This early Tv film by the great politically conscious British director Ken Loach (arguably no other movie maker has done more with their work to illuminate timely issues of social justice) uses an event that had happened just one year before the telecast to call for industrial democracy. Workers in a company town at a glass factory go out on a wildcat strike for fairer pay when the bureaucratic union structure that is legally supposed to represent them fails to support their issues.
The dramatization, following up on a similar exploration of labor problems in Loach's The Big Flame two years before, raises a larger question of democracy beyond just the workplace. Governments around the world not just in the UK claim to be democracies but in fact leave most of their citizens without any direct say in politics and with a system of representation where the officials claiming to act in their interests have become way too settled and comfortable with the corporate powers and have actually sold out and become corrupt.
Loach's recreation of a specific local action in its historical context is devastating and we are reminded that the British Labor Party hadn't really done much to help the workers since 1926, when there had been a General Strike.
The dramatization, following up on a similar exploration of labor problems in Loach's The Big Flame two years before, raises a larger question of democracy beyond just the workplace. Governments around the world not just in the UK claim to be democracies but in fact leave most of their citizens without any direct say in politics and with a system of representation where the officials claiming to act in their interests have become way too settled and comfortable with the corporate powers and have actually sold out and become corrupt.
Loach's recreation of a specific local action in its historical context is devastating and we are reminded that the British Labor Party hadn't really done much to help the workers since 1926, when there had been a General Strike.