This is one of two films made by the Conservative and Unionist Film Association held by the YFA.  It is difficult to know how many films they made: the British Film Institute lists some, but doesn’t list either of these two films, so must be considered incomplete.  The Conservative Party Archive is held with the Bodleian Library Special Collections, but their own cataloguing of this is still a work in progress, and they defer to the BFI without adding anything.  The BFI catalogue lists two...

This is one of two films made by the Conservative and Unionist Film Association held by the YFA.  It is difficult to know how many films they made: the British Film Institute lists some, but doesn’t list either of these two films, so must be considered incomplete.  The Conservative Party Archive is held with the Bodleian Library Special Collections, but their own cataloguing of this is still a work in progress, and they defer to the BFI without adding anything.  The BFI catalogue lists two other connected films that they made in 1949, Steel Men Talking No.1 and No.2.   For The previous year they also list three related films: Common Sense about Steel, Who Voted for This? and Doorstep to Communism.  See also the Context for The Personal Touch (1949).

The first film that they list is for 1929, presumably to coincide with the general election of that year.  This was also the first time that party political broadcasts were given by the BBC, on radio.  The only previous one was in 1926 by the then Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in opposition to the General Strike.  Although the BBC began broadcasting its first high definition television signal in 1936, the first TV political broadcasts weren’t aired until 1951, and the first proper party broadcasts not until 1953.  All the party political broadcasts listed by the BFI, up until the 1960s, are by the Conservative and Unionist Film Association.  Of course, the early broadcasts were in fact films that, presumably, would have been shown in cinemas.  It seems that the Labour and Liberal parties were well behind in this, although the Communist Party, and associated left-wing organisations were making political films going back to the  1930s – see the Context for Sheffield Peace March  (1936).

The earliest political broadcast film that the BFI list is for a cinema owner Harry Kemp, who stood as a candidate for office on Saltcoats Burgh Council, Ayrshire, 8th November 1922 (the BFI lists it as 1920).  The, rather rudimentary, film can be seen on Scotland on Screen, Vote for Harry Kemp .  Andrew Aguecheek, on the website Everything2, provides a good overview of the history of political broadcasting (References).

In fact the first televised Prime Ministerial speech was in 1938, when the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, declared "peace in our time."   There weren’t any more until well after the war.  In fact there was no television broadcasts at all during the war – for fear that German bombers could use the television signal to home in on London – until  the 7th of June 1946, when the announcer welcomed back viewers by declaring, "as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. . ."

As the film notes, the policy of nationalising the iron and steel industry was in Labour’s Manifesto of 1945.  It was felt to be an essential part of ensuring government control of the economy in the aftermath of the war.  Yet in fact the leadership of the Labour Party were by no means fully committed to it, and it required pressure from backbench MPs, led by Aneurin Bevan, to push it through – Herbert Morrison opposed it.  David Rubinstein gives some background to this, noting that, “at an agitated meeting of the parliamentary party on 11 August 1947 the demand to expedite nationalisation was backed by a petition signed by nearly 150 backbenchers.”  And that Tribune argued, in an unsigned article on 8 August 1947, “that the issue at stake was nothing less than the control of the economy by capitalists or the government.”  One right wing Labour MP who opposed it was expelled by the National Executive.

As David Childs points out, the programme for nationalisation was quite moderate, and in keeping with previous policy in many respects by both major parties.  Herbert Morrison, the Minister who was the driving force behind the plans, saw to it that the public corporations were run on the similar lines as the postal and telephone services which were already under national ownership, as was the BBC – none the work of the Labour Party.  Even so, the six main industries taken into the public sector– railways, coal, iron and steel, electricity, gas and the airways – accounted for 17% of the Gross National Output and 10% of the total workforce.   The nationalisation of the iron and steel industry was the policy that the Conservatives took most issue with – the case for mining and the railway being much stronger.  In fact it was only iron and steel and road haulage that the Conservatives de-nationalised when they came to power in 1951.

The reticence over the nationalisation of iron and steel led to a decision to delay in putting the Bill before Parliament, and making appointments to the Corporation, until October 1950, and transferring property until January 1951.  This time lapse allowed for the mobilisation of a propaganda campaign, involving many private companies outside iron and steel.  Insurance companies set up 400 anti-nationalisation committees throughout the country to do anti-government doorstop canvassing.  In the lead was Tate and Lyle, who inserted propaganda material into material going out to 4,500 schools, and set up mobile vans to tour the country, making “more than 3,000 speeches . . at factory and working men’s clubs, youth and university organisations, women’s clubs, schools and even groups of soldiers” (Rogow, cited in Sked and Cook, References, pp 82-83).

Given all of this, it is little wonder that many working people weren’t enthusiastic about nationalisation (although, if there was no support for it, why bother with the propaganda?).  So there is some truth in the assertion in the film that the workers themselves were not enthusiastic for nationalisation, at least not in steel.  This is borne out by what testimony there is through interviews carried out by Mass Observation – see David Kynaston, References.  Certainly far more miners welcomed it, but having the state as the employer that was no guarantee that things would be much better.

This film is clearly part of that propaganda campaign.  Although the word ‘propaganda’ didn’t come into general use until the First World War, the phenomena that it refers to goes back at least to the birth of what we now regard as politics, Athens around the 5th century BC.  It refers to the practice of presenting arguments that serve a particular interest as representing the interest of all.  Rather like the word rhetoric, the word 'propaganda' has a mixed history: it hasn’t always had the negative connotations of dissembling.  Nevertheless, whether the argument presented is deliberately meant to mislead or not, it is not the intention so much as the reality that matters. 

Fortunately, the antidote to this was also born in 5th century BC Athens: philosophy.  The great insight of Socrates, as portrayed in the writings of Plato, is that all of us, as a matter of course, proceed with our beliefs without really examining the underlying assumptions they rest on: the common opinion, and formation of opinions, that Plato termed doxa.  This was true of the sophists who employed rhetoric, the art of persuasion, as much as to anyone else, as Socrates set out to prove.  He would enter into a dialogue with his interlocutor questioning his assumptions, a process of elenchus, until they reached a point when the interlocutor was unable to proceed further by his reasoning, reaching an aporia.  It was at this point that the Delphic Oracle to ‘know thyself’ become pertinent.  

The propaganda nature of the film is revealed right at the beginning, when the argument is presented is claimed to be on the side of ‘practicality’, as opposed to the ‘doctrinaire’ position of Labour.  Yet a list of the objections made, and how they are presented, reveals that these are just as much based on beliefs and values, or doctrine, as is the position they oppose.   This is not to suggest that all those who hold these beliefs are being deliberately deceptive – although undoubtedly many are – only that in coming from a particular perspective they are bound to highlight those points that might favour their pre-determined position.  Psychologists use the term cognitive bias to refer to how judgement is distorted by limited experience and knowledge, as well as emotions and needs: something that affects everyone, and something that the makers of political broadcasts will be aware of.

The differences between Labour and Conservative, even at that time, were much less than what they had in common.  As Alan Sked and Chris Cook note, “nationalisation signified no new beginning for Labour.  No transformation of its relation to capital occurred.  In practice all that happened was that the state bought out the former owners and allowed management to remain.” (References, p. 31)  They point out, for example, that the mine owners were compensated to the tune of £164,600,00.  There were those on the left of the Labour Party who wanted public ownership to be more than a state capitalism, with the bureaucracy that the Conservative Party have always identified this with.  Yet the desire for more workers’ democracy was strongly mitigated by the apparent disinterest of workers themselves.  This was the view of some on the left, such as Manny Shinwell and Sir Stafford Cripps, Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1947 and 1950, who claimed to favour some form of workers’ control:  a catch 22 situation whereby the lack of experience of having control leads to a disinclination to have it.  The Labour researcher Michael Young (later a well-known sociologist) wrote a pamphlet flirting with the idea of workers control, which was later withdrawn.  This is indeed a dilemma that has faced socialists ever since – although some are facing up to the challenge, see the International Organization for a Participatory Society.

In David Kynaston’s sketch of political views in the years immediately after the end of the Second World War, it appears that apathy and cynicism were as rife then as they are today.  Many commentators have highlighted the poor regard that politics is held by many, especially in the wake of the recent MPs expenses scandal.  The simple propagandising and exchange of fixed views hardly encourages anything different.  Many have contended that the media acts to reinforce this situation and marginalise those with alternatives views on the public sphere and democracy (see Iris Marion Young, References).  Unlike in science, where debate requires answering the strongest arguments of alternative positions, politicians are adept at avoiding this, and some consider that their pronouncements tend to be predictable, insulting to the intelligence or only (rarely) of entertainment value.   

So  a line can perhaps be traced linking this propaganda film on nationaisation, going backwards to Plato and forwards to today, with the interlinking themes of the nature of political discourse, political representation and honesty.  Maybe the new media of the internet – and the idea of ‘liquid democracy’ – will open out political dialogue, as Paul Mason contends.  Yet the apparent poverty of much political discourse – including on the internet – makes others, like Rowan Williams and Andrew Shanks, argue for the need for a stronger concept of citizenship: more critical and honest about our own preconceptions, as well as those of politicans.

References

David Childs, Britain since 1945: A political history, Routledge, London, 1997.

Alison Gillwald, ‘The Public Sphere, The Media and Democracy’, Transformation 21 (1993)

Terry Gourvish, ‘The Rise (and Fall?) of State Owned Enterprise’, in Britain since 1945, edited by Terry Gourvish and Alan O'Day, Macmillan, 1991.

David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951, Bloomsbury, 2007.

Arthur Marwick, British society since 1945, 4th edition, Penguin, London, 2003.

Paul Mason, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions, Verso Books, 2012.

Ivo Mosley (editor), Dumbing down: culture, politics and the mass media, Imprint Academic, 2000.

Kenneth Morgan, The People’s Peace: British History 1945-1990, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Keep Left

David Rubinstein, ‘Socialism and the Labour Party: The Labour Left and Domestic Policy, 1945-1950’, What Next, No. 31, 2007

Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2002

Andrew Shanks, Civil Society, Civil Religion, Blackwell, Oxford, 1995.

Andrew Shanks, 'What is Truth?': Towards a Theological Poetics, Routledge, 2001.

Alan Sked and Chris Cook, Post-War Britain, Penguin, 2nd edition, 1984.

Nigel Tubbs, History of Western Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Rowan Williams, Faith in the Public Square, Bloomsbury Continuum, 2012.

Rowan Williams, ‘‘Know Thyself’: What Kind of an Injunction?’, Royal Institute Of Philosophy Supplement Volume: 32 Issue: 1 (1992-05-01) p. 211-227.

Andrew Aguecheek, ‘Party Political Broadcast’

International Organization for a Participatory Society