Press_ Gan

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The "evidence"?

A notebook allegedly found in the pocket of one of the Africans, containing not only references to Mugabe, but a detailed account of the massacre! Robert Mugabe Fortunately. for Smith and his namesake in Salisbury, dead men can tell no tales, nor refute even this most ridiculous slander.

But as the guerrilla war has begun to reach into the very outskirts of Salisbury itself, as a growing queue of white settlers forms up to flee the country, and. as Muzorewa struggles. to preserve his position as the regime's leading stooge while finding himself starved of reforms to offer his demoralised supporters, this latest stunt indicates nothing but the desperate weakness of imperialist control in Zimbabwe.

A mutilated, toned down version of a documentary film on racialism in Britain was screened o. American TV last week to the sound of wind and fury on both sides of the Atlantic.

The film-'Blacks Britannica' -included interviews with blacks beaten up by police and police at target practice-using black targets.

But the target practice scene has been removed, the sequences have been drastically rearranged and the ending of the film has been completely changed.

Only the city of Boston has put out the original film uncut.

Producer David Koff went to court to stop the film being shown in its mutilated formand lost.

•Stopped British cinema goeers in London had the opportunity to see it for a few weeks at the Scala, Tottenham Court Road, but the sponsoring TV company had it stopped.

All in all it's a fairly familiar story of censorship triumphing over those few artistic products which attempt to present a class BLACKED OUI perspective.

This butchery is not, however, enough for that champion of press freedom, the Daily Mail.

Enraged that any of the original sequences have been screened in America the paper launches an attack on the film as "the most biased propaganda film"

"Its viewers will be told that Britain is the home of racialism, and that we exported it to the States along with the Pilgrim Fathers.

They will be led to believe that our politicians exploit black people, that the police regularly batter them, that we refuse to employ their young, and that we have in short, totally failed to allow them to integrate.

"More important, they will be shown a Britain where the blacks are so desperate that they are on the brink of revolution. Marxism is the only solution, they will hear."

The full page feature contains some fairly tame red baiting and then an instructive description of the censorship by the TV producer David Fanning.

"It (the film) began with talk of a state conspiracy against the blacks, and ended with film of a riot. He was unhappy but he didn't want much. [!] "He kept the conspiracy statement but moved it further into the film. He took out a sequence in which policemen are shown practicing hand gun, shooting against black targets.

"And that was all.I!! His version still remains a piece of propaganda of which Goebbels! could be proud."

Effrontery

The Mail's effrontery is not yet exhausted. It goes on to say that the film would have "terrible potential" in the hands of the National Front.

The answer for the Mail would presumably be to rush through some of David McNee's plans for an extension of police powers.

That way those who made or appeared in the film could be held on suspicion for a few days and interrogated-using appropriate force.

With a bit of luck they would be in no state to make any further films embarrassing to the British ruling class. papers make between themselves, like those between husband and wife, would be embarrassing to reveal."

However when Sally Hardcastle suggested that the Express 'committment to the fund might be £1 million there was no hint from Matthews that this was on the high side.

All he wóuld say gnomically was:

"This is not a situation we would talk about, if it exists at all."

"It obviously has its attractions when you get enormous losses but it's a difficult question whether a newspaper should stand on its own feet."

But where Matthews had been coy, the Sun editor, Larry Lamb, blundered in.

Still enthusing about the reappearance of his newspaper, he fell into the trap it is also clear that employers are putting increasing pressure on print union officials to break the strongest chapels for them with the intention of reintroducing plans for new technology, already rejected by the Fleet Street workers.

Richard Marsh, former Labour MP, and now head of the Newspaper Publishers Association, said in the same programme:

"Where rank and file union members will not follow the procedure signed by their General Secretaries, then the General Secretaries have an obligation to take away their union cards"

The problem for the print workers is to develop a political understanding of the task, that faces them, and a leadership which is prepared to turn their strength and militancy onto the offensive.

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesdar 16 August 1978