British Collectivist Propaganda in World War Two
I am not going to say too much about this video clip from the British Film Institute National Archive. It traces class consciousness and the war effort and shows how film has been in its very short history, central to what we understand as our official or national history in this age of moving images.
The bite-size documentary is particularly interesting to me because where once we had seen the birth of the working class hero during World War Two, the same studios that gave us the first phenomenon became famous for their post-war comedies, but does that only mean that British propaganda did a turn in the 1950s?
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Four stars to this BFI gem, AA! It seems a shame that it took a world war with a enemy 25 miles across the Channel to bring the working class into the forefront of the nation. What happened in the General Election of '45 has always seemed to me to have been a quasi-revolution. Some of this echoed in the USA with the so-called "G.I. Bill" of 1944 that opened up higher education to lower middle and working class people for the first time. Without the war (and the FDR Democrats) my dad would not likely have gone to university out of the service and certainly not a top-flight one.
ReplyDelete"Went the Day Well?" to me is one of the gems of British cinema from that period--a movie about fifth columnists and fascists landing smack in the ol' back yard and getting a good swift boot up the arse for their trouble. I believe the story was originally done by Graham Greene and it was made as has been pointed out by the US film critic Leonard Maltin "when the outcome was far from certain. I enjoy propaganda films when they say more than "keep the side up" and reflect the basic decency of real democracy and common cause.
Cheers Doug, I'm glad you enjoyed the clip....as you know the BFI archives are a treasure of captured moments in the history of film. I remember seeing Went The Day Well when I was a kid on Sunday afternoon TV in the late 1950s or early 60s. There was very often war films on the tele at that time, heroic struggles against an implacable foe and all that stuff. The fifth columnists and Quislings are still there, sleepers in the rural heartlands awaitng their big chance I think Doug, but you know 'walls have ears' and 'careless talk costs lives' and all that, can't be too careful around Johnny Foreigner don't y'know? The post-war reconstruction was a wonderful time for capitalism and especially the credit houses of the West to make their fortunes while fuelling the consumer revolution. It could never last and it didn't.
ReplyDeleteAs you say 1945 was a momentous year for the British (and international) Labour movement..... but in 1919 Britain came very close to a socialist revolution, so the working class always were at the forefront driving history along...wars seem to have that effect, perhaps that's why they don't declare them anymore?
Yes, AA, one thing that the American masters of war have learned is to not declare war, and to avoid a total mobilization as we had seventy years ago. People seem more willing to accept combat losses and PTSD if they don't have a close tie to its victims. It's a "living-room" war on computer screens and television sets, all colorful "shock and awe" for the vast numbers of Americans and others.
DeleteThe only winners are as you say, those who make fortunes from the occupation and those private mercenaries who stay on to guard the corporate fiefdoms, as in Iraq.
Most succinctly put Doug. Undeclared wars have no formal begining and hence no absolute end. If you want perpetual war the only way is to keep fighting them without cessation through mercenaries, covert operations and social destabilisation but never declaring them a war.
DeleteThe living room war you describe Doug is in my view a retrograde step back to the time people paid to go to the Colloseum to watch people being disemboweled, mauled, chewed and chopped into pieces. This TV war lust is a modern equivalent in my view, as Edmund Burke famously said "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Too many 'good men' are watching TV and evil is prevailing, but they don't see it these 'good (wo)men'....they look but they don't see it....until something happens to them and the scales suddenly fall from their eyes.
Just recently it was celebrated on BBC the 30th anniversary of the start of the Falklands/Malvinas war. I was amazed by the vox pops I heard and the texts to my local BBC station Hereford and Worcester. They were overwhelmingly negative about the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan.....when I opposed the war 30 years ago I was in a minority ....now I am in the overwhelming majority, so much so the BBC stopped the phone-in because the views were all one sided and they were all against.
So we have made progress I think in some important ways, most particularly in creating crises of confidence that has social, politico-legal and economic consequences our idea has gone viral.
Hi Aaron, not been around much recently, had no internet for a while then I finally had my eye surgery. So just catching up now. Interesting little film clip , can't help wondering how different things may have been if the earlier move toward socialism had not been bought off with minor reforms. Sometimes I just with the vast majority of people would wake up and see what's going on.
ReplyDeleteHi Loretta, I am so busy in the real world at the moment I have not been online 'recreationally' for quite a while. Thanks for asking. I am glad to hear that you have had your eye surgery and I wish you all the best with that. I'm also glad you are now back online.
DeleteIts never too late for progressive politics I don't think, especially when the 'opposition' can be seen so obviously to have failed, but the way these ideas are presented will be different to the way in the past. No Jarrow Crusades anymore, although I don't rule it out in the future. I think people are waking up to different aspects and mostly miss the elephant in the room, capitalism itself.
Thanks for leaving your comments Loretta, I'll catch up with you soon.