On the face of it, this is a pretty two-dimensional story of how the owner of a small plough-making factory, driven to distraction by a diminishing business in which no-one seems to be working as hard as he, throws down the gauntlet to his workers that they wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Goaded by Niall MacGinnis' tub-thumping militant, the workers take him up on the challenge, which he later attempts to argue was only metaphorical, and elect their own management. A promising start notwithstanding, the experiment soon comes unstuck however, and by the end the workers are positively pleading for the permanent return of their old boss. A stirring tale of British pluck and the moral that in these times of post-war austerity, we've all got to do our bit and muck in together. And that might have been the reason for its BAFTA nomination.
Looked at more deeply however, this very personal work by Bernard Miles is actually full of sympathy for the workers' cause. Miles' characters of the time, from Pip's kindly uncle in Great expectations, to plain honest Walter Hardy clinging to the dinghy in In Which we Serve, were impossible not to like, and his performance as George Stevens, reluctantly entrusted with the support of his comrades alongside Ted from the fitting shed sheds a gentler light on workers' control. George and Ted oversee a period of rapid progress in which buildings are whitewashed, roads are asphalted, workers labour purposefully at their lathes and even the factory laggard makes it through the gates before the hooter has finished sounding. As a message on the improveability of the human condition, its hard to miss.
Even when things do go wrong however, as when first the wage bill cannot be paid and then a vital order falls through, when the workers fail it is not their failure, but that of the system. If its not the machinations of the bank managers and steel mill owners and others of their ilk doing everything they can to sabotage this 'apalling precedent' then its the inanity of a capitalist system which seems incapable of meeting needs where they exist. 'It's a crazy world', Steven tells the angry workers faced with calamity,'but the Xenobians want to buy our ploughs and we want to make 'em. but it seems they haven't got the right sort of money.' In fact, Miles is so good at this simple everyman unwilling to accept the iniquities of a morally unsound system, that its a bit like watching a Michael Moore. 'Well, I don't know,' he offers the Governor of the National Bank, 'I don't see why you can't lend us the money without security. It seems to me the workers go to work all week without security and have to wait until the end of the week to get their due'. Even when the Dickinson comes to the rescue, he does so not as a representative of his class, as the workers are, but as a decent man who has turned his back on the schemes and subterfuge employed by his fellow capitalists. This is a story of heroes and villains then in which even the least appealing of the workers, the barrack-room lawyer whose beery oafishness threatens to undermine the factories best efforts, is offered a welcome return to the bosom of the workforce, (represented none too subtly by the ample Hatti Jacques) and the understanding of an audience given an insight into his poverty and his fear of of wife's sharp tongue if returns with a light paypacket. The ruling class are offered no such redemption. From the moment we see 'snob's window' of the local pub reveal the weaselly features of Mr Brand, underlined by a pencil moustache, we can be assured that he is a wrong 'un. He jibes and sneers and goads the workers at every time so that even Dickinson is forced to rebuke him: 'Yes, know you ant to get rid of them Brand, but I'm paying you to keep them at work, and look at them'. From the provincial bank manager to the steel mill owner, all the way through to the governor of the bank himself, George Stevens' patient questions are met with a patronising snide hostility and an obvious relish in the power they have over the workers. This is not really a film about a class collaboration at all. Rather,it's what must have seemed like a timely foretaste, following Labour's post-war 'Golden Age', of how people might live life differently, given the chance.
Looked at more deeply however, this very personal work by Bernard Miles is actually full of sympathy for the workers' cause. Miles' characters of the time, from Pip's kindly uncle in Great expectations, to plain honest Walter Hardy clinging to the dinghy in In Which we Serve, were impossible not to like, and his performance as George Stevens, reluctantly entrusted with the support of his comrades alongside Ted from the fitting shed sheds a gentler light on workers' control. George and Ted oversee a period of rapid progress in which buildings are whitewashed, roads are asphalted, workers labour purposefully at their lathes and even the factory laggard makes it through the gates before the hooter has finished sounding. As a message on the improveability of the human condition, its hard to miss.
Even when things do go wrong however, as when first the wage bill cannot be paid and then a vital order falls through, when the workers fail it is not their failure, but that of the system. If its not the machinations of the bank managers and steel mill owners and others of their ilk doing everything they can to sabotage this 'apalling precedent' then its the inanity of a capitalist system which seems incapable of meeting needs where they exist. 'It's a crazy world', Steven tells the angry workers faced with calamity,'but the Xenobians want to buy our ploughs and we want to make 'em. but it seems they haven't got the right sort of money.' In fact, Miles is so good at this simple everyman unwilling to accept the iniquities of a morally unsound system, that its a bit like watching a Michael Moore. 'Well, I don't know,' he offers the Governor of the National Bank, 'I don't see why you can't lend us the money without security. It seems to me the workers go to work all week without security and have to wait until the end of the week to get their due'. Even when the Dickinson comes to the rescue, he does so not as a representative of his class, as the workers are, but as a decent man who has turned his back on the schemes and subterfuge employed by his fellow capitalists. This is a story of heroes and villains then in which even the least appealing of the workers, the barrack-room lawyer whose beery oafishness threatens to undermine the factories best efforts, is offered a welcome return to the bosom of the workforce, (represented none too subtly by the ample Hatti Jacques) and the understanding of an audience given an insight into his poverty and his fear of of wife's sharp tongue if returns with a light paypacket. The ruling class are offered no such redemption. From the moment we see 'snob's window' of the local pub reveal the weaselly features of Mr Brand, underlined by a pencil moustache, we can be assured that he is a wrong 'un. He jibes and sneers and goads the workers at every time so that even Dickinson is forced to rebuke him: 'Yes, know you ant to get rid of them Brand, but I'm paying you to keep them at work, and look at them'. From the provincial bank manager to the steel mill owner, all the way through to the governor of the bank himself, George Stevens' patient questions are met with a patronising snide hostility and an obvious relish in the power they have over the workers. This is not really a film about a class collaboration at all. Rather,it's what must have seemed like a timely foretaste, following Labour's post-war 'Golden Age', of how people might live life differently, given the chance.