The Rank and File (1971)

Interesting facts

"The Rank and File" is the 21st episode of first season of the British BBC anthology TV series Play for Today. The episode was a television play that was originally broadcast on 20 May 1971. "The Rank and File" was written by Jim Allen, directed by Ken Loach and produced by Graeme McDonald. It is included in the Ken Loach at the BBC boxset released in 2011, although the recording is of unusually poor quality for a DVD release.

Background

In 1970, an unofficial strike took place at the Pilkington Glass Works in St. Helens, Lancashire, initially after an error in wage packets but the strikers later demanded a wage rise to £25 per week. The cause was described in the New Statesman as 'the cumbersome structure of different bonus and shift payments which meant that men doing similar jobs took home different and unpredictable pay packets'.

The Trotskyist dramatist Jim Allen visited the strikers to show support and showed them the film The Big Flame, which he had written and Ken Loach had directed. Jim Allen has given an account of how he was subsequently persuaded to write a similar script about the strike at Pilkington.

So, one old bloke said to me, "Will you write a film for us?" And I was really up to my neck in work, committed. I said, "I'm pressed for time." So this old fella said, "come to the toilet with me, I'll show you my 'war medals'." We got to the toilet and he whips his shirt off, and his back was lacerated, as if he'd been whipped by glass, and then he put his shirt back on.

This man became the inspiration for the character Charlie in the film.

The strike took place near the end of Harold Wilson's first government. The unofficial strikes and student protests in France in May 1968 were influential amongst the left-wing in the UK, and there was a subsequent increase in strikes taken outside of the union framework, most notably the miners' strike of October 1969.

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