2024 should be the tenth anniversary of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival. Much to our regret SWTUC, the organiser of the Martyr’s Festival have made it clear they no longer wish us to deliver Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival as part of the main festival.
When we withdrew from the 2023 Martyr’s Festival, due to the censorship of the film Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie, we remained on reasonable terms with the organisers and with an understanding that in 2024 we would return to Tolpuddle, perhaps in a renewed form.
Since then the position of SWTUC and the Martyr’s Festival seems to have hardened and despite numerous attempts by us to initiate discussions about a way forward this year, SWTUC seem to have decided they do not want us at the festival.
In 2022 the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival had screened a 30 minute teaser version of the film, Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie with no controversy or comment from anyone other than the 22 people who saw the film in the Vintage Mobile Cinema.
In 2023 the full, feature-length, version of the film was scheduled for a screening as part the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival .
Much to our surprise when we forwarded the screening schedule to the Martyr’s Festival’s organisers, we were informed that SW TUC would not allow us to screen the film Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and unless we agreed not to screen the film we would not be allowed on the festival site.
The film Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie is a modest, low-budget, talking-heads documentary, that tells the story of the Labour Party from September 2015, when Corbyn was elected party leader, until the 2019 election, after which he resigned as party leader.
The film is well-researched, professionally made and measured in tone.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the film is that it tells this well-known story from the perspective of the Corbyn supporters who were suspended, disciplined and expelled by the Labour Party because they supported Corbyn.
In early 2023, and for reasons we find it difficult to comprehend, Kier Starmer and the Labour leadership decided that this modest little film represented some sort of existential threat to the Labour Party and like some Soviet despot behind the Iron Curtain, they set out to proscribe the film…
Our position was and still is that there is nothing in this film that warrants censorship of any kind, let alone an outright ban, and the censorship of the film by the TUC can only be understood as part of the partisan attempt to silence the entire left of the Labour Movement.
In banning the film SW TUC had ‘taken sides’ in the bitterest civil war in the Labour Party since WW2.
We did not wish to ‘take sides’ in this way and regard this type of censorship of ideas as entirely inappropriate for an event such as Tolpuddle.
As a result the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival withdrew from the 2023 Martyr’s Festival in Tolpuddle.
Several months later and at the bequest of many local and national trade unionists and Trade Councils, we arranged a screening of the film in a village hall near to Tolpuddle on the Saturday afternoon of the festival. This of course did not take place as the entire festival was cancelled due to a freak weather event.
As agreed last spring, in the Autumn of last year we approached SWTUC to discuss the future of film at Tolpuddle. The initial response was very hostile and we were accused in writing of cynically attempting “to undermine the festival and all that it hopes to achieve”.
After ten years of working for nothing to keep film at Tolpuddle it is galling to be described in such terms and despite repeated attempts to overcome the resentment of SWTUC it is clear we are not invited to the Martyr’s Festival.
It seems a strange kind of ‘solidarity’ that relies on the censorship, suspension and expulsion of anyone who questions ‘the party line’ but nonetheless we wish the festival all the very best and will miss all our friends and film lovers.
A festival in Tolpuddle to celebrate the story of the 6 martyrs has been running in one form or another since 1875. In it’s present form the festival was developed in 1997 by Nigel Costley the then newly appointed South West TUC Regional Secretary, with the help of Dick Muskett from the Workers Beer Company. Today the festival ranks with The Durham Miners Gala and Levellers Day in Burford, Oxfordshire, as one the key summer events in the annual calendar of the UK Left. Music, theatre and dance have been well represented at the festival since 1997 and the possibility of incorporating radical film into the festival has been on the agenda for many years. In 2014 the decision to show films at Tolpuddle coincided with the restoration of the Vintage Mobile Cinema and we were able to make the ambition for film at Tolpuddle into a reality. So in 2014 The Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival was founded by Chris Jury of Changing Stories CIC and Reuben Irving from Gorilla Cinema / University of Worcester. It is hoped the film festival will run for many years and grow in size and scope. Ken Loach is a supporter of the film festival and says: “I strongly support the idea of a Radical Film Festival at Tolpuddle. Films can bring in new ideas, new perspectives, new voices. We need real political representation and to re-discover our militancy. Films that reflect struggles of working people can be a spur to action” In normal years all screenings of The Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival take place in the Vintage Mobile Cinema.
Why do we need film at Tolpuddle? Our friends at Culture Matters made a short film to explain why film matters politically. https://youtu.be/TcttOqQ83uo
tolpuddleradicalfilm.org.uk 