Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER No. 3 1944 27 GRIERSON AND THE I.L.O. john grierson has reported how an American journalist, Miss Ernestine Evans, first suggested to him a pre-war plan for the enlightened use of the film medium by the International Labour Office. Her thesis was as follows. If England represents the highest i standard of safety in mines, let an appropriate film record be made i for all the mining nations to see and let it pass out to the world through the agency of the I.L.O. If Sweden has the best system of hospital service, or New Zealand the highest standard of pre-natal care, or France the best service of medical information to farmers, let the record of them go out to all the other countries for their consideration and benefit. Use the I.L.O. as a world centre. Let it encourage the various countries to produce those film records which by their example would best contribute to the common cause. Largely as a result of Miss Evans's suggestion, Grierson and Basil Wright, on the I.L.O.'s request worked out at Film Centre a scheme which they took to Geneva in 1938. But the sands of peace were running out and war came before anything concrete could materialise. In 1944 the opportunity presents itself once more. On April 26th of this year Grierson, now Canadian Government (Film Commissioner, again stated his case, this time against a horizon ;of approaching peace. He had been invited to address the I.L.O. conference at Philadelphia and he reminded the assembled body that tthe I.L.O. and any similar international bodies which might grow } from the war would be faced with an educational task which must ;.be conceived in new terms. He began by stating them. "The I.L.O. is concerned with working standards and working ii relationships and we have all been learning over the years how wide and deep this interest goes. The war period, especially, has provided a revelation of how the quantitative achievements of industry are completely dependent on the conditions under which industry is carried on, how war efforts of every kind involve close consideration B of the social structure which supports them. The war period has, not least, brought a revelation of this relationship to the people concerned with war information and industrial morale. a "Not all of them, I am sorry to say, have appreciated the humanl.istic terms under which the work of men's hands is secured. In spite of the experience of the I.L.O. over the years, the worst mistakes Kwere made from the beginning. First we had the 'patriotism is enough' period — the 'my country right or wrong period'. To integrate the workers' front with the soldiers' front, we thought it sufficient to call up the sacred images of the tribe and the nation. iThe flags flew, the bands blared. The lights of common sense were jdimmed; spotlit, our national banners fluttered in an artificial ;breeze. Then we had the 'black and white' period. We built up the [Nazis as the children of darkness and ourselves as the children of jlight. We asserted our way of life as the best in the best of all ^possible worlds. Forgetting the d^ark thirties, we assumed an affectionate and even fervent belief in the status quo. Then we had the 'finger of scorn' period when we bullied the workers from factory platforms, telling them how they were killing soldiers and sinking .ships and letting down the war effort if they so much as cast a critical eye over wages and working conditions in time of war. "We had to come sooner or late to a more realistic conception Df our information to industry. We discovered that absenteeism might have a great deal to do with local transport conditions or Kocal health conditions or local housing conditions. We discovered hat the employment of women involved a consideration of creches ind communal kitchens, and even a consideration of the opening fiours of beauty parlours. We discovered that there was a basis in reason — local reason — yes, even for the attitudes and actions of the people. With any true sense of democracy we should have known it "rom the beginning. "That was not all. We discovered that the co-operation of the workers in any effort, national or otherwise, is dependent on the amenities which surround not only their lives inside the factory but their lives outside it. We discovered that the degree of their participation depends on the degree to which, as free men, they are allowed to participate in the understanding, direction and management of their own work and their own destiny. We discovered, finally, that all the patriotic ballyhoo, all the generalisations about black and white, all the exhortations, abuses and threats are not so important or so basic as a credible pledge, implemented in action, that the war is for the sake of the common people everywhere, and nothing if not that. . . . "The ends men seek are identical and simple and concrete, whether they come black, white or yellow. They concern food and health and housing and the other highly visible evidences of the good life. I have no doubt that when these are fought for and secured, the invisible aspects of the good life — whatever these may be — will come to inhabit the edifice we have built. In the meantime, it is in the fulfilment of actual and visible human needs that we shall find the basis of a common philosophy and, if I may say so, the only one which the peoples of the world will any longer trust. In this progressive struggle for welfare which is actual, we all need the example of other countries, the example of other peoples' genius, other peoples' ingenuity and other peoples' good fortune. This example of others is a weapon in our hands, wherever we may be, with which to intensify the educational effort in our own domain. . . . "There is an internationale of interest in medicine and town planning and agricultural research, and in each of the thousand and one specialised fields of human effort. From this point of view there is no such thing as a general public, nationally or internationally. There are thousands of publics, all trying to do something about something. The only time they all get together and become general is when they get tired of doing things, and lazy and lackadaisical and want to get off the earth. The trouble is that we have organised the people brilliantly in their moods of relaxation. We have organised them in the movies and the dope sheets of the sensational press and the dance halls of the nations. But we have not, with anything like the same intensity or deliberation, organised the people in their moods of resolution. We have not, with anything like the same adequacy, sufficiently fed them in the terms of their constructive and creative interests. . . . " The source of vital education to-day is no longer the formal educational system. It resides rather in functional international organisations like U.N.R.R.A. and the I.L.O., and in functional national organisations which are actively concerned in developing the welfare of the people. I doubt if the people any longer put their hope in formal education, and for the good reason that it is not associated with their actual needs. There are brave exceptions, I know ; but, by and large, it has been so anxious to avoid political difficulty that it has steered education away from those needs which produce political expression and therefore produce political difficulty. It has come to teach the technique of understanding but not the substance of it. It gives technical skills but not the sense of a living and organic social participation." Grierson promised that there was no one concerned with documentary films or with film education in the various countries in the world who would not willingly stir his country into participation in a great new international educational effort. We here in Britain reiterate the pledge on our own behalf, and we await the appearance of allies in official quarters.