsley 3 strike in the precinct.   
                       Please support. 
2pm          Votes for Women –campaigning in Barnsley and beyond.  Jill Liddington
3.15pm    Labour Politics in Barnsley 1890-1910   Keith Laybourn
4.30pm    The Matchwomen’s Strike and New Unionism    Louise Raw (finishes 5.35pm)

7.30pm    “The Price of Coal”    Directed by Ken Loach. Written by Barry Hines.  

Sunday October 16th 

10am         The Great Unrest   1910-14    Ralph Darlington (John Newsinger is ill). 
11.15         The General Strike     Daryl Leeworthy
12.30pm   Work Camps in Yorkshire in the 1930s   John Field
1.35 – 2.40pm                      Dinner
2.40pm      Asian Youth Movements in South and West Yorkshire in 1970/80s
                      Anandi Ramamurthy
3.55pm      The Miners’ Strikes of 1972 and 1984/5    Ralph Darlington

The Festival has been financially sponsored by the TUC, BFAWU, UCU Yorkshire Regional Committee, Leeds and Hull Trades Councils, Barnsley UNISON

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Jim Allen: Perdition surpressed in Britain!

Read an Interview conducted with Jim Allen conducted in 1995 and a Obituary on World Socialist Web Site.

Sent in by Trevor Hoyle

Reviewing Jim Allen of Middleton, Greater Manchester

THE first attempts to show Jim Allen's play Perdition in Britain and Ireland resulted in it being banned. It was first surpressed in London during 1987, after fierce protests from Zionists forced the Royal Court in London, England to pull the play 48 hours before it's preview. It has since been described as "the most controversial play of the 1980s" (1).
Allen, a longtime creative partner of the British film maker Ken Loach, wrote the award winning films Hidden Agenda, Raining Stones and Land and Freedom. Loach was also to have directed Perdition at the Royal Court. After Jim Allen died in June 1999, Loach said in his obituary in The Guardian (27th June 1999) that "One of the pleasures of his last days was its current successful revival at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill". Loach summed up the story behind the play: it was how "some Zionists" in Hungary in 1944 had done a deal with the Nazi's:

"In which a certain number of Jews would be allowed to escape to Palestine in return for silence about the destination of those bound for the concentration camps".

Loach also observed how previous attacks on Allen and the play:

"Were as nothing compared to the Zionist fury unleashed when the play was being rehearsed. To Jim's disgust, and to the shame of the Royal Court, the play was withdrawn. Crude charges of anti-Semitism were discounted by critics when the play was heard in public at the Edinburgh Festival".

In a 1995 interview, immediately following the release of Land and Freedom, Barbara Slaughter and Vicky Short interviewed Allen who recounted the problems he had putting on the play. The full text of the interview can be seen on the World Socialist Web Site.

World Socialist Web Site: Could you tell us about the problems you had with Perdition, your play about Zionist collaboration with Hitler's Nazis? Perdition was a very bad experience. I got my bank statement the other day and my overdraft, the lowest it's been, is now £3,000 despite the fact that I've written about four films in six years. We were £20,000 out of pocket for the libel action and that's a killer. A publisher was involved and he paid a lot. But it's very time consuming. I've followed this for six years.
I got an apology from the Telegraph and £5,000, which didn't cover anything.
We never got it on the stage except a shortened version at the Edinburgh film festival, where it appeared for one night. The bloke who put it on said, "I've never ever known such pressure, I'm a nervous wreck. The phone never stopped ringing, from all over the world." One Zionist leader in London said to Ken Loach, "I've got six friends who are very powerful, and we'll stop it going out."
A big producer in the West End did agreed to stage it. Within 24 hours he phoned back and said to Ken, "I'm sorry, forget it, I've had phone calls telling me if I put Perdition on, I will never open again on Broadway. I'm sorry."
The campaign they orchestrated with the press was incredible. It was attacked in America. I was sent a 20,000 word article printed in the New Republic. I replied in 1,000 words to make sure I got it in. Three months later I got a letter back saying, "You will be given the same liberty as any other writer in our magazine" - 100 words or something, in our letter column.
Arising out of that came the libel action. For two years I think my earnings were about £10 a week, plus I was going through a bad time personally because of my wife's illness-phone calls, abuse. You've got no idea what it was like.
A group of us put it on for a week in London, in some secular society. We showed the shortened version. It was packed, mainly by Jewish people, because this was a chapter of their history they didn't know, like Land and Freedom for the Spanish people. I am not exaggerating, there were some people crying, old people, because of the facts that came out in the play about the Zionists doing everything they could to disorganise the Jews, in Hungary, etc. I said to Ken, "If ever I win the lottery the first thing I'll do is hire a theatre and put it on." Apart from that there is no chance.  

Thus, we see the reason for the plays controversy: it shows how some of the leaders of the Zionist movement in occupied Europe collaborated with the Nazi's in the Final Solution of the Jewish people of Hungary. The play is based on an infamous libel trial in Israel during the 1950s, and centres on the head of the Zionist Rescue Committee, Rudolf Kasztner. He sued a pamphleteer for claiming that he help the Nazi's exterminate 500,000 of his own people after admitting to negotiating with the the SS war criminal Adolph Eichmann for the safe passage out of Hungary of just 2000 Jews - many of whom were Zionists from his home town in Hungary.
When the play has been shown again in London, the controversy was reawakened. Elliot Levey, the Jewish actor who directed the new production, said: "It is not historically inaccurate". However, Zionists again attempted to apply maximum pressure to have the play stopped. In a letter to The Guardian (April 26th 1999), David Menton of the Union of Jewish Students suggested that the play was both "Holocaust revisionism" and therefore "one of the most vicious forms of anti-Semitism". He also cites the author David Cesarani as condemning the play for its "revisionism".
Neville Nagler, the director general of the Board of Deputies of British Jews claimed in a letter to The Guardian (April 26th 1999), that Perdition was a "travesty of reality" and "grossly distorts historical fact". But does it ? The main argument of the critics, is that Perdition should be banned because they claim that the basis of which the play is based is historically inaccurate, and therefore is "holocaust revisionism".

For more go to  http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/kasztner.htm