Much Reality?

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and fienroe Wright of itv but from it being too Shelley :Pam drowning in Italy, the laws on publishing were liberalised in Britain. This could have enabled him to return to take an active role in workers' struggles, as he had done whilst he had been in Wales.

His early death led to the gross sentimentalisation of him and his work. Nonetheless, his political writings were widely read amongst working class people in the 19th century - prompting Mr Ross's outburst.

A statement attributed to Marx comparing Byron and Shelley says that whereas Byron, had he lived, would have undoubtedly become a reactionary bourgeois, "Shelley was a thorough revolutionary and would have remained in the van of socialism all his life."

Paul Foot convinces us of this, describing his own discovery of the power of Shelley's writing. "He became for me like a great tree of knowledge and I Like 8 squirrel scampering down each undiscovered branch.

Anyone interested

sharing this enthusiasm and drawing inspiration from Shelley's political thought should read Red Shelley. "I deeply regert that a journal which I regard as being part of the broader labour movement should carry a review which denigrates a film in which all the participants were representatives of the working class and which was made with th intention of presenting a working class point of view"

Two angry letters from steelworkers in Tribune last week responded to Chris Jones' review of 'A Question of Leadership', Ken Loach's TV film on the steel strike.

The film was practically the only time workers have appeared on television discussing their struggles indeed, practically the only time workers have appeared on screen speaking directly to the audience rather than via an interviewer, or that ordinary peoplé have appeared collectively discussing a common effort. Jones' verdict: "Trot?; loudmouths, professionals. "Much of what they had to say was very predictable. They did not add to the sum total of our knowledge."

''Leadership' was the cry but it had an air of unreality.

Messrs: Thornett and ('onnolly: who confronted Bill Sirs and George Wright of dire Wales TUC in the late addiion to the film, are both self-consciously obstreperous individuals. Definitely not forelock touchers.

"When they talk about lack of leadership they mean that the leadership is not heading in the direction they want. They really want to be the leaders themselves.

Having disposed of the "would-be leadership" as vulgar loudmouths, and their views as unrealistic (The TUC, through its democratic structure, is not geared to quasi-revolutionary industrial action"), Jones also distances himself from the trade union leaders: "Between them lay the yawning gulf of reality....

Anu lui the "reahties" he appeals to the "steelworkers who had taken redundancy payments, and thus undermined the union policy, of opposing redundancies...

One of the tollowing week's letters, from Swansea comments sharply, "It is news to many South Wales steelworkers made redundant that the unions opposed redundancies...

The truth is that Jones hostility to the tilm comes not from it "missing reality but from it close to reality.

TV normally presents an artificially bland "balanced' picture of the world. And many semi left-wingers in the labour movement have a similar glossed-over vision.

There are lots oi problems, and progress is very difficult, so the story goes. Nevertheless, It advances at its own sweet rate. The present leadership is, all in all the best leade:ship possible at the preseri stage. Our job is just to nudge it forward, continue our day-to-day work and be sure that it will all turn ou: for the best.

It's a comforting vision. -and one that allows. c= rationalises, friendl passive attitude to present bureaucracy of :*= labour movement.

The programme reveac a reality very differert ::o= that vision - a reali: :: harsh contlict bew== workers in struggle are tee present leadership. a7c urgent need for a new leace:ship it future dean 2=:: be acided

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