The British Labour Movement and Film, 1918-1939

Stephen G. Jones

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429830488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Economía laboral

First published in 1987. Using a wealth of primary sources, Stephen Jones investigates the role played in cinema affairs by the Labour Movement, stressing the important contributions made by the Labour Party, Communist Party and trade unions in the production and presentation of film. He gives us a rare and important insight into the British film industry, examining the cinema in its wider economic, political and cultural context. He explores the ideological influence of film, the nature of film work, state intervention and Sunday entertainment, as reflected in the policies and attitudes of organized labour. Also discussed are the growth and impact of independent working class film organization.

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1Introduction

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There can be few doubts that Labour history is now an important strand in the historical sciences. From its beginnings as an academic discipline taught in institutions of higher education, Labour history has expanded to cover a range of themes and debates. It is true that Labour historians have by and large focused on political and industrial struggles and the main areas of debate in the historiography have tended to reflect this. Yet, recent historical work has shown that the British Labour movement, encompassing the main Socialist parties, trade unions and co-operative societies, has a cultural as well as a political and industrial tradition. Fascinating accounts have appeared on the wider influences of work, community, and leisure. More specifically, it is now clear that there is more to the Labour movement than political and trade union organization – a balanced study would also have to consider cultural organization. Indeed, under the influence of the Marxist writer, Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), scholars have started to examine the question of Socialist and working-class culture. As a result we now have important accounts of, for instance, Chartist cultural formation, and, as far as the twentieth century is concerned, contributions have appeared on the workers’ sport, theatre and film movements.¹ It is the aim of this study to focus on the last of these, the workers’ film movement, and to assess the wider Socialist approach to film in inter-war Britain.

The recently published work of Bert Hogenkamp and Trevor Ryan has shown that British Labour spawned a vibrant cinema movement in the 1920s and 1930s, which was involved in the production, distribution and exhibition of films.² The main aim of Labour activists concerned with film was of course political, to change the social and economic system. But it should be emphasized at the outset that because the film medium had recreational and aesthetic qualities, entertainment, pleasure and critical comment were always important concerns. Moreover, the Labour movement was dealing with one of the most important working-class leisure activities of the inter-war years. Consequently any study of organized Labour and film has to consider the nature of the relationship between Socialist culture – which workers’ film was a part of–and working-class culture.

It is therefore imperative to distinguish between Socialist and working-class culture. Here we will draw upon Raymond Williams’ conceptualization of oppositional and alternative forms of culture, between a culture which is different from the dominant society and aims to change that society, and a culture which is also different but wishes to be left alone to defend and improve its position within the given society.³ Socialist or oppositional culture arises out of the struggles, concerns, ideas and institutions of the organized Socialist and Labour movement. Before the Second World War the Labour movement had a diversified network of theatre groups, sports clubs, social centres, temperance associations, a travel organization and many other groups reaching out into every conceivable leisure activity from chess to radio and film. Raymond Williams, in pressing the need for ‘an autonomous politics of information, education and culture’ provides a good overview:

it was formerly recognised part of the business of the movement to build educational and cultural organisations, as necessary elements of the aspirations of working people. From adult classes to theatre groups, and from labour colleges to newspapers, magazines and bookclubs, these parts of the movement were seen as integral to its success.⁴

In essence inter-war Socialist culture was oppositional, in as much as it opposed the structures and organs of the dominant society. For Gramsci, Socialist culture was consciously mediated ‘through a critique of capitalist civilization’.⁵ More recently, two historians, in stressing the importance of cultural organization in working-class politics, have protested that if by Socialist culture ‘we understand those ways in which the working class actively and consciously seeks to shape its own social activity as a class and, by so doing, differentiates itself from the values and principles underpinning the culture of the dominant class, then we arrive at a conception to which the notion of “explicit resistance”, ie opposition to the dominant culture is fundamental’.⁶ In this sense, then, the workers’ film movement of the inter-war years was an integral aspect of Socialist culture, for it sought to challenge Capitalist culture and ideology. It should be stressed, however, that Socialist culture was neither uniform nor a continuous form of opposition. As the next chapter will show, there were contrasts between the Marxist and Labour Socialist cultural traditions.

For the most part working-class culture was not, and is not, oppositional. This does not mean, however, that working-class culture reflects the ideology of the ruling elite, for it is essentially an alternative. At root, the culture of the British working class has been shaped by the conditions of existence at work, particularly the wage nexus. It may well be the case that the working class has been ‘docile’, failing to challenge in any direct political way industrial Capitalism and the wage form. However, British working-class culture evolved as a form of protection and insulation from, and a means of advance in, an exploitative economic and social system. One of the most durable features of an emerging and evolving factory proletariat has been its remarkable ‘apartness’ from other social classes. Out of the first industrial revolution came a class which was tough and resilient, with a ‘collective self-consciousness’ separate and distinct from the dominant society. There can be few doubts that the proletariat was, and is, a class in and for itself, having generated its own ideas, institutions and culture. Following on from E.P. Thompson, it has to be remembered, of course, that class is a process, not a thing but a happening. Accepting that class relationships and attitudes change over time, by the 1920s class consciousness permeated day-to-day existence in so many forms – at work and at leisure, and in dress, accent, manners, behaviour, attitudes, and in a profound sense of ‘us and them’.

The inter-war culture of the people, with its roots in the workplace, the home and the local community was ‘staunchly impervious’ to bourgeois attempts at control. Despite changes in the wider political economy such as the increasing routinization of the work process and the spread of commercialized leisure, ruling groups found it difficult to penetrate or manipulate the cultural sphere of the working class. This was surely due to the inward-looking nature of proletarian culture. True, workers’ institutions tended to be conservative rather than subversive, but they did act as a means of cultural and ideological defence. The institutional organs of the working class such as working men’s clubs, neighbourhood sharing schemes and other systems of mutual aid were a sign of autonomy in the cultural sphere, but working-class culture was more than that. It was also about shared traditions and collective perceptions of the world. To understand the texture and feel of the workers’ way of life, we have to penetrate attitudes, as well as the economic, political and cultural structures of society. Indeed, according to Williams, working-class culture is ‘the basic collectivist idea and the institutions, manners, habits of thought and intentions which proceed from this’. He goes on to claim that working-class culture is a ‘collective democratic institution’, a creative achievement which bourgeois culture, with its ‘basic individualist idea’, would do well to follow.⁷ We are therefore left with a rich and variegated picture of inter-war working-class culture which looks to ideas, as well as way of life, institutions and the determining influences of economic and social relations.

It has to be added that there has never been a homogeneous working-class culture. In the first place, there are real divisions within the working class on occupational lines. From the early nineteenth century, the working class has been stratified with a distinctive hierarchy based on skill and status. It is only right and proper to acknowledge that the culture of craft workers may be different to that of labourers, the culture of clerks different to that of shop assistants. Likewise, regional divisions have meant that in different parts of the country the working class has developed with its own traditions, forms of work and leisure, modes of behaviour and, most conspicuous of all, accents. Obviously a more detailed discussion would have to turn to the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Cornish tin miners, Norfolk agricultural labourers, Welsh quarrymen, Lancashire cotton operatives, Clydeside shipbuilding workers, and the rest. There may be a number of other differences, but none can be more profound than ethnicity, gender or age. Though the details cannot be entered into here, it has to be stressed that in the inter-war years there were important distinctions between, say, Jewish, Irish and English workers. Similarly, it is a rather obvious point that the female sphere was, to say the least, distinguishable from male-dominated culture, whilst it is possible that the period saw the emergence of a youth culture with its own concerns, interests, mores and conventions, set apart from the adult world. Such fragmentation within the working class manifested itself in a variety of ways, though the historian cannot get away from the fact that it was an element in the reproduction of chauvinism and cultural conservatism. The way ideology was received by the working class has to be linked to the broader division of life-experience engendered by work, the sexual separation of labour, race, region and nationality.

Notwithstanding all of this, it was still the case that the biggest divisions were between classes rather than within them. Ruling and subordinate classes faced each other with separate interests and identities. Proletarian culture and ideology as mediated at work, in the home or in leisure were in essential respects alternatives to the dominant society. To express it another way, workers have been able to resist Capitalist ideological impositions, and indeed reshape messages from above by all manner of means to conform with their own class needs and priorities. Thus bourgeois values such as diligence, thrift and respectability were reformulated by sections of the working class as necessary safeguards against low wages, unemployment and poverty. However, inter-war working-class culture was not the same as Socialist or oppositional culture, in that it did not seek to overthrow Capitalism with a new economic and social order.

Writing as a historian and not as a sociologist or social theorist, it is apparent that there are problems of semantic interpretation in all of this. For instance, using Raymond Williams’ terms it is possible to designate the culture of the Socialist movement as oppositional, the culture of everyday working-class life as alternative. Yet, there was a thin divide between oppositional and alternative cultures. There was certainly no such thing as a closed working-class culture. Socialist (and Capitalist) ideas and precepts could, and did, penetrate those sections of the working class without a formal commitment to the Socialist movement. Eric Hobsbawm has even noted that ‘the world and culture of the working classes is incomprehensible without the labour movement, which for long periods was its core’.⁸ None the less, in trying to be historically specific, there was an important, albeit a tenuous, dividing line in the inter-war period between the subculture of the organized Socialist and Labour movement, and the culture of everyday life not encompassed within that movement.

The problem as it emerges is to provide some kind of link between Socialist culture and the wider working-class experience. There is a need to examine the tensions and contradictions between the aims of Socialists and the realities of day-to-day life. In the case of German Labour history Richard Evans has stressed that there is a need to constitute ‘the working class and its culture and values as objects of historical study, and of investigating the relationship between these and the institutions, culture and values of the labour movement’.⁹ This is no less a pressing concern for British Labour history. In more specific terms, in order to understand the Socialist approach to film in inter-war Britain, it is necessary to investigate the Socialist movement’s relationship with the cinema-going public and the wider developments in the political economy. This introductory chapter will therefore provide an overview of the main inter-war trends in the economy and society, and investigate the cultural, ideological and political aspects of the new film medium.

The British economy and society

The traditional picture of inter-war Britain is one of economic depression, mass unemployment, the rise of Fascism, and general gloom and pessimism. Britain has been viewed as being in the ‘doldrums’ and the 1930s in part...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Labour Movement, Ideology and Film
• 3 Trade Unionism in the Cinema Industry
• 4 Labour, Film and the State
• 5 Labour and the Sunday Films’ Question
• 6 The Labour Film Movement
• 7 The Communist Movement and Film
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index