Film Review
The Wind That Shakes the Barley by Ken Loach

---

Michael O'Brien

The Wind That Shakes the Barley Directed by Ken Loach, Written by Paul Laverty Pathé, 2006 Price varies

Now Released on DVD, Ken Loach fully deserves the plaudits and accolades he has received for this fantastic piece of film making.

The film follows the fortunes of an IRA brigade in rural Cork during the War of Independence and the Civil War that took place between 1919 and 1923. No punches are pulled in portraying the brutality of the Black and Tans and the reality of Britain’s occupation for these communities.
Loach effectively demonstrates how this brutality can push ordinary people, who would otherwise lead quite plain lives, into taking up arms to defend their communities and to combat those responsible for their oppression.

Damian, the main character is an aspiring medical student who, before parting for university, is drawn into joining his brother in the IRA after witnessing a brutal and depraved assault on his neighbours and friends by the Black and Tans.

Loach does not prettify or romanticise the armed resistance and all that goes with it, and the film graphically shows the conflict from close-quarter ambushes to the heartbreaking shooting of a local youth turned informer.

The defeat of the Black and Tans ushered in a period of negotiation between the Sinn Fein leadership of Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins and the Lloyd George government. As a settlement is within reach, there is debate about what kind of Ireland they are fighting to create. The films attempts to show the class divisions that opened up amongst sections of those involved in the IRA and Irish society in general.

This is played out most effectively in a court scene presided over by the local IRA, where a local businessman is pursuing a debt with extortionate interest payments from a poor woman. While the court rules in favour of the woman, a debate amongst the volunteers ensues in which Damian and Dan (a Dublin socialist, trade unionist and follower of Connolly), defend the decision and point out how the Irish business class, by and large, played no role in the fight against the Black and Tans. However others in the IRA welcome the climbing on board of the Irish capitalists who saw which way the wind was blowing.

The main preoccupation of most of the anti-Treatyites was not whether the new Ireland for which they were fighting would be socialist or capitalist. Rather it centred on issues such as partition and the "dominion" status of the Free State.

The film attempts to answer questions the present day viewer would have as to why the pro Treaty side won both at the polls and on the battlefield. The pro-Treatyites had the advantages in terms of financial and military support from Britain, backing from the pulpit and pillars of the Catholic business establishment.

The warning in Connolly’s famous quote, cited by the character Dan earlier in the film, comes to pass as the Free State efficiently takes over the tools of the British establishment in Ireland.

However was it the case that the broad mass of the Irish working class and peasantry were ready to meekly accept their new exploiters just because they had Irish accents? The viewer may be left wondering. The film offers us a microcosm of the situation, rural Cork, which cannot accurately reflect the situation among the urban working class who had been involved in tremendous struggles in this period.

The betrayals of the labour and trade union leaders who stood aside to give Sinn Fein a free run and thus abandoned the mass struggles of the working class convulsing the country both North and South. Their historical betrayal squandered an opportunity to unite Catholic and Protestant workers in a struggle for a socialist Ireland that could have stopped partition. 

The anti-Treatyite leadership included the likes of DeValera and Lemass and it is clear that despite their opposition to partition, they had no interest in a struggle for socialism and the emancipation of the working class and small farmers.

The voice of the Dans and real life revolutionary socialists in the anti-Treatyite camp such as Liam Mellows were unfortunately a minority who did not decisively shape the politics of their side. However the relegation of their "voice" in the film can also be attributed to Ken Loach’s own left republican outlook.

The film has predictably drawn scorn from the British Tory press (apart from their "Oirish" editions) and some revisionists in the South such as Eoghan Harris and Ruth Dudley Edwards who complain about the film’s portrayal of the Black and Tans. A key motivation behind their column inches devoted to discrediting the film and its director has been Loach’s vocal intent of drawing comparisons between 1920s Ireland and the Iraq of today. So despite its victory at the prestigious Cannes film festival, The Wind that Shakes the Barley received only a very limited showing in Britain.

For people interested in reading a first hand account of the period there are two books by Earnán (Ernie) O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound, which covers the period of the War of Independence and The Singing Flame which covers the civil war.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley may leave you wondering why the anti-Treatyites were defeated, but nonetheless Loach’s film gives one a good feel for the period.

Film Review
The GAMA Strike - A Victory for All Workers by Frameworks Films

---

Dave Keating

The GAMA Strike - A Victory for All Workers By Frameworks Films and The Socialist Party Frameworks Films, 2006 €10 / £7

After a brief introduction to GAMA, who were originally invited to Ireland by Mary Harney in an effort to drive down wages in the construction sector, the story begins with Cllr. Mick Murphy explaining how he found out about GAMA and the exploitation of their Turkish workforce. 

The trade union SIPTU, to which the workers belonged and the various state agencies, despite their vast resources, could not verify the claims of gross exploitation that were self evident given the extent to which GAMA could underbid their rivals and complete major projects months ahead of schedule.

Despite language and other difficulties, the Socialist Party forged links with the GAMA workers and then set about using its resources, in particular its Dail seat, to expose that exploitation, which amounted to rates of €2.20 an hour for 80 hour weeks with no overtime rates.

The documentary makes great use of TV footage and time and again we see Joe Higgins in the Dail, lambasting GAMA and the government. We also see the GAMA solicitor fumbling with his glasses as he tried to offset the facts that were being piled on top of him by the TV interviewer. The full extent of GAMA’s intrigue begins to become clearer when a delegation of GAMA workers and Socialist Party members are seen outside Finansbank in Holland. The bank had 2,000 accounts belonging to the workers in an effort by GAMA to demonstrate that the correct wages were being paid all along, accounts the workers didn’t know they had. Altogether, the accounts held an absolutely astonishing €40 million. One worker alone had €40,000 in an account that he didn’t know existed.

So now the battle was on. First, to ensure that all of the workers’ money held in Finansbank was released to them and secondly, that they would secure their proper conditions and be paid for the overtime already worked. Over 220 GAMA workers met on Sunday 3 April 2005. They formed the Turkish Workers’ Action Group and agreed unanimously to strike the following day. It’s now that this film turns from a good documentary into a great account of a significant strike. On the pickets and on the demonstrations, the energy and enthusiasm of the Turkish workers is infectious with their chanting, singing and dancing. Way better than “What do we want” etc.

In just over a fortnight, the workers secured their money from Finansbank, but the second more difficult task still lay ahead. GAMA used the courts to further delay the publication of the Labour Inspectors’ Report, a report that was widely expected to condemn GAMA. Winning support from the courts allowed GAMA to go on the offensive and as well as intimidating the GAMA workers in Ireland, GAMA started intimidating their families in Turkey. GAMA stopped the pay of the workers, stopped their food and threatened them with eviction, in effect it tried to starve them back to work. The documentary makes a clear and credible comparison to the 1913 Dublin Lockout. What was particularly encouraging though was seeing ordinary working class women and their children, coming to the pickets and handing the Turkish workers sandwiches.

By the sixth week of the strike, the failure to close the GAMA sites in Ennis and Tynagh in Co. Galway coupled with increased intimidation began to take its toll. Workers started to drift back to Turkey and some of the strike leadership had secret talks with GAMA management. A new strike committee was elected and despite no great faith being held in the Labour Court, it was felt that with public opinion firmly behind them the Court would be forced to concede to the workers. It did. The 85 men who stayed were awarded €8,000 per year worked in overtime payments. This meant that a worker with three years’ work won €70,000 from GAMA between the Finansbank money and the overtime money.

For anyone not involved with the labour movement, this documentary is professionally done and makes a good and interesting story, but for anyone remotely involved it’s absolutely loaded with important lessons. I couldn’t encourage people enough to get this DVD and to give it as wide a circulation as possible in schools and trade union branches.