John Pilger - Conversations With a Working Man - World in Action (1971) 

Hi Andrew. Thank you for filling in the blanks to some of the questions I had been wanting answers to. Pity to hear Beverly passing away at such a youngish age..she must have only been in her fifties. Do you know if she had any children of her own?

Thanks for the info

Hey mate, thanks for the write up. I hope Jack's descendants and yourself went on to prosper, that was a hard job he had. Those chemical fumes looked a bit nasty, if it were today health and safety would have been all over it. Bit shocked about Beverly dying a whole decade back, she wasn't much older than me 😮

Thank you your grandfather told the truth my dad was a herdsman. Like your grandfather hard working for a pittance. Modern politicians of all colours and alot of young politically motivated university types now mock people like this. Listen and learn.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. Even now I’ll have another look at this episode to remind me about what matters in life. Poor Audrey, lost Jack as a relatively young man and her daughter too.

how right you are JJ. its a sad indictment to todays society that such garbage is even given a single story let alone be as popular, rich and talentless as they are. I often wonder if jack and his wife are still alive to see such a debacle.. the world has gone mad and I cannot see the situation taking a turn for the better.

Great example of what.? Doing something you despise working for a pittance. The Working class are forced, or basically told do crap jobs you will achieve nothing. That's utter and complete garbage.

@@Rivelino824 it's a great example of the work ethic of previous generations. Work ethic has been eroded over the years. I agree that he should have been rewarded more for his work, but that's a separate issue.

@@JJ-zg1hh I'm not degrading the man's work ethic, or dedication. But if you want to motivate, and inspire people of a certain background show them this. Also I worked in a factory, and building sites up to the age 21. Then I realised I'm going to get nowhere with the status quo. Ive managed to work my way up to having three food businesses. Also like to add I'm thick as a brick so if I'm able to achieve anyone can.

@@Rivelino824 fair comment. Most people won't have the courage to set up a business though and will put their trust into loyalty with their employer. I just admire the man in the video for the way he conducts himself in the face of all the hardshipsthrown at him. My fear is that the current generations (including my own) think that life will be handed to them on a plate - if they could see what this guy went through they may have a change of mindset.

Wish we had more true journalists like John Pilger

@@nemo7550 Have you seen his film about the chagos islands .. it’s called “Stealing A Nation “ ? It’s very sad .. but tells us a lot about evil .

As a young man I was very conservative and we hated Pilger and the light he shed on injustice. I feel very different now. A magnificent crusader for truth and justice.

​@@nemo7550 Absolutely, John Pilger was a legend. He went to war zones as well Vietnam etc. He was a proper journalist and sought out & told the truth

An amazing man

Sad to hear that, and you are 100 percent right

Exactly the same situation (3 kids even) but she passed a month after retirement age of 66. DWP sent condolences and said they'd take back the two extra months they paid. Rip to your mum.

The most poignant thing I've read in a while.

God bless your late mum Sir.

Very sad 😢

yeh i hate labour. they're centre not left.

vote workers party , Galloway

They're Tory lite like the Democrats in the US. All part of the plan.

They keep themselves down, God knows why. Karl Marx never did a real days work in his life, he just wanted to make some money from writing his stupid book.

Trouble is too many people vote against their own best interests, I'm sure in 1971 people like Jack knew the tories aren't for the working classes

@@fredatlas4396 yet I bet any of them still alive now, vote Tory, because they want " Britain to be Britain" again. What they forget is that it was Labour who built what they (Boomers) know as Britain.

I was not aware that he had died. I am sad to hear that. That's a loss to all thinking listeners/viewers of real news.

@philipspencer1834 Whitney Webb has inherited Pilger's work! Look her up. One Nation Under Blackmail

Spot on

Yep - John Pilger is up there with Steven Seagal and Tucker Carlson as being a top arse-licker to Vladimir Putin.

Programme

@@sandgrownun66You forget to capitalise 'God' several comments back. Don't thank me. You're welcome :)

Well said Sir, I agree with you.

Unfortunately those with the power to do that find native working class history to be boring. One of the chats how hosts was asked to go on Who Do You Think You Are but after they looked into his family which consists of a long line of miners they decided not to start filming.

@@Vroomfondle1066 Firstly, what do you mean by, "several comments back"? There was were no comments in this thread, except yours. How could anyone know, to which other thread's comments you're referring to? Secondly, congratulations, on picking up on my intentional non-capitalization of the the word "god", which is also "dog", spelt backwards. Rather than tell you, can you guess why I would do such a thing?

How far back have we slipped under tory rule ?

the uk has been going backwards for a while, it’ll be workhouse time again soon

Actually it has: they still deal with all this, but the government floods their areas with immigrants, replacing them in their communities then, if they complain, they get called a bunch of gammons by the posh middle class and mocked.

We’re not a Christian democracy anymore

At least Jack could afford a house.

Heroes

Jack Walker looks to be a fine fella but that is bollocks. ...What's heroic about submitting to working in a shite job all your life, making 'mill owner rich whilst knowingly having no possibility of anything interesting or good coming your way and eventually keeling over due to it? That's perfect submission to mediocrity and monotony, it's not heroism - the working class hero is a conjuring trick to see that submission celebrated, it's bollocks. A hero is someone who does something ABNORMAL, something EXCEPTIONAL, something RISKY, who WINS out... what Jack Walker does is perfectly predictable, isn't it? They shot the film, he stayed where he was, made the factory owner lots of cash and eventually keeled over. If that's a hero I'm Napoleon Bonaparte.

@@JesseP.Watson Did you watch the video? Jack said that he'd like to set up his own business at some point. I don't know his family circumstances. However, if he was bright enough he should have sat the Eleven Plus. Got into a Grammar School, and that would have been his ticket out of working class drudgery. You'd have thought that would have been what his parents wanted? Instead, he left school at fourteen, and went into the same manual labour as his father.

@@sandgrownun66 I've nought against Jack, a good man, that reverence of the guy who accepts perfect monotony is what I meant to push back against a bit, I've heard it one too many times (I was brought up around this same area). ...Because, the truth is, we can always get out of a position if we REALLY want to, we might end up in a worse one, of course, but we can try. ...And the misplaced patriotism of the OP like Jack was a hero for spending his life colouring cloth for Britain... he was employed in a factory, a private company, there's no great service there and, to my mind, it's gullible to think otherwise. No, it's just a job, making cash, no need to pretend its of great importance, it ain't. Jack Walker's story is one of hardship, monotony and obscurity, there's a beauty in that, no need to pretend he's some great British hero.

@@richardprocter4905 Didn't that sweat and tears have to be supervised by educated or bright people. Directing plans of innovations and inventions made by even more talented people?

Well said

Now, we’ve sold it all off.

​@@earlbee3196To the poxy Russians.

@@earlbee3196 As Fred Dibnah said, "we couldn't make a bean can now".

@@sandgrownun66 so sad. 70% of what I live with in my flat is made in great Britain, I just always brought British and looked after it.

The cigarette industry played its part.

@@bastogne315that’s what I was thinking but to be honest about this, by 1971 we all knew of the harmful effects of smoking.

I learned great wisdom from the guys i worked with in the 70's. Most served in the war... Glad to be alive. Tbey were patient with me and tought me well. I try to pass this wisdom to my grandkids... God bless everyone like Jack.

@@tsb3093 Correct. The first concrete evidence of cigarettes causing disease was published in 1950 by Professor Doll in the UK. Nearly everyone has a relative who was killed early by smoking.

@@sandgrownun66…and by the same token my father and mother were never smokers and lived long lives

The entire planet is enslaved

You're just changing the meaning of the word enslaved. They had to work harder than most people in the west do now, but they would have looked back at the people a few generations before them with the same feeling we have looking at them. It's because of all these generations of people working that our lives are relatively easy now. The real problem is that we are squandering their gift to us.

Well at least he was able to own a house, today's youth are unable to build a future and own property, they are working to pay rent and bills, that's true slavery.

@@stevem815 Excellent point well made Steve. I suppose the point I was making was what little alternative they had at that time and one has to consider the notion of enslavement as a figurative concept rather than the traditional sense of the word, which arguably does a disservice to those people who laboured under real terms of enslavement. In relative terms I live a lavish lifestyle compared to the family in the documentary; though a Russian Oligarch would see me as a peasant.

This is the way it's always been. Although Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. If you want equality, where everyone was equally poor, you could always try Communism.

I came to the conclusion fairly early in life that hard work is rarely rewarded and your work is just making other people richer It's one aspect of working class that's incomprehensible to me, they are too conditioned by the Protestant work ethic I guess

@@keithparker1346 Did that apply to the USSR?

@@sandgrownun66Yep - the USSR was the same story as the West - a bunch of useless w*nkers at the top taking the fruits of everybody's hard work....

@@sandgrownun66 what has this got to do with USSR?

Most working people are robbed of their retirement, it was engineered so they would see very little of it, and that's why the qualification age keeps rising, the saddest thing is that people do absolutely nothing about it!

We seem to now have the same problem now where ordinary people are getting poorer and are not listened to.

There are some, today, who will tell you how easy the previous generations had it.

​@@Automedon2Easy, no. Substantially cheaper and more homogeneous, yes.

nah, Still some pretty rough jobs out there. Jack could afford a house, holiday etc- which is more than some can expect these days

There's people in exactly the same position and even worse today - I've met them, I'm probably one of them.

3:45 25 yrs to go HE WORKED ALL HIS LIFE AND BARELY GOT TO ENJOY HIS PENSION

​@@banksterkid5930exactly. It makes all the praise of hard work seem crass

​@@banksterkid5930it's designed that way. I'm 57 have to wait another 10 years for pension here in Australia. Working manual labour all my life. Have a hard enough time getting out of bed

This was the way for millions. Somehow things changed and we are living longer - why, and for what I don't know.

​@@bas4903your back must be in bits by now. Don't know how you do it.

Beverly was his daughter , Audrey was his wife. His daughter passed away too

He also wanted to marry her up into middle class 🤣🤣🤣

Imagine if the workers in all countries stopped having children.

infuriating when you compare it to what passes for journalism today.

This kind of thinking is now decried by an ultra right wing media as radical marxist and unaustralian/unbritish etc. In fact any view that is not hyper capitalist is attacked as extreme left.

John Pilger was a titan of hard hitting current affairs documentaries. He did fantastic research, went into the field, and left nothing unturned. He was also an humanitarian. This was journalism at it's finest

Beautiful comment this my friend. I have a frog in my throat watching this. What a true hero Jack was, a true northern grafter. Wouldn’t it be nice to go back a shake a true gentleman’s hand.

Get a grip

​@@scouseaussie1638shut up

Are we, how do you make that out then ?

Where's your god's blessings here?

i loved the usic to it - great show

I loved the programme. As I grew up it helped me become socially aware. I learned about so much about life in the real world and politics.

For me it was a must-see along with World at War.

On at peak time too. After Coronation St.

I was born 1980 and I remember watching this, and panorama.

Hi Pat. Do you know what became of his daughter?

@@spike197047 sorry mate I don’t, lost contact many years ago

Thank you for this. There’s something about Jack that brings me back time and time again. Only one when this was made and yet he represents so much that is good, decent and honest. Seemingly he didn’t get to enjoy much of his retirement?

Rip a true hero xx

@@spike197047 Hi Stephen, I am his daughter Bev's son-in-law, unfortunately she passed nearly 11 years ago now.

Pilger

@@sandgrownun66 slip of the finger , yikes 😧

As well as John Pilger

Why didn't he use a car, or get a bus?

He couldn’t help but brag a few minutes in he does nothing but smoke for an hour and a half once machine is set.

@@jenniferindigochameleon6680 point accepted

I​t isn't, & wasn't, always that simple, or an available choice. Is it !

@@user-vt2jo3oi7i What isn't an available choice?

Luckily we have the slave ship Amazon to knock things back to medival times. And the covid outbreak is exactly what those bastard's need to make us greatful for even less.

We've gone backwards in terms of our current lack of respect for humble people like Jack and adoration of people on Chlamydia Island, or is it called love island, I can't remember

Why does he need to get his own house when he has a council house?

People on the dole aren't all shirkers

Using the "st*b" word, had my reply go down the memory hole.

Better see the optician to see if they can remove the rose tint from your spectacles...

@@Vroomfondle1066 It was better then. Not so many ragheads then.

@@Vroomfondle1066 You better get to the doctor's to see about that verbal diarrhoea that's splattering out of you mouth.

You must be looking at it with rose tinted spectacles: there WAS drugs, there WAS killings, there WAS MASSES of litter, and there WAS an ABUNDANCE of racism i.e. people with no manners. Your comment reeks of ignorance, old man.

They weren't that clean but most of the litter was paper based and soon disappeared unlike the plastics of today.

I live in a Central European city that was surprisingly clean...until we got the first McDonald's. The McDonald's rubbish on the street started appearing a few blocks away from the "restaurant". It was the only litter. It seems to have created a sort of freedom to throw trash around. Before McDonald's, cigarette butts and nothing much else. But once people started throwing McDonald's trash around, the litter problem got worse and worse.

It's easy to keep a flat or house clean when you only buy and have as much as you need to use. The modern family "needs" so much crap, kids wade through toys on the floor and can't find anything to do, closets stuffed with more clothes and shoes than anyone actually wears... So we "embrace minimalism" to try to have a clean home and less stress. But how much real money are we shovelling into the landfill when we become minimalists? We want...something...and we buy stuff to fill the desire. These people had community, family, convictions, the ability to converse and the desire to make a decent world. They had values higher than buying stuff,so they didn't drown in stuff. They invested in family, neighbours, society, hobbies... *Real life* instead of buying a "lifestyle."

@@stevetaylor8698exactly. I remember stray dogs and their excrement all over the streets. There were litter campaigns when I was at primary school in the 1970’s. Memory is a lot sweeter than reality! Too many people love to wear rose tinted glasses!

spot on and now they want to make retirement 71 they want it all , with a pittance in return , the longer longevity the higher the age of toil , i am passionate about this country but it makes you weep , and this lot that are in governance now , and the opposition , detest us to be honest.

I love the World in Action theme tune, very evocative.

Yep the memories are indeed haunting

8 o'clock, wasn't it? After Coronation Street on a Monday night.

Do you notice we don't see this so much anymore? Raw reporting of British life. Its all gloss now, not real.

It certainly looked it, My grandad used to say the days were long and sometimes only a dripping sandwich to come home to afterward. But there was none of this complaining and entitlement you see today. Good people.

? ......Huh? How was the world "a much nicer place"? To work in some chemical-drenched factory with no windows for 60 hours a week until you die with no money at 62? Man, that SUCKS.

@@paulbaumer8210 60 hours a day? What planet do you live on?

A week (corrected).........but it may as well have been a day for the effort put in.

Yeah it's just been out sorced to China, some poor sods still paying the price somewhere. ​@@paulbaumer8210

Laetitia Logan same with mine! He drove for years, Ireland was a bloody hard place to raise a family. We were poor but happy and looking at kids today I don't think id swop it, gave me a great head for managing hard times myself!

bless your father and his generation x

@@SuperStevien Thank you so much

@@andrewgoodbody2121 Thank you AG...it was damn hard, but the hardship set me up in so many ways

Except that your god didn't bless them.

True. You can find great storytelling on RU-vid though.

What are u talking about captain ridiculous…. It’s a reality documentary and they still make them today 🤭

@@dcanes5720 thanks for your offensive and unnecessary input. There is nothing on TV that looks at social issues in any way as effectively as World in Action did. You may go now.

Agree with that

A lovely story. I often wonder if the youth of today look back on the the post 2000s with such fondness.

🙏❤️☝️ me too 😔

Well, yours is an interesting comment. He also said he dreamed that his daughter would become a "glamour girl" and a guy in a Jaguar would come along and rescue her. "Marry her way out of the working class" What is different?

@@ReputationManagementDCannell I think perhaps he was thinking of the then accepted classes; working, middle and upper. Perhaps when he meant glamour, he had in mind not working in a factory. You could be right, however I think he would have been too much of a traditional man to see parading around in the manner we see today as acceptable.

That's how people were back then and there was a great community spirit. Everyone pretty much knew everyone else and neighbours would do each other favours, knowing they would get it back when needed. Kids would be in each others houses all the time and the mum would so often make an extra tea for them. There wasn't as much money in those days, but people had dignity and respect for each other.

Yes, MT provided the play book for Ronnie Ray gun and Milton Friedman - and look where we are now. Disintegration of all that's worthwhile

Too right!!

Agreed.. amazing

He never got to retirement then! Any idea how life worked out for Beverly?

@@BigDuke6ixxnot many do breathing in the stuff Jack did every day. No idea about Beverley, hope life worked out well for her though.

Poor man died at 61 after working all his life. These politicians don’t work.

Christ. Working people didn't live long in those days did they. So many dying in their 50s and 60s. Hellish

Yes,it did make one rather tearful to see good and decent people receive so little in life. Although one can blame the captains of industry for the conditions of the likes of Jack Walker the likes of Jack have to shoulder some of the blame. I have little doubt that Jack and his colleagues have,''always voted Labour'',just like their fathers. The Labour party has sold the British working class down the Swanee with the worst Labour government being led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. I suppose the only way Jack and his pals will ever get off the treadmill is to either win the football pools or the lotto. Or failing that death!!

Empathy shows humanity. Even today some people are relying on food banks, brave new world; I think not...............

@@beaucorr2561 you don't think that the owners of mills etc sold out their employees by moving production abroad your comments after that are shameful

£4 a day gross don’t forget

This was just before the high inflation of the mid-seventies in the UK, killed the value of money.

@@philshine3388 If he had £20 and some smash in his pay packet it would be £4 net. If he was losing 18p for being late, 'i.e. quartered, that would make 72p/hr gross, 30% tax and NI comes out at 50p/hr net, a rough guess of course as that doesn't take into account tax allowances etc. Not horrific for the times. I started work as an apprentice blacksmith early 80s and my first year rate was 90p/hr. No idea what the time served rate would have been as I hated the job and was frankly a bit sh!t at it so got out of it after a few years and been doing something else that's kept me equally poor ever since.😞

Or, they knew they were being filmed so on best behaviour and house tidied up.

​@terri6854 Just because they are poor, doesn't mean they're not clean or tidy. There are working class slobs and working class people who aren't slobs, just like any other social class.

nice comment mate.

Not diversity.

@@martingonzalez2850 Said Mr Gonzalez 😂

@@NoLefTurnUnStoned. Said the usual one brain cell tube 🙄

@@martingonzalez2850 What? I’ve got GCSE’s in Home Economics and Gender Studies!!