LETTER: Destiny unfulfilled

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The Teamscioma view what is now the most important is how-the--camıagunche--the-dileseunt strata of the proletariat in the direc Annie Hall, by Woody and starring Allen and Keaton.

Woody Allen's film "Annie Hall" is billed as "a nervous romance" but in fact, though it follows the progress of two extreme neurotics toward the final breakup of their relationship, it is a paradoxically calming, reassuring little film.

It waves its anxieties like a banner, but much of the time it is really saying, "there, there" , administering to its audience a kind of pat on the head-a lover's tap.

Departure

This marks a sharp departure from Allen's earlier films, which are anything but easy to watch: Play It Again, Sam, in which the monomaniacal couple (acted as in Annie, by Allen and Diane Keaton) gabble on endlessly about their anxieties while a life-size Humphrey Bogart, Allen's alter ego, disapprovingly looks on; or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, in which Burt Reynolds, as the muscular embodiment of Allen's sexual imagination, shouts encouragement to Allen's flagging erection. lirected Allen, Woody Diane A reply to the review by David Edgar's p lay Destiny.

Liverpool 14.2.78 Dear Comrades, I don't think that "David Edgar's play is a weapon in the struggle to build a working class opposition to fascism" as your reviewer seemed to suggest.

Any workers who watched the play right through to the end, (not many probably), might well have ended up a bit confused. Because in trying to "explain" why workers can be attracted to fascism the play unintentionally gives the National Front a big boost.

What comes across very strongly in the play is the strength, confidence, purpose of the fascists versus the absolute feebleness and bankruptcy of the other political parties.

The scene where the Tory candidate goes to National Forward's offices to confront them was typical in this respect. Fascist Cleaver mops the floor with the Tory.

Cleaver's politics are based on the reality' of the uncle who despairs as blacks move into his neighbourhood. The Tory can only offer pathetic liberalism and meaningles platitudes about fairness and decency.

What's missing from the play, of course, is the genuine voice of the left. Not the cynical, scheming corrupt left, like the left-labour friend of the Labour candidate.

The only characters who could have served as the authentic opposition were the strikers. And because of the structure of the play they were merely incidental to the main action.

The white worker who made the appeal in the labour club put in a rather belated, token, confused and inadequate appearance. And he seemed to reduce the whole question of anti-fascism simply to solidarity on the picket line.

The Left in general has welcomed this televised play, Progna the socialist revolution. WSL. 31 Dartmouth Park Hill itl ing and talk *It hs_a programme for action non trala until tinebregning And from the practical point of saccenda tion.

Lomdon NWEETHIR in Socialist Press as your reviewer did, as a useful weapon in the anti-fascist I think this is based on a misconception of how we address our ideas to the class. The ideas we present have to be related to the experiences of the people we are talking to.

Most of the revolutionary left press is related to the experience only of the small circle of people who are pretty close to the revolutionary left.

David Edgar's play was only intended for a narrow audience of people who had a certain understanding already of fascism.

It wasn't meant for a mass audience on whom it would only have a reactionary effect. (Edgar wrote much better material for the antifascist campaign in Ladywood last year).

Lenin said that propaganda is many ideas to a few people; agitation, few ideas to many people.

If this is so, then Edgar's play was very subtle propaganda directed to a few people "in the know" about If there was any effective agitation in the play it was expressed entirely by the fascists who were able, with a few key ideas, to offer a plausible explanation of what was happening in the world to the workers.

They spoke to the experiences of the working class. The class's understanding of those experiences was wrong, of course.

What the left has to do to change this false understanding is not to congratulate ourselves on the excellence of our dramas and propaganda, but to start expressing ourselves in relation to the real experiences of the class.

This may mean abandon.

our comfortable rituals the secret language we to each other with .. Yours, Michael Bryant.

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