Atomic Cate

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ways got worse for gay people and how none of the parliamentary political parties (with the partial exception of the Liberals) are committed to any major reforms. The Tories have just been forced to apply the British law in Northern Ireland but only after a long and bitter struggle with the European Court of Human Rights. The last Labour government made a deal with lan Paisley not to do this.

This year the Labour party NEC has carefully decided to include discrimination against gays in the age of consent in its programme. The SDP voted against including gay rights in its programme. And recently the TUC decided against including anti-gay clauses in its proposed model anti-discrimination clause for agreements between unions and employers.

In this atmosphere there is necessarily a contradiction between what Paul Crane as a member of the gay movement advocates to change the situation militant campaigns by gay people and their allies - THE Atomic Cafe, the latest film against nuclear weapons, is a film as much about propaganda as it is about nuclear war.

It is made up of extracts from US-government sponsored TV and radio broadcasts, cartoons and 'educational" films from the 1940s and 1950s and from official film of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later US atomic and hydrogen bomb tests on Pacific Islands.

The extracts are cut together in approximate chronological order. No spoken comment is made on any of the material used. Instead there is a soundtrack of songs from the period about nuclear weapons, such as "Jesus Hits Like an Atom Bomb" and Bill Haley's 'Thirteen Women"

Film of the horrific effects of radiation on bomb victims contrasts sharply with the lecture by an army "expert' on the relatively minor effects of radiation from nuclear explosions.

Atter the lecture the soldiers are sent out to sit in bunkers during a test explosion with instructions to keep their heads down, and to close their mouths and hold their noses (to stop radioactive particles entering their bodies!).

There is some hilarious film of the suggested protection against nuclear explosions. One kid is dressed up in a lead-lined anti-radiation suit, only to experience great difficulty climbing on his bike to cycle off. To the jingle 'Duck and cover", classrooms of school pupils dive under their desks and cover their heads.

The development and testing by the United States of nuclear weapons is shown as a central part of the fight against expansionist Soviet Communism.

Nuclear weapons protect the "American way of life" epitomised, it seems, by the nuclear family and Coca Cola.

The film also reveals a cynical racism shown towards the unfortunate inhabitants of Pacific Islands chosen bythe US as sites for their test explosions.

I found the film in parts very funny and in parts sickening. But the laughter is tempered by the realisation that most of the people at whom the material was aimed did not have the overview, we are given by the film makers. Instead they had to accept what they heard and saw at face value, and probably believed most of it.

Most readers of Socialist Organiser don't need convincing about the need to get rid of nuclear weapons nor about the nature uf propaganda. But The Atomic Cafe is worth going to see for the range of its material and for the songs on the soundtrack.

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