WORKER AND WAR-FRONT MAGAZINE ISSUE NO 12 [Main Title]

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  • Title: WORKER AND WAR-FRONT MAGAZINE ISSUE NO 12 [Main Title]
  • Film Number: UKY 812
  • Other titles:
  • Summary: A wartime newsreel highlighting the part played by ordinary working men and women in Britain's war effort featuring an exhibition on the plans for the post-war reconstruction of a London borough, how a female Post Office worker persuaded her employers to allow women to wear trousers at work and the manufacture of cameras used by the Royal Air Force for its photographic reconnaissance missions over enemy territory.
  • Description: START 10:00:00 'Model City'. A report on an exibition showing a plan to rebuild Bermondsey "if given half a chance" beginning with views of three storey tenements and rows of plain two-storey terraced cottages with cramped backyards ("Streets like this must have no place in post-war Britain", says the commentary), a 'blitzed' church (St James' Church ?), destroyed homes, a view looking north along Tower Bridge Road showing electric commuter trains using the main south-east London railway line near London Bridge Station, with Tower Bridge in the background, and warehouses and river barges on Bermondsey's Thames waterfront to illustrate the legacy of poor housing, war damage and the wholly inadequate separation of residential and industrial districts. Architects working for London County Council (LCC) put the finishing touches to a scale model of Bermondsey that shows the ambitious reconstruction plans for the borough after the war. The model includes a replica in miniature of Tower Bridge, the rebuilt St James' (?) Church, the new warehouses and quaysides planned for Bermondsey's waterfront, rows of trees, open spaces and big thoroughfares lined by blocks of apartments. Scenes at an LCC exhibition in which ordinary members of the public get a chance to view the model. The camera picks out people of all ages, some in uniform, a young couple with an infant, middle-aged men, teenage boys and an elderly woman. 10:03:16 'Mail and the Female. Highland Postie starts a Fashion'. A report about the introduction of trousers for all 16,000 female Post Office employees beginning with shots of post bags labelled for delivery to York, Glasgow, Leeds and Cardiff and containing trousers for women and three women 'posties' wearing trousers (or 'Camerons' as they apparently were called) as they head off in the snow at the start of their mail delivery round. The story of how trousers became an acceptable part of the Post Office uniform for its female employees begins with a scene showing Jean Cameron, a 'postie' from Glen Clova in the Glens of Angus north of Dundee, being called in to the post office by her mother (Glen Clova's post mistress and wearing a 'sensible' tweed jacket and skirt) to take a telephone call from the district Post Master. He wants to know what size skirt she needs; Jean replies that trousers would be more suitable (no synchronised sound). The camera follows Jean, wearing a dark Post Office jacket and trousers, as she travels along a lane through snow-covered countryside on her bicycle and, leaving the bicycle by the roadside, heads across-country through the snow, crosses the River Esk with the help of cables strung across it and delivers the mail to an old lady living in a cottage, the local Church of Scotland minister and the local primary school headmistress during the children's break time. She heads back through the snow past Highland cattle, reclaims her bicycle and wheels it through the snow past local farmers with horse-drawn sledges loaded up with straw bales and continues on her way through the snow-covered glen. A view of St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London and the General Post Office (showing signs of bomb damage) in St Martins-le-Grand. 'Glen Cova' on the destination indicator on the Post Office bus as its driver drops off a parcel to Jean Cameron's mother at Glen Clova. Jean collects the package and afterwards shows off her new trousers to her mother before heading off on her bicycle on another mail delivery round. The story ends with a shot of women 'posties' wearing trousers heading out of the General Post Office in St Martins-le-Grand at the start of their mail delivery round. 10:06:43 'Sky Witness: Evidence in Camera'. A report on the manufacture of cameras used in aerial photographic reconnaissance missions by the Royal Air Force starting with unsteady operational footage of a night raid on a German city, an air-to-air shot of a de Havilland Mosquito PR. 1 (?) in flight and 'before' and 'after' bomb assessment aerial photographs of the site of the annual industrial fair at Leipzig (allegedly used as an aircraft factory), the Mohne Dam, one of the three targets of the May 1943 'Dambusters' raid by RAF 617 Squadron, and the Gnome-Rhone aero engine plant in Limoges bombed in February 1944 (?) by the same squadron. Two RAF ground crewmen at RAF Benson, the base of No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PRU), carry cameras over to a PRU Mosquito at dispersal. A pile of aluminium castings for F.24 14-inch camera lens mountings inside the factory where they are being made. A woman lathe operator oversees the manufacture of a lens mounting. A shot of a large number of F.14 camera lenses; a skilled worker picks up one lens and inserts it into an aluminium lens mounting and uses a long-handled screwdriver to secure it in place. A camera body is fashioned on a lathe out of an aluminium casting. A row of male and female employees sitting at a work table assembling camera shutter and film winding gear. The machinery in a completed camera body is tested to ensure its reliable operation. Another camera technician carries out tests on one new camera lens in a studio at the government aircraft inspection department, using a large test card that resembles the old BBC black and white TV version. He compares a negative of the test card taken by the new lens with an original one and judges the results to be satisfactory. A new F.24 camera is packed away in a travelling container. Two ground crewmen place two F.24 vertical cameras in the bomb bay of a Mosquito. Shots showing a ground mechanic starting up the aircraft's starboard Rolls Royce Merlin engine and receiving a blast of hot petrol vapour from the exhaust and the rotating starboard engine propeller spinner. An RAF Mosquito light bomber heads down the runway for take off as an entire Mosquito squadron lines up to follow in its wake. End titles. END 10:10:20
  • Alternative Title:
  • Colour: B&W
  • Digitised: Yes
  • Object_Number: UKY 812
  • Sound: Sound
  • Access Conditions: IWM Attribution: © IWM
  • Featured Period: 1939-1945
  • Production Date: 1944-09-01
  • Production Country: GB
  • Production Details: Ministry of Information (Production sponsor) Paul Rotha Productions (Production company)
  • Personalities, Units and Organisations: Royal Air Force, Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (regiment/service)
  • Keywords: Glen Clova, Angus, Scotland, UK (geography) Benson, Oxfordshire, England, UK (geography) Bermondsey, London, England, UK (geography) Second World War 1939-1945 (event) British Home Front 1939-1945 (theme) Royal Air Force 1939-1945 (theme) British War Work 1939-1945 (theme)
  • Physical Characteristics: Colour format: B&W Sound format: Sound Soundtrack language: English Title language: English Subtitle language: None
  • Technical Details: Format: 35mm Number of items/reels/tapes: 1 Footage: 966 ft; Running time: 10 mins 20 secs
  • HD Media:Yes
  • Link to IWM Collections page:

    UKY 812

  • Related IWM Collections Objects:

    MWY 110 (MANUFACTURE AND ASSEMBLY OF F.24 CAMERAS [Allocated Title])
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