SLUM

sharp contrast can be seen at Unity Theatre in a documentary drama entitled 'South Africa 70'.

All the material in it is based on facts, events, verbatim reports, government papers, personal experiences, political statements.

As an exercise in theatrical propaganda its an interesting one, well staged, well paced, it begins as something gripping. There is something very dramatic in the pure presentation of facts.

Slides projected onto a screen announce conditions, laws, statistics etc. From the stage actors give reports of events, and act them out, particularly compelling what the laws mean to a black Africanhis every move, how he how they curtail and define subjected always police brutality and arrest, how he has no real (social life, nor any life other than to fulfil the requirements of S African • capitalism.

What the facts make clear is the relationship of the black worker to the state, how the entire economy is based on an unemployed labour pool, who are forbidden the right to organize, to live and move at will.

situation where capitalism reduces black workers slavery. They are hunted around as a labour force. When required or unemployed they are shunted back to the townships.

That is therefore the economic meaning of apartheid, it's real meaning. The information in the first act spells this out eloquently and harshly.

And what a contrast to the craven hotchpotch of protesters who give their voice in the second and third acts, ANC, Black Sash, white liberals, the whole circus of sad dissidents who peck pathetically at the problem like gnats.

But gnats too have a bite and behind the sorrow, the suffering, the imprisonments, the risks to life and liberty, is the sting of reformist betrayal.

And no more eloquently stated than out of the mouth of Nelson Mandela.

For all the protests about the dignity. and rights of man, he states his task clearly.

'ALL THE WAY UP' is a film version of David Turner's stage play 'Semi-detached' and the changed title gives the key to the Carry-on style double entendre that follows.

Turner's talent as a TV dramatist has always been in a minor key, but at his best he has a marvellous ear and eye for the pretensions of the lower middle class, and though some of that remains in this film, most of his sharpness for detail has been blunted by the deliberate decision to go for a broader style.

The result is a patchy comedy where bawdy farce replaces réal social observation.

'All the Way Up' is a story of getting on, of petty-bourgeois

SOUTH AFRICA '70

directed by PAUL TOMLINSON designed by JERRY SPRING Until July 12 at the UNITY THEATRE Reviewed by S African workers await transportation to the mines. Identity tags on their wrists indicate the shipment of labour to which each worker is assigned.

(Picture from Ernest Cole's HOUSE OF BONDAGE.)

Not the communist revolution for him, but the role of containing the rage of the masses and channelling it into reformist ventures. Democracy for all— black and white capitalists.

It is this tragic and Philistine understanding of the real economic conditions that bedevils the revolutionary movement in S Africa.

piece for an unashamed mouth- Unconsciously, against itself the ANC) the play exposes the contradictions.

Merely by juxtaposing reality with illusions it helps to clarify the question.

And that question is not resolved for the S African masses by the act of faith hope and charity that concludes the piece.

That battle is fought out else.

CINEMA ambition, of status, hypocrisy and double-dealing.

In this respect the content, promises something sharp and critical; in realization it becomes a family romp.

Warren Mitchell plays the part of the father who has manoeuvred himself into the position of head of the Starlight insurance branch by slandering his earlier rivals with poison pen letters.

Thẻ move into the semi-detached belt out of the two up two down of earlier origins represents only the first triumphant step up the ladder of status.

Family and social life is dominated by the desire to appear better than their next door neighbour, two silent observers next door.

One daughter has been married off to the heir of a local button factory, the other one is biding her time.

All appears promising, until the young son gets his girlfriend pregnant.

He decides to get his girl married off to someone rich and together they choose the owner of the button factory, who falls for her in a big way.

REGIONAL The news of their forthcoming marriage upsets though the rest of the family's aspirations, for the factory owner's nephew falls out of line of inheritance if there is a child, and there threatens to be one.

The film concerns itself with the farcical manipulations of this situation, which are at times quite funny.

Mitchell's. pretensions and deviousness are amusing, particularly the posh accent he adopts.

But all the time there are merely broad hints at the potential subject matter, the real tensions involved in social climbing, the apeing of the middle class, the mean-minded ambition which makes all real human response subservient to its needs, the reduction of everything to a commodity.

It is a world where appearance predominates over reality.

Yet the film fails to communicate a real world. The settings are familiar enough, the family familiar enough, but they are mere caricatures, in the end just actors giving comic performances. There is no real social sharpness.

The French, the Italians and the Czechs are able to make Socine heir world ecause that eye for detail and a simplicity of exposition.

The comedy derives from an understood reality, flows from the situation. All great comedy does from Shakespeare through to Chaplin.

But 'All the Way Up' leans too heavily on extraneous tricks, on gimmicks, on milk boiling over in kettles, or motor cars boiling up, or simply funny faces. It béars all the imprint of what is vulgarly considered commercial.

This is James MacTaggart's first venture into film.

He is a man responsible either directly or indirectly for real innovations in television drama.

He was the first producér of the Wednesday Play and has many distinguished credits in his record. But he is yet to make the transition into film which bears the stamp of his own creative personality.

Warren Mitchell In this he shares the fate of many directors who are forced to fall foul of the capitalist film industry, where the pressures are enormous and talent is often stifled-the clock and the budget are always on your back.

And the pattern becomes more ominous.

Simply, capital is being withdrawn from the film industry, studios close, men are made redundant.

Those few films that are made are placed more and more at the mercy of the requirements of profit and quick turnover.

It never was and it certainly isn't now any way to run an These tensions flash out with every cut in 'All the Way Up'.

way down ALL THE WAY UP starring WARREN MITCHELL directed by JAMES MacTAGGART carried pictures of Tory Housing Minister, Peter Walker, looking at slum houses in Brixton.

The point of the story was transparently obvious-to underline the overcrowded conditions which many immigrant families are forced to live and so to lend support to Tory plans to restrict immigration even more than the Labour government had done.

In the course of his tour • on Wednesday morning, Walker had said:

'All I can do here is to express my disgust at any human being who exploits other human beings in this dreadful way.' There is no doubt about Walker's sincerity in relation to slum landlords. Until taking up his Ministry last week, he numbered among his many directorships the Rodwell Group, one of the biggest development companies. . Walker spent much of his time until the election being managing director of Slater Walker Securities, a f72 million investment banking group.

several unit trusts.

So we can be sure he would never exploit anybody by extorting high rents for rat-infested Why should case Somerset spy A RECENT broadcast from Prague certainly confirms predictions of a show trial on traditional Stalinist lines.

It consists of reminiscences by Bretislav Vejda of a Russian sent to advise the Ministry of State Control in the early 1950s.

Vejda recalls Comrade Zhukoy, a Soviet specialist in the control sector' as an elderly, greying man of proletarian origin' And what a nice chap this GPUman must have been.

'He was very diligent and modest... untiringly interested in our home conditions ... He even found time for lessons in Czech . . .

I never saw him give an arbitrary order or interfere ... He kept turning our attention to the mistakes we made...

Then comes the point of the exercise.

I also watched at close quarters his behaviour at the time of the Slansky trial. I witnessed no direct or indirect interTHE 'Morning Star' for Tuesday, June 30 led with a story by Peter Zinkin about the Common Market Safeguards Campaign.

It applauded the formation of a committee supported by many Labour and Tory MPs.

'The wide opposition to the Market is seen in the new Tory backers,' wrote Zinkin, 'who inlude Sir Stephen McAdden, Sir Eric Bullus, Mr Richard Body CLEARANCE ference on his part. Only documents from production sectors which were used as background papers for the trial were translated for him. He methodically commented on them from the viewpoint of an expert controller.' So the time has returned when 'expert' work on the 1952 frame-up is respectable and praiseworthy.

remember our January report that Russian 'advisers' from the early 1950s are returning to Prague to continue this work, so rudely interrupted when Stalin died.

The crudity of the Slansky trial certainly implied that the Czech Stalinists were in need of help from their more experienced Russian colleagues.

The idea of a conspiracy whose centre was Mr Noel Coward appeared strange even to the most devout Stalinist.

To recall one more example. Vavro Hadju, one of Slansky's few non-jewish co-defendants, 'confessed' to having been recruited as a spy when in Britain in 1939. and Sir Gerald Nabarro.' Military Intelligence at Wiveliscombe It all happened, he told the court, in Wiveliscombe. The chief of police called him to an interview and elicited • information. about industry in Slovakia.

Seven years later, when Hadju was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, Sir Gladwyn Jebb met him and at once told him that he knew all about the Wiveliscombe talk.

Patient research has revealed that Wiveliscombe is a Somerset metropolis whose population had risen by 1967 to 1,141.

In 1939, the 'chief of police' must have been in the confidence of leading circles of British Intelligence and on the look-out for all possible information about Slovakian industry, at that time under German occupation.

We can imagine Vejda's Russian mentor shaking his grey head over such a clanger, and gently chiding his Czech pupils.

No wonder the would-be trialfixers of 1970 are grateful for the help received from Moscow, as they prepare for a new round of frame-ups.