BBC ON THE 19TH CENTURY TRAIL INTO AFRICA

'THE SEARCH FOR THE NILE': Episode 6 Conquest and Death. Produced by Christopher Ralling Directed by Richard Marquand. BBC 1. 'ON THE BUSES': Gardening Time. Director/producer Bryan Izzard. LWT. 'OUR KID': The Turn of Worm. Director/producer lan Davidson. Yorkshire. 'SEVEN ONE': I'll Fly you Quid. Producers ames Gilbert and Sydney Lotl erby. BBC 2.

'White men excel all others in goodness and wisdom', observed Henry Stanley, one-time American newspaper reporter, in an exchange with the King of Uganda. 'The Arabs bring you cloth and wire and beads and take you for slaves; we can make cloth and wire and beads — and cure sickness — and we will do away with slavery?

It was assertions of this kind which heralded the blooming of the finest flowers British imperialism and colonialism in the 19th century. It was men like Stanley, waving the flag of pious Christian zeal, which Livingstone had let fall on his death in 1873, who embodied rapacious obsession with the African interior and all it had to offer. And it was this imperialism which carried in its womb the seeds of crisis today, both here and in every part of modern Africa.

In "The Search for the Nile' (last episode, Monday, May 7, BBC 1, 9.30), the BBC has seen fit to present its own portentous version of the British on the trail in Africa in the 19th century.

The last of this six-part drama documentary had, in common with the other episodes, the same • one-sided view of events, the same golden tones of James Mason to add a touch of distinction as narrator. Along with some attractive filming on location, it tended to cover the same ground both physically and ideologically throughout.

It had about it the quality of sodden obsequiousness that hangs heavy about programmes on the daily doings of the royal tamily.

Only here we had Richard Burton and his dreary wife, Isobel, Henry Stanley, David Livingstone, Stanley Baker and John Hanning Speke all being given the human touch.

At various points in the tale we saW our heroes in their more intimate moments: at breakfast, in the bath or supping tea, even confessing to rare weaknesses (It is DOUBT that I fear most' , said Livingstone one sunny evening in darkest Africa).

But mostly we had to endure their heroism-persistent coverage of the treks against all odds, disease, savages, heat, flies and the rest; particularly the savages. Stanley knocked off scores of blacks in his determination to show them 'justly but firmly' who was Master.

Now and then to London meetings of tion, he was told the story of a big US union whose stail decided to organize a union to look after their interests. "The trade union,' he wrote, 'fought its own employees with a fervour and viciousness which would have done credit to any business organization.' RATES RISES Small shopkeepers continue to be hit by rising rates. Two traders in Walkden, near Manchester, have complained to the Chamber of Trade that their rates payments have gone up 200 per cent in actual cash as a result of revaluation.

Early reports of the effects of revaluation had led to expectations of rate increases of between 35 and 45 per cent. But now reports are being received of much higher increases.

Local chambers of trade are compiling overall pictures of the effects of revaluation. The secretary of one of them, Mr Bernard Tennant of Bolton, says he expects to receive a 'massive' number of appeals against the new assessmenis. Michael Gough who has some convincing moments in the BBC series, 'The Search for the Nile' we returned the august Royal GeoLivingstone graphical Society and others who were in fanatical conflict over the burning question of the day: where was the source of the Nile?

And in this final episode there were frequent resorts to the desolate Burton and his wife as they pined away their days, scorned by society but nevertheless able to keep body and soul together, on their estate in Trieste where Burton was posted and spent his days writing copious diaries, anthropological notes and erotic stories and verse, which his misguided wife A new English edition of the 'Frst Five Years of the Communist International' incorporating hitherto unpublished material from Volume XIII of Trotsky's Works' THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE COMMUNIST İNTERNATIONAL mention is either the he existed, and forces duced such mention of tions of the Stanley, ton, Speke like them trickle of burned to the last w. ird after his death lest they sully his name.

Michael Gough and Kenneth Haigh (despite the latter's unfortunate false beards) were the only members of the cast who managed to look anything but ludicrous and even had some convincing moments.

Mumbo-jumbo much of this stuff may be, but it is tricked out and dressed up as history -and as an authentic account at that.

This sort of idealism-tales of past glory in all formsare recurring with frequency on our screens.

In presenting history as the hero's adventure, one man's trek to change the world, no of course made of context in which nor of the currents which both promen. Nor is there what the implicase events were and Livingstone, Burand all the others came as the first the flood tide of turopean ana American cap!talists who poured into Africa, greedy for the resources, material and human, which such a vast land offered.

The latter part of the 19th century was the neatest carve up of Africa by the Europeans that could have been wished for by any democratic capitalist.

No mess, no noise, not much blood. Or so it was presented by the capitalists to their fellow capitalists.

They came under the flags of freedom, democracy, the abolition of slavery and the brotherhood of man-and every nuance of false morality that could be mustered.

The oldest capitalist nation pulled out every. stop to glamour and sanctify its nefarious activities across the globe in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s.

Of those hallowed names Speke was an ambitious militarist; Stanley, a firstborn son of pragmatism and the newest capital in the world; Livingstone, a well-meaning religious maniac, Burton, a mad egotist with literary pretentions.

But their significance lay not in their individual quirks and foibles but in their expression of that juggernaut, British 19th century capitalism, which not content with the wealth produced its own NEW EDITION The First Five Years of the Communist International This first volume of Trotsky's writings and speeches for the Communist International covers the period of its first three Congresses when the post-war revolutionary upsurge reached its peak and then began to recede. It establishes, without fear of contradiction, the important role which he played in the foundation of this, the Third workers' International and'in the formation and early development of the French, German and Italian Communist Parties. At this time the theory of 'socialism in one country' had not been invented and Joseph Stalin was still a second-line Bolshevik leader who played no part in the international movement which he was later to pervert and eventually destroy.

Price: £1.50, 421 pages.

New Park Publications 186a Clapham High Street, L or the Paperbacks Centre 28 Charlotte Street, London, (Enclose 10p for postage) repressed and exploited millions at home, travelled to the farthest corners of the globe in order to do the same with millions more.

WORKING CLASS Comedy is flourishing on television these days.

On Sunday nights there is the rare treat. of three programmes in three series.

'On The Buses' takes the prize for the crudest, worst written and worst acted by a head start.

It takes place largely in a bus depot and the humour is heavily cockney, or the television conception of cockney, with lots of jokes about bikinis and lavatories and dialogue like 'Did you enjoy your dinner?' eat it for once, you 'Yes, thank 'Our Kid' is a pretty close runner-up, with two moronic Brummy brothers and the girlfriend trying to sort out who doesn't go to work.

The Ronnie Barker show ('Seven Of One' 8.15 p.m.) is on BBC-2, just in case the distinction isn't apparent, and is sharper, slicker, more articulate and just as objectionable.

This week showed Barker as a Welshman in a small community and as his dad who dies in bed, clutching the winning racing slip in his hand—so that the thing has to be wrested from his coffin by son and grandson, who are beset, as is the whole community, with gambling.

All three of these programmes have in common one thing: total contempt for the working class.

In varying degrees the comedy (if it can be dignified by such a title) is all drawn irom playing on the imbecility • of the working class in one part of the country or another.

All those taking part speak and act like morons-and the more moronic, the louder the laughs.

They are laced with anti-union jokes, reactionary and cynical in content.

Nothing could spell out more clearly than do these programmes that those now in control of television have consciously and deliberately chosen to act as the agents of reaction and repression for the most right-wing government of our era.