UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Monday 4 February 2013

Fife's working class heroes of 1926

The Sunday Mail in Scotland yesterday published an excellent two page feature on The Happy Lands – the new film about the 1926 General Strike which shows how ‘the mining villages of Fife and the working-class heroes who fought for better conditions were made to suffer during the nationwide stand against the bosses’:
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/movies/movie-news/relatives-pay-tribute-to-mining-heroes-1572327

In a powerful editorial the newspaper compared then and now, lambasting the Con Dem Government’s austerity offensive which is being used to wage class war on the descendants of the working class heroes of 1926:

‘At times like this it sounds a little like class war. It feels a little like class war too and, right now, there is only one class winning. The Government are using austerity to justify the dismantling of a benefits system that has been a crutch to our weakest and deserving for generations.

Now Osborne likes to talk of scroungers, of how we are either shirkers or strivers.He’s no fool, despite what he looks like, and his spinners and focus groups tell him that he cannot bang on about benefit cheats enough. Voters love it, apparently.

Well, sometimes voters are dummies because while we’re getting into a lather about benefit thieves, this Government are gunning for all of us. For our benefits, for our pensions, for our granny’s winter fuel allowance. Meanwhile, millionaires are sending billions of pounds out of reach of the taxman while Osborne does hee-haw, nada, nothing.

No, they don’t give medals for class war nowadays. If they did, our Chancellor would be wearing his with pride’
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/mail-opinion-have-we-really-left-the-days-1572328
See more about the making of the film interviews with UNISON members in the cast at http://www.unison-scotland.org.uk/happylands/ and links to a trailer at http://unisonactive.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=happy+lands