The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

92 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN May 1954 Advances in TnvnUi-ime Years by George Elvin. <.<ini ,ii Secretary, A.C.T. 1HAVE always had a sneaking admiration for the African tribe which makes its elders stand on one leg at tribal meetings in order to discourage loquaciousness. Some comparable rule is clearly necessary for those invited to write in anniversary numbers of journals. I do not, therefore, intend to write at great length on the twenty-one years of A.C.T. or, more specifically, the nineteen-and-a-half years of my association with it. But whilst not, I hope, being tedious, there are some points in our history which bear stressing on such an anniversary occasion. A.C.T. has developed parallel with the growth of the British film industry and, as is told elsewhere, it is both of interest and significance that A.C.T. was formed in the same year as Korda made his masterpiece The Private Life of Henry VIII. In other words, coincident with the resurgence of British films the technicians who made those films gave thought to their own status and particular niche in British film production. There was a great deal wrong with working conditions in British films in those days although then, as now, Korda was amongst the least blame-worthy. But the first Agreement we negotiated with London Films provided for the payment of overtime to the lower paid technicians for all hours worked over sixty in any one week. Those working in British films then will realise that this registered remarkable progress. We had more difficulty when we tried to get away from the individual Producer and negotiate for the industry as a whole, because in those days there was no employers' federation but merely a number of anarchic individual units. Invariably the great need was to reach an agreement before the individual producer finished his film and, as so frequently happened afterwards, before he, or to be more exact, his company went into liquidation. The year books record that there were 640 film production companies registered between 1925 and 1936. Many of them had a nominal capital of £100. Not more than 3 per cent of these companies remained in production by 1937. Several of them never completed a single picture and a still larger number never made a second film. In fact it became impossible to calculate the total sum due to technicians in respect of arrears of salary and broken contracts from the financial failure of these companies. One of the by-products of building a strong trade union organisation for film technicians was that we were powerful enough to prevent producers commencing subsequent production until they had paid any arrears of salary which were due on previous productions. Today, although there are still companies which get into difficulties, a technician is reasonably assured that he at least receives his weekly remuneration. In addition to never being sure of their money, technicians in those days worked inordinately long hours without a penny overtime payment. They frequently worked seven days per week, received no salary if they were sick and holidays with pay were but a dream. There were no standard rates of minimum pay and technicians seeking employment were played off one against another so that technicians had to work for very low rates as a consequence. Therefore on the material side the benefits of trade unionism to film technicians have been incalculable. Many of the problems existing in production did not spill over into the laboratories where, however, working conditions generally lagged behind those in most other industries and wage rates were correspondingly very lo"w. Before A.C.T.'s first agreement was signed many of our members were earning less than £2 per week. Parallel with all these struggles was the fight to maintain the film industry in which our members were working. There was a regular crisis every ten years when the Quota Act became due for renewal and on other occasions when bubbles burst or for various other reasons. One of the bast jobs of work which A.C.T. ever did was to campaign with the other trade bodies for improvements in the 1937 Cinematograph Films Act to replace the well-meaning but not verj effective 1926 Films Act. True, the earlier Act established a small quota for British films but it had many loop-holes from which the quota quickie emerged as one of the biggest evils. As a result of a magnificent campaign which continued through all stages of the Bill, debates in the Chamber and Committee Rooms of the House of Commons, and the Committee Rooms in the House of Lords, we were able to obtain considerable improvements. Quota provisions were extended to Short films, previously they had only applied to the longer film, and a minimum cost clause was introduced to kill the quota