This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of over 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a...

This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of over 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region.  C.H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filmmaking.  Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE.  His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications.’ The company closed down in 2002.  See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C.H. Wood. 

Although there are records of the film being supplied to various organisations, as with all the C.H. Wood films, these all date from the 1970s, and there doesn’t appear to be any record of when the film was actually made.  The film stock is for 1947, and judging by the cars that are in the film, and other aspects of the film, it would be reasonable to conclude that this was the year in which it was made (the dates for the event in September also favour 1947, as the 22nd fell on a Monday in that year).  Most convincing is that this is the same event as featured in   another similar instructional film on road safety made by Charles Wood in 1947, Children's Driving School .  This one more specifically for school children, made under the auspices of the Bradford City Police.  Another film C. H. Wood made, rather later in 1984, Do you remember?, provides an historical overview of road safety from a much earlier time.

Unlike the many other films made on road safety in the years immediately after the end of the war, going into the 1960s, this one was not made by either the Police or the local authority.  The YFA has quite a collection of films made by West Yorkshire and Humberside Police on road safety.   Thus in the same year that this film was probably made, 1947, West Riding Constabulary also made a road safety film, It Happened Today, containing some fairly hair raising stunts.   The earliest one is Trouble on the road, made in 1942 by Sheffield teacher William Gregory, and commisioned by Sheffield Education Committee and Sheffield Watch Committee. 

Road safety was clearly a major concern at this time.  The prevention of accidents was a concern going back to the very early years of motoring, with the Motor Car Act of 1903 imposing a 20mph speed limit.  In 1917 a campaign to get pedestrians to walk so that they faced oncoming traffic led to a 70 per cent fall in fatal accidents in 12 months.  After the First World War, with a further one-and-a-half million new motorists, the London "Safety First" Council was founded in 1918, introducing a 'Think Safety' campaign the following year.  A National "Safety First" Association was subsequently formed in 1923, and half a million copies of a Safety Code for Road Users were distributed in 1924.  Perhaps the first specifically road safety film, for safety week and shown to 10million people, was made by British Movietone News in 1931, the year the Ministry of Transport began to issue the Highway Code.  Many more campaigns followed throughout the 1930s, normally aimed at children, and often relating to cycling.  There was also analysis of accidents for the first time. 

During the war the accident rate increased dramatically thanks to the black-outs, despite the numerous posters on black-out hazards, with the Association changing its name to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) in 1941.  At the end of the war local authorities began to take over road safety work from the local safety committees.  By 1947 there were more than 1,100 road safety committees in existence, and in this year the Cycling Proficiency Scheme was begun.   The website of the RoSPA provides a fuller history of the campaigns to prevent traffic accidents, and there is more on road safety and the films on this during this period in the Context for Tomorrow Is Too Late (1952) and Drive with Clare (1963-1968).

The music used in the film provides as much a flavour of the period as do the motorcars and clothing.  The light music at the beginning would have been influenced by the BBC Light Programme, starting in 1945, which inaugurated a golden era of British light music.  The big band swing music that follows it may well have been something heard on the General Forces Programme which started in 1944, while the strains of Sweet Georgia Brown remind us that 1947 was an important year in the beginnings of British trad jazz, with Humphrey Littleton joining the George Webb Dixielanders along with Wally Fawkes.

The Belle Vue Barracks, built 1861 and rebuilt 1892, has long been the home of several regiments, including the First Battalion West Riding (Duke of Wellington’s).  It may have been them who used for the less public spirited act quelling workers protesting during the strike at Lister’s textiles in 1890/91 – see the Context for Knitting Pretty (c.1955).  It isn’t clear who were stationed at the barracks in 21947, and acting as stuntmen in this road safety demonstration, possibly the 2nd West Riding Brigade Royal Field Artillery (Territorial Army), or the 70th West Yorkshire Field Artillery (TA) stationed at Valley Parade at opposite Belle Vue Barracks.  Somewhat surprisingly Belle Vue Barracks in Manningham, close to Bradford City Centre, is still open, though much transformed.  It now hosts a wide range of activities, including lectures, conferences, exhibitions and physical training.  Although it is still used for drill by Bradford District Army Cadets, it is doubtful whether anything quite as much fun takes place there now as had by these British Tommies messing about on the cycles and in the cars.

References

History of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents

The West Riding Regiment Royal Artillery (Territorials)

Jim Greenhalf, ‘Old soldiers tell stories of World War Two’, Telegraph and Argus

West Riding Artillery