WORKER AND WAR-FRONT MAGAZINE ISSUE NO 1 [Main Title]

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  • Title: WORKER AND WAR-FRONT MAGAZINE ISSUE NO 1 [Main Title]
  • Film Number: UKY 450
  • Other titles:
  • Summary: A newsreel highlighting the part played by ordinary working men and women in Britain's war effort featuring reports on a scheme to enable women war workers to buy food during working hours, the production of sand filters for aircraft and tank engines, a US-built tug in service with the Royal Navy, the use of spiders' webs in the manufacture of optical gunsights and an amateur war worker's band.
  • Description: START 10:00:00 Opening title and Credits. Intertitle 'Food Front. Shopping Plan helps women factory workers'. The report follows two women war workers at work with drilling tools and when they are waiting in a long line of women queuing up outside a grocery store; they notice from a nearby clock on a building that it's nearly nine o'clock and they and another work colleague have to leave the queue in order to get to work on time. Close up of a notice put up by the St Pancras Chamber of Commerce to inaugurate a scheme to issue priority food ration cards to all those engaged in essential war work. The three women war workers clocking in at the factory at the beginning of their shift. Various shots of meetings held by the St Pancras Chamber of Commerce and local trade union representatives to discuss a new system to allow women war workers the means of collecting unrationed food whilst they are at work. An old-fashioned printing press at work at a Ministry of Food office turns out food priority cards for essential war workers. The three women arriving at the counter of their local grocery shop to collect application forms for the new cards for priority war workers. A factory manager counter-signs one such application form. The three women workers collect their food priority cards and are seen walking to the head of a long line of shoppers, showing their new cards (together with their identity cards) and leaving a list of food items with the male shop assistant. Whilst the women are seen at work, a shop assistant packs tins of food and other edible items wrapped in plain paper into a wicker basket. He hands it over to one of the women workers as she arrives at the end of her factory shift. Over shots of two women workers leaving a shop with boarded up windows and the St Pancras Chamber of Commerce in a meeting, the commentary concludes, "This is only one of the ways of sorting out one of the problems of the Home Front but it is the right way of going about it - people on the spot getting together, seeing what has to be done and then doing it". 10:02:11 Intertitle 'Science on Sand: Workshop device aids British desert fighting'. A report about the manufacture of sand filters with shots of weapons powered by petrol engines - a 2-pounder anti-tank portee on a CMP 3-ton lorry chassis, a Morris 15-cwt wireless truck, Stuart III 'Honey' light tanks, Matilda Mk II infantry tanks and Martin Maryland light bombers - churning up dust in the Libyan desert. A laboratory technician demonstrates the principle of an air filter by showing how vegetables cooked in boiling water are afterwards drained in a colander. The actual components of an air filter are seen to consist of felt interleaved with metal gauze. A scene in a drawing office where a technician sketches a sand filter design. Animated diagrams shows how sand particles sucked in through an engine's air intake are trapped by the sand filter and how its efficiency is vastly increased with a concertina-like design. An actual sand filter unit similar in appearance to a concertina is held up in front of the camera. Women warworkers are seen assembling sand filters. An animated diagram shows how a 'concertina' sand filter works. Workers are seen fitting sand filters shaped like narrow rectangular boxes into the air intake for an aero engine and assembling filters for tank engines (?). Shots showing mechanics at a base workshop in Egypt working on the engine of an A13 (Mk IV Cruiser) tank and the interiors of a large factory shed where men and women war workers are seen assembling aero engine sand filters. The closing shots show an RAF Maryland bomber dropping a stick of eight 250-pound bombs from its bomb bay and a squadron of Matilda Mk II infantry tanks advancing across the desert as the commmentary sums up, "Without the factory, there would be the defeat of Britain in the Western Desert - not defeat by Germany or Italy but defeat by sand". 10:05:08 Intertitle "Tug-Boat Annie". A scene from the popular 1933 Hollywood feature film starring Marie Dressler as the eponymous heroine and Wallace Beery as her husband Terry Brennan who has sustained severe burns to himself whilst trying to relight the boiler on board their tug boat, Narcissus. A shot of the American tugboat that featured in the film as the Narcissus in Royal Navy colours as rescue tugboat HMT Sabine armed with a single 12-pounder gun at the stern. The 488-ton tugboat is seen in harbour at Kingston-upon-Hull, with the ship's crew playing cards in their quarters when the radio operator picks up a message via a shore line and runs off to inform HMT Sabine's captain, Lieutenant A Birnie, RNR, in his cabin. The crewmen abandon their game of cards and dash off to man their positions, including the 3-inch 12-pounder gun and engine room. Shore lines are cast off and the ship's boiler is fired up. With the helmsman and Lieutenant Birnie on the bridge and the steam reciprocating engine in operation, the tugboat heads out into the River Humber and passes a Fairmile B launch heading in the opposite direction. 10:07:31 'Good News for Spiders. Special Web spun for big guns'. A report on how spider's webs are used to make gun sights showing men from a Royal Artillery gun battery rushing to man a shore mounted six-inch gun overlooking a stretch of coastline, gunners using an optical range-finding instrument known as a position-finder at the battery observation post and a view through a position finder showing the cross-hairs that help determine range. In the armaments inspection office in an ordnance plant somwhere in Britain, a common British spider is retrieved from a plant in a green house, put into a box of matches and put to work spinning a web in a u-shaped frame for the next few days. An animated diagram compares the strong heat- and damp-resistant spider's web with a less reliable man made cotton thread. After several days, the spider has weaved a web in the u-shaped frame. It is put back in the matchbox and returned to the greenhouse. A skilled worker proceeds to slice the web with a surgical knife and attaches a tiny length of spider's web onto the diaphram for an artillery position-finder that is set in clear varnish or shellac. Over a view through optical gunsights of a warship in heavy seas, a single round being fired out of a six-inch gun barrel and library shots of shells striking a ship at sea (a scene borrowed from a German newsreel showing a U-Boat in action), the report concludes, "King Bruce owed a lot to the spider - so do we!". 10:09:22 Intertitle 'Beating the Band! War-front workers build up talent in lunch break'. A short essay in natural sound and pictures consisting of shots showing workers turning out parts for rifles as they whistle and hum tunes to themselves with the constant clatter and hum of machinery and music playing in the background. A woman lathe operator offers a male colleague (boyfriend or husband ?) a cigarette. Whilst in conversation with one of his foremen, the factory manager taps the papers he is holding with a ruler as the lunchtime bell rings; the next shot shows him as the leader of a band of part-time musicians, some of whom are recognisable as the workers seen earlier. The band plays a popular tune as the rest of the shift collect lunch from the canteen and sit down to eat their meal. Shots of the band leader and the musicians - wind section, drummer (who winks at his lady friend in the canteen) and string section - playing and receiving the applause of the lunchtime crowd at the end of the number. END 10:11:25
  • Alternative Title:
  • Colour: B&W
  • Digitised: Yes
  • Object_Number: UKY 450
  • Sound: Sound
  • Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM
  • Featured Period: 1939-1945
  • Production Date: 1942-05
  • Production Country: GB
  • Production Details: Ministry of Information (Production sponsor) Paul Rotha Productions (Production company)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations: Royal Navy, SABINE (HMT), rescue tug (regiment/service)
  • Keywords: London, England, UK (geography) London, England, UK (geography) Egypt (geography) Libya (geography) Kingston-upon-Hull, East Riding, Yorkshire, England, UK (geography) Second World War 1939-1945 (event) Rationing (concept) Naval Operations, Second World War (event) Home Front, UK, Second World War (event) Aerial Warfare (theme) Armoured Warfare 1939-1945 (theme) British Army 1939-1945 (theme) British Home Front 1939-1945 (theme) British War Work 1939-1945 (theme) Coastal Forces 1939-1945 (theme) Royal Air Force 1939-1945 (theme) Royal Navy 1939-1945 (theme) Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles 1939-1945 (theme) Military Aviation (theme) North Africa 1939-1945 (theme)
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Sound Soundtrack language: English Title language: None Subtitle language: None
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Footage: 1071 ft; Running time: 11 mins 25 secs
  • HD Media:Yes
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    UKY 450

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