photos and a previously undiscovered Socialist Outlook spoke to the film's director ANNE MARIE Joking: women's struggles in Oxtordshire: in the fight for trade union rights. 19304, so anyone remembering them would sent to prson lor pickering during the 1873 Wewere lucky tubtai a rare copy of a us abour the sigauficance of the Ascott casc wowen from the village of Ascott had been Agriculriral Labourers' Union: That told find women in Ascos who know anyuung Book by Rog Groves, called Sharpm Your Tell an abow the earlest rious the films nicer. cphemera lu work with, so we set out to themselves. The last of them died in the AMS: We bad heard that a number of be very old: and have unly chilchood Sickle, on the history of the National There were almost no records or about the sixteen Ascott martyrs farm labourers' strike. SWEENEY.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 4 November/December 1987 Tou dirocered winen i rolent gouonerng Copseler: mion rerngnition in what is today's Austin Rover body plant, but we couldn't find any recollectens of try suttrageres on mocor involved in the 1931 xerike wyluen hest won Widlands gives a vivid account of the strike organsing a strike of Cornsh tin miners! A key figure was Mine Warley, the first Frown's book Erineng Smuggles in The press shop. We trund newspaper articles: headlined Tour women elected to strike commince 1 don't shink Were can ever Notion police station shouting footes for woman Jull-tine oberal for the Workers Union at a tame when officials really did hikes ricane round and round Chipping blocking them. She had just come trum and mentions the role of women in the Handicapped We knew women were women still alive who had taken part organise and backd strikes mstead of AMS: Yes, but again we were car tearkers? women? Cooper is released from Oxford gaol, - not for organsed a campaign hitting national press reputacon Bur it desserm that tiere was repeal of the criminal law amendinent act The strike at Bliss tweed mill - Mrs huge demonstration of three thousand in Instead within a day Joseph Arch had Headlines, Three days later there was al Chipping Norton: bur the demands for Of course Joseph Anch has a good and an end to clerical magistrates the release of the women! nor lode an appeal. Feburary 1914 families - sonuc had fifteen children — and We also found Reverual Mann, who hari We were fortunate. Mrs Weston not only outcry against the jail sentences belped lose and Disraci then repealed the criminal Taw amendment thousand had joined. Ascott is right on the convey the incredible burden these women long bours in the fields, hut they had large rescarclied the national implications of the Warwicksture: within a vear one hondred members bf the undot and were expecting intolerable conditions and all wcachery her They were not ever ar worst to be fined. They walked over to Unions had oody become legal in 1872: Ase Lase, He told us how the national remembered the Ascotr women, but had bern a field worker herself. It is hard to often did gloving work in the exenings. Joseph Arch deep formed the NAEL in The women haid picketed a firl in ser which had made picketing legal They nut only worked in Gladstone the nexe election Warwicksbire border. support of the strike. endured. 38
STRIKE AT OXFORD WORKS : TRAIN THEIRS ARE GANE HARE YOU? STRIKE OW 1 VEVE D SHIS FIGHT/S YOURS® GET INTO IT YOu WITH THE BO WITH ARE OR
AMS: The whole story is told through older having nothine to say for Liemselves. and To did the all-scoren team connibate to the women, who are normally regarded as movement. Wewere able to show List ire agnuted even hy the women's protecton, Test the pressure to work dunder only two-durds men's pay: equal jay was women then did the same job ax men for while the farrory owners were rakig in We wanted to remind people that the There was io health and safcty. probs. it has parallel with the 1984 miners' strike. The 1931 strike laster only ten clays. bur have been four women on a Cowley stoke poster to cuunter newe kories claining a printers produced immandia fraffers and There was tremendons class solidaritv: committee sance then!
Norton hnspital. It was Fascinating to warch To acheve the impossible, and complete months for onlo 4800, we had temeridous and rommens Maureen Fadershaw, te many have a wealth of experience views wto who gave us help free because they working with cluerly people ar Chipping Peggy Seever did the sound track; bur talked to them withont patronising, und the whole propci in just two and a half suppor from other women's groups in interviewer, was ideal, Sir i a nurse She het adlerview three older women. rcally wanted to fiscen to them. were exelted by the projoct AMS: locuses on women's struggles, and about British warnen. There is Loid BerEar women and the muters" strike: but tiere is couribution is not recogniscd at the tann themselves as in any way exceptiunal can union struggles in thr C5t, but very few There are some films about women s Granauck, and more recotly some on shows low women who do bur scr or even afterwards, by the labour do exceprional Lungs. Yet their Phat pansel dow the cider? not won castil che Tate 19705. шпо сленг. were motivated by survival and the need to There ar shots of women on picket lines in struggle, with slogans liks "The girls are women, these show the humour of wmen was sixteen and sent to prison for ten days as a ringleader was den pur on broad and fiy-posted these posters. and chalked and important lime of the video. One of the Somehody said that the Ascott women Ascott-women, Fanny Lonerborne whis with placards, and like with the Aseptr have a bit of a laugh Ithink this is an difft Back to work. Tears of women painted on scabs house: game — are vou?!
39 suggest that women members are a block to peninso in torlay 's trade union struggles, And their is much more of this history to We hope that the film wilt help counter becausc there were wi few about women and expose those salan leaders who still even then we had to was newsongs be found: Oxfordshire is nor unique! • To adians a rops of this rides cartact: Oxiona Film or Video Mater and unions in Britam. Headingor ON3 31Y 0865-00072 The Staples Vorth Place militancy by rhe video. Before in she had belleved that support group, said that she felt "humbled' Wotten have always struggled with sutler Oxfordshire, wlach is not scen as a bastion working class women a history is hidden or miners strike had been extraordinary and ofunion power. If you mulriply dison a Glymas Evans from Maerd women's deteraniasion and against similar odde very little compared to the mumher of what they had done as women in the new, but they had done nothing new national scale, just think how much lorgotten by the labour movement. We have foured this much in women's struggles by the viden exploitative conditions. Production levelat and it still is for women today, us we daw in Humour was a weapon for these women. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 4 November/Decembor 1987 The foral section is on comen in the car plantson effort in the munitions plants. The reslity Cowley were staggering: we met womcu who had signed up for the lorces riber overalls happily sacrificing for the war AMS: The myth prot trim women th was the most appallingly oppressive. water as an extra ponshruent Taughing during exercise! partime cury this period? the miners" strike. than work cherc:
TNES NOW THAT WE REALY нім? HARVEY'SSWALD WHERE NEED
JOHNSON FOR.
could control its assumec allies — bur also of ming the situation in the Middle Fast. The year culminated with the Nicaraguan and The detente policies initiated by Nixon and Kissinger, and continued by Carter and Brzezinski until 1979, were the nasnalty not only of a faulty analysin — thar the USSR the new relation of forces ereated Graffiti in the US officers' club in Hanau, West Germany — anti-war protest was widespread and woridwide Grenadan revolutions. Vietnam: EX PRESIDENT THE BARE statistins of tus costs in the war Twenty years ago there were 161,000 US those who fought, 57,000 died and 154,000 were wounded, many with the most appall- figures underlay the political impact of the anti-war movement and the passive support it recciv- forin the basis of the Vietnam syndrome' ed from an eventual majority of Us poople troops an combat duty in Indo China brutal These disabilities. ang Tales of 'Nam story of the war, Hamburger Hill are packing local become big box-office business. high demand for the serialised cinemas. Newsagents report Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and The Vietnamese war has
witnessed in the first roll-back - against tradictions that were assumed to be ready to But the remilitarisation drive launched by Carter was dwarfed by thar minared by the Arms: expenditure was bumped up immediatel by thirteen per Twenty five years alier Kennedy sent his capacity of the Diem regime Reagan sent similar missions to provide logistics and The use Sf direct intervention was SOCIALIST QUTLOOK no:4 November/December 1987 and The new doctrine as the Carter ad- minisration moved into the '80c was bor- economically, in an attempt co explode con: cent in 1992, with a nearly ten per cent risc military for his Honduran pruxies. militarily: tearns to beel up thr projected for the next five years ripen within Soviet society USSR Reagan administration: advisury" producing training ultimate Aid provided to UNITA forces in Angola tervention of Cuba This breakdown of the restrain its allies li exchange for deicate. assistance provided both by Cuba and the USSR to Ethiopia to ward off the invasion of Defeat piled ou defeat fur the Carter ad- in Afghanistan and Iran respecticly, transfor But the 'syndromc" also applies to the suc- cession of defears suffered hy e5 im perialism following the fall of Saigon and the reonification of the country, not on terms dictaten by the W5, bur by the victorious was smashed by the audacious military in- - that the USSR would was further undermined by the military ministration. In April 1978 and January Overturns tbe Ogaden by Somalia in 1978. were the were idea of linkage" ministration there Vietnamese: 1979 of the US publie British reflection of this is a pale for tales of the of the appetite Nam. And all apocalypse. Here, STEVE ROBERTS syndrome' and its cultural examines the Vietnam representations. 40
The comhination of the stern resisrance of Vietnam syndrome prevent an invasion of which can give both a realistic account of In lact Platoon Hamburger resist the prossures which push towards the It would be nice to think that films like the Sandinistas, and the remnants nf the Nicaragua. If that resistance collapses, an it ficient. Neither is it sufficient to dudi LIS The rebuilding of a truly mass anti-war movement not just in the DISA bur around The world will be signalled by new films All Qaed on the Western Front provided such a critique of the first world war, seen through the eves of a German soldier. A similar an- the glorification of the Rambo-type bar- Hill and Full Metal Jackel mark an impasse. did in Grenada, domestie pressure is not sul war and at the same time, provide a ren ex count remains to be made of Vietnam. Kubrick y marked an anti-war amination of its mechanisms burian watrior. the chest asking: would you have been able to resist this fully ledged grunts" then find ternselves hurled into the Ter offensive of 1968. Rut it is a curiously one-dimensional soldiers, no "fragging" of officers, the rise of Major contradictions are one hinted at with one of the characters wearing peace button on his lapel and 'Born to Kill' on his of his peace harge. /You know It's the Jungian thing, he replics, the duadits of The colonel does not His soldiers, schooled to kill, are swept ly of war. but of humanity in generai, with its strong implication that we are unable to Those who hesitare are the peace movement in rhe Us% and interna- helmer TIr is asked by a colonel the meaning Jost. Te is a bleak and pessimistic view not on- towards their bloody end, with only war. Them is mo drug-taking buy this, Bur Kubrick clearly does. cunally is never mentioned. prods his audience in life, love and death. strongest surviving- conditioning?' To be sure the policy has met with internal opposition. The movement against interven- cant. Bur has Reagan succeeded in croding The wave of films abour the experiener in During the build up of the American presence the light at the cod of the tunnel' was kept burning by John Wayne und the The mond of interventionisna utilised thr Part of the answer can be found in the way the bitter and olen psychopathic However, atremprs in come to grips with the war itself found themselves taking cover soldiers of The Deerhunter) or in the magical familiar and emotive totem of Us forcign Americur captive. Starting Lion in the Central America is nut insignifi in which the history of the Vietnamese in tervention bas been treated io recent years. Greet Beret. Defeat was marked by films por- veterans returning home, played by new ac- in demonology (the sadistic and twisted NIt tors like Dennis Hopper and Jon Vuigl the spirit against new Vietnams? itself is not a new phenomenon. realism of Apocalypse Noz:
Socialist Outlook offers all new subscribers a copy of Alan Thornett's new book From Militancy to Marxism for €3.00 SPECIAL OFFER £3.00 OFF! Grenadan medical school, a new wave of ing in action from the Viernamese war (onr of the masons for denying aid to Vietnam), to the 1iS embassy hoscages in Tehran, to the possible danger" to the US students at the filte sprouted with Sylvester Stallone and from real-le campaigns around Llose miss-
* £54.00 for overseas airmail multi-reader subscriptions (US • Yes, I want a copy of From Militancy to Marxism at the specially discounted rate and enclose a cheque for €15.45 for the book and my for a one year subscription to Please return to: Socialist Outlook, PO Box 705, London, * €18.00 for overseas airmail subscriptions (US $25.00) * £17,00 for inland multi-reader subscriptions Make all cheques payable to Socialist Outlook. Annual Subscription rate: (10 issues) SUBSCRIBE! Subscription to start from issue number * €8.50 for inland subscriptions • Book offer only applies to inland subscribers. I enclose a cheque for £_ one year subscription. * Socialist Outlook. SW2 5UN. Post Code.. $75.00) Name .e• Address... Washington. As against the Pentagun who spirit which informs the current crop of films condemnation of the motives and strategy of first hall you accompany a caw squad of Chuck Connors haunting the jungles of the Far Fas in scarch of chose enslaver by scen in the debate of what memorial should be crected to the L'S victims of the war in pressed for a conventional commemoration to the valour of those who died for a greater good, veterans associations pushed tbe other was a single monolitic stab engraved sumply with the names of the scidies who died, This is the The theme of the poor bloody infanriy amultaneously carries an impacit or explicit governments and military high commande, while celebrating the bravery Of those who fight, le can allow a partisan of either lelt or Takewise with Stanley Kubrick's Film Foll grea popularity on general release, with a record from irs sound track riding high in the charts The film is split into rwo parts. To the They are brutalised. You are brutalised, A turnan conversation does not occur amril twehty minutes neo the film. Sex becomes togething you do with vour tille. Kubrick right to see a film like Platoon and appland it. recruits through their training as marines The reaction to these films was switt, fore SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 4 November/December 19A7 contradietary: - the cult if thr comminn soldin. Metal Jacket currenily way. The compromise been always COMEHUAIRI has:
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