Leeds United!
- Episode aired Oct 31, 1974
- 1h 57m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
73
YOUR RATING
The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union th... Read allThe true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.The true story of a strike in 1970 by female textile-factory workers in Leeds who wanted to be paid the same as their male colleagues, but whose efforts were undermined by the trade union that they belonged to.
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Did you know
- TriviaThe mother-in-law of Colin Welland, who wrote the play, was involved in the real-life strike. Many of the people who had taken part in the strike appeared as extras in the crowd scenes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in In Vision: Leeds United! (1974)
Featured review
Fossil from Another Age
Leeds United were one of England's top football teams during the late sixties and early seventies, but this play has nothing to do with football. The seventies in Britain were a period of high levels of inflation and high levels of industrial unrest. These two phenomena were connected, although the exact nature of the connection was a matter of political controversy. British industry and the political Right, especially the Conservative government of 1970-1974, claimed that inflation was being fuelled by excessive wage demands backed up by the threat of strike action. The trades unions, backed by elements of the political Left, claimed that their wage claims were necessary to prevent their members' living standards being eroded by inflation. The result was a decade dominated by strikes, most famously the miners' strike of 1974 (which helped bring down Ted Heath's Conservative government) and the "Winter of Discontent" of 1978/9 (which did the same for Jim Callaghan's Labour government).
"Leeds - United!" is a fictionalised dramatisation of another strike from the period, one which took place amongst the garment workers of Leeds in February 1970. The employers had offered a rise of fourpence an hour to female workers and fivepence an hour (roughly 2p in modern currency) to male ones. This offer had been accepted by the union but was rejected by the workers themselves who wanted a rise of a shilling (5p in modern currency) an hour across the board and came out on strike. (Because the workers were defying their union, the strike was known as "unofficial"). The strike was largely led by the female workers, who earned less than their male colleagues to begin with.
Modern viewers will doubtless find it incredible that workers were prepared to strike over what today seem like paltry sums, but this would be to ignore changes in the value of money over the last fifty years. An increase of a shilling an hour amounted to two pounds extra a week- a significant sum at a time when some young apprentice workers earned as little as five pounds a week. Even for experienced, skilled workers, who could take home over twenty pounds a week, a two-pound raise would have represented a considerable benefit.
Dramatist Colin Welland's mother-in-law was involved in the strike, and his sympathies are clearly with the strikers. The play was originally written for Granada Television, part of the ITV network, but in the end was filmed by the BBC and shown as part of the "Play for Today" series. Granada ostensibly rejected Welland's script on financial grounds, but the real reason seems to have been that they feared its anti-capitalist stance would antagonise their advertisers. The film was not, however, just perceived as anti-capitalist; it was also denounced by the "Morning Star", the organ of Britain's Communist Party, as anti-communist. What upset the communists was Welland's negative portrayal of trade unionism. The union officials, especially Harry Gridley, a card-carrying Communist Party member, are depicted as hypocritical careerists, unwilling to fight for their members' interests if to do so would upset their cosy relationship with the employers.
This is very much an example of ensemble film-making with no star actors; Welland may have wanted to emphasise that industrial action is, of necessity, collective rather than individual. At around two hours, about the same as the average feature film, it is considerably longer than most "Plays for Today" which were around 70-80 minutes in length, shorter than a feature film but longer than the standard hour-long TV drama. I felt, in fact, that it could profitably have been shortened. Too much time seemed to be taken up with lengthy speeches and repetitive scenes of women marching through the streets chanting slogans.
Colour television came to Britain in 1967 and nearly all programmes were made in colour after about 1969/70. It is therefore unusual to find a prime-time programme made in black-and-white as late as 1974. Director Roy Battersby may have been deliberately harking back to the "kitchen sink" cinema of the late fifties and sixties, and possibly also some of the television plays of that period from "Play for Today's" predecessor series, "The Wednesday Play", and trying to capture their gritty social-realist look.
Its monochrome photography probably made "Leeds- United!" seem rather old-fashioned in terms of looks, even when first broadcast, but its theme was very topical for the period. (It was shown on 31st October 1974, a few months after the miner's strike had ended and three weeks after a General Election which had seen the Labour government returned to power, partly because of dissatisfaction with the way Heath had handled that strike). Today, however, that theme of seventies industrial unrest makes it look (like a number of other "Plays for Today" rooted in the politics of the decade) like a fossil from another age. It retains a certain power, but no longer speaks to us in the way it once did. 6/10
"Leeds - United!" is a fictionalised dramatisation of another strike from the period, one which took place amongst the garment workers of Leeds in February 1970. The employers had offered a rise of fourpence an hour to female workers and fivepence an hour (roughly 2p in modern currency) to male ones. This offer had been accepted by the union but was rejected by the workers themselves who wanted a rise of a shilling (5p in modern currency) an hour across the board and came out on strike. (Because the workers were defying their union, the strike was known as "unofficial"). The strike was largely led by the female workers, who earned less than their male colleagues to begin with.
Modern viewers will doubtless find it incredible that workers were prepared to strike over what today seem like paltry sums, but this would be to ignore changes in the value of money over the last fifty years. An increase of a shilling an hour amounted to two pounds extra a week- a significant sum at a time when some young apprentice workers earned as little as five pounds a week. Even for experienced, skilled workers, who could take home over twenty pounds a week, a two-pound raise would have represented a considerable benefit.
Dramatist Colin Welland's mother-in-law was involved in the strike, and his sympathies are clearly with the strikers. The play was originally written for Granada Television, part of the ITV network, but in the end was filmed by the BBC and shown as part of the "Play for Today" series. Granada ostensibly rejected Welland's script on financial grounds, but the real reason seems to have been that they feared its anti-capitalist stance would antagonise their advertisers. The film was not, however, just perceived as anti-capitalist; it was also denounced by the "Morning Star", the organ of Britain's Communist Party, as anti-communist. What upset the communists was Welland's negative portrayal of trade unionism. The union officials, especially Harry Gridley, a card-carrying Communist Party member, are depicted as hypocritical careerists, unwilling to fight for their members' interests if to do so would upset their cosy relationship with the employers.
This is very much an example of ensemble film-making with no star actors; Welland may have wanted to emphasise that industrial action is, of necessity, collective rather than individual. At around two hours, about the same as the average feature film, it is considerably longer than most "Plays for Today" which were around 70-80 minutes in length, shorter than a feature film but longer than the standard hour-long TV drama. I felt, in fact, that it could profitably have been shortened. Too much time seemed to be taken up with lengthy speeches and repetitive scenes of women marching through the streets chanting slogans.
Colour television came to Britain in 1967 and nearly all programmes were made in colour after about 1969/70. It is therefore unusual to find a prime-time programme made in black-and-white as late as 1974. Director Roy Battersby may have been deliberately harking back to the "kitchen sink" cinema of the late fifties and sixties, and possibly also some of the television plays of that period from "Play for Today's" predecessor series, "The Wednesday Play", and trying to capture their gritty social-realist look.
Its monochrome photography probably made "Leeds- United!" seem rather old-fashioned in terms of looks, even when first broadcast, but its theme was very topical for the period. (It was shown on 31st October 1974, a few months after the miner's strike had ended and three weeks after a General Election which had seen the Labour government returned to power, partly because of dissatisfaction with the way Heath had handled that strike). Today, however, that theme of seventies industrial unrest makes it look (like a number of other "Plays for Today" rooted in the politics of the decade) like a fossil from another age. It retains a certain power, but no longer speaks to us in the way it once did. 6/10
helpful•14
- JamesHitchcock
- Nov 24, 2020
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Language
- Filming locations
- Leeds Town Hall, The Headrow, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK(union meeting at town hall)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 57 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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