Springtime in an English Village (1944) 

It must have been very emotional for you to watch this, I hope you were able to download it at the time and show it to your Mom :-) I wonder if she ever talked about that time in her life. I can only remember fragments of my young life, I was born that year actually, so I was too young to remember the end of the War in Europe. Your Mom would be 84 now I guess, and hopefully still going strong. Regards to her and yourselves. Cheerio.

How lovely what a gift for her after so many years ............ I'm English and grew after the war up on the edge of London and can't believe we ever lived like this!? I'm pretty sure this is 'rose tinted glasses' as it was towards the end of the war and moral was low. Whatever very sweet and enjoyable, made me smile. x

That is so cool!

You could always pause it and do a screen grab.

It's called black people!

The gentleness and benevolence quite moving. Imagine the horrors enacted not far away. Fortunately separated by that 'strip of water'.

@Bighill 'obbit That all sounds so positively, blissfully right!

Beautiful to read of your experience in Sussex........... I'm from London and very interested in history and because we were a port, really the centre of the world for trade, we were very inclusive. I think it was so hard simply to survive colour was not such an issue. People get caught up in black white but the true issue then as now is rich poor alas................. I watched a brilliant forensic documentary here on yt about a person buried in the grounds of a monastry in Ipswich Suffolk from the fourteen hundreds who was of African origin. A historian had done quite a lot of research into being BAME going back to the twelve hundreds. I would include the link but I think that causes problems have just looked it up it called 'History Cold Case - Ipswich Man' and it is on Reel Truth History Documentaries channel here on RU-vid. Ironically narrated by Laurence Fox! Enjoy PS I believe we are going through a process of evolving into a society that lives from it's heart and not it's head and so we will become more 'healthy' in many way's including how we bring up and teach our children. Childhood is so important. Ironically the most popular school for parents working in the California tech industries is the Rudolph Steiner/Waldorf School which though not perfect teaches through play and creativity, following the seasons of the year and the christian calender!!! ......... though later they are academicaly rigorous. Creativity is what they value and where innovation resides........................

Multiculturalism has worked a treat ..exactly how they intended to destroy European identity .. no other reason or need for such a program .i ,like many other english men have watched with our own eyes the systematic wholesale destruction of our culture for the sake of others and we are silenced

@@cgrieve1636 Stop your bleating typical crying imperialist, pinning for the halcyon days of the sixteen hundreds when Britain ruled waves and they all bowed down. Not tired yet of robbing, pillaging and holding The Other in servitude ever since, still not enough? European identity has not changed, STOP LYING AND THE SELF PITY When you know you still have the handle, YOU and everyone like you ARE FUCKING WEAK AND PATHETIC Cry more!

They are and they aren't. Yes, the film was made to promote a vision of England to encourage immigration, but it was also actually a real event in a real place - the filmmakers went there because the May Queen choice had been reported, and other pupils confirm that they chose their Caribbean friend by ballot. The world it represents was, in fact, real enough, but of course the motivation for the film is more complex. That quaint village life certainly existed, as did a degree of openness in many places that we find surprising retrospectively. There's nothing wrong with wanting that, albeit it wasn't the reality for everyone, and didn't represent the experiences of the majority of immigrants in the UK's urban centres.

It literally states in the description that the original purpose was to attract support from men and women from across the empire. Also, can't help to point out that cheap labour describes 95% of global immigration.

Cheap labour! Are you having a laugh! In 1944, 95% of the population were just that “cheap labour” even when I grew up in the 60s food was scarce and everyone was living on the bread line! I am sick of this thought that every Englishman were well off, it’s only really been since the mid to late seventies that people living in this country had spare money!

I live in the next village and it certainly looks like Stanion

it’s definetly stanion!

Thought the same myself, especially in Covid 2020!

Dated 1944. It wasn't always good.

I agree....lovely

RIP May Queen Stephanie.

What could possibly of changed? "diversity is our strength"!

I was just wondering what the dressing-up was about, thanks for that.

@Kevin CHOU point proven.

@Kevin CHOU You were a bit late to insult him. You lack a certain amount of empathy. Why should he shut up anyway it was his opinion, to which he is entitled. You are an example of what people have become today, a waste of time and resources.

Machete gangs

Its sidney poitiers daughters

I doubt it very much.

@@ianwilkinson4602 @sharonpeters2262 is exactly right. That May Queen is my Mumsie (grandmother) and that is in fact princess Elizabeth.

did you forget to take your medication this morning?

@@johnauger5746 Awwww... Aren't you special... I base that comment on many years studying "Cases on the Law Of Torts" by Cecil A. Wright Q.C., S.J.D., LL.D. You really ought to read it to understand how the British Class System works against it's citizens.

Your brain is broken.

@@snowflakemelter1172 You just don't understand the how the British Empire was managed, it started at home of course.

Sometimes it seemed like England way back was black, white and grey anyway.

Hi, did you notice there is someone below - highgatemini - who wrote 5 years ago telling how she met Stephanie the May Queen. Check it out

Heather Absalom Dear Heather Absalom & others, I met the girl featured in this film today, in the doctor's office. Her name is Stephanie. She and her nonidentical twin sister, Connie, were both in this film; Stephanie was the one crowned Queen of the May. She is the daughter of a Nigerian man and an Irish woman. She said that at the time they lived in London, only three Black families lived there. I asked her whether there had been perceptible racism in London at that time; she said it was there (imagine the word there is underlined) but not obvious. She and her sisters and brother were indeed evacuees, as an earlier commenter posited; they were sent to the country when she was 8. She said there were no other Black families in that town. Though this was a propaganda film, from what I gathered, the children in her class had actually chosen her Queen of the May, and she was the first Black Queen of the May in England; this perhaps prompted the reenactment shown in the film. The teacher shown was one of the teachers but not her primary teacher. She knew the name of the primary song in the film -- it was something like The Bells of Rhymney--different tune from the Pete Seeger & Byrds version we may know, but similar lyrics (though not all the same). She also named the game where they link hands and go through/under other linked hands, but I don't remember what she called it. In 1958 Stephanie moved from London to Alabama with her American husband, who she met during the war. She had at least two children, and currently lives in Maryland. In her face, you can still see the face of the little girl in the film.

@@jwhit8083 Wonderful piece of background information, thank you. I hope they all had memorable lives. I wonder if any of them ever saw this lovely film, how emotional that would have been. Greetings from Wales in the UK. Goodbye.

Stephanie Marshall, the May Queen, was my maternal grandmother. She passed away recently. Her service will be held at Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in Washington, DC on 12/16.

@@ianwilkinson4602 yes, Mumsie (Stephanie) and Auntie Connie (her twin) have both seen the video.

Children's Overture by Roger Quilter

Lots of US soldiers were stationed in England during 1944. Is it possible that the little black girl was a daughter of one of those soldiers and attended an English village school during that time? I could well be wrong, but it was just a thought.

Children's Overture by Roger Quilter

The tune which was played the most frequently in this film was that of a song called "Girls And Boys Come Out To Play".

They are black not coloured, that’s a racist term.

They are twins, my mumsie and aunt.

GlamGlamable The Catholic Church devotes the month of May to Mary. Hence the crowning of Queen of the May. I assume that this is an Anglican (Episcopalian) church, but probably a very "High" church one.

@@Denis-tg6jw The Queen of the May is a pagan survival, as is Maypole Dancing. Nothing to do with Mary, or the Christian church, Catholic or Anglican, although the country parsons of course went along with it, most countryside English Christianity in those days being really related mainly to nature, underneath it all. Think about the majority of the parishioners only going to church at Christmas, Easter, and Harvest Festival, the only times in the year when the churches were full. [Speaking from experience, by the way.]

Rob Wilde but adopted by Christianity.

@@Denis-tg6jw Broadly speaking, yes. I was just trying to say that it was taken in and subsumed into Christianity by pragmatic clergy from outside, gradually, during the middle part of the Christian era, rather than being an internal part of original [Middle-Eastern, or Roman] Catholic doctrine. However, your point does suggest the possibility that there would have been early, purely Christian, celebrations of Mary in association with youth, springtime, purity, and of course flowers, which could have run parallel with the pagan version, and then merged with it. The clergy would have their reasons for it, and the peasantry theirs, and even if in places the feelings were different, everyone was happy.

Its not amazing when you see that the film shows a mono culture and you yourself admit it looks more peaceful and civilised.

yea you liked them when they were kissing white mans ass and bowing down to white master. the new age is finally here, and there wont be no "yessir massa" and buckdancing anymore. deal with it.

I never saw a black when I was a kid. I grew up in a monoracial, Christian, crime free village in West Cumberland. We went to school, went to church on a Sunday, attended Scouts and were typically naughty but loveable rogues who poured beer on the Flimby Town Band during the Seaton Carnival. You are talking out of your rectum.

TimelineProvision TP Look, don't impose a guilt complex on the whole world. My ancestors never had slaves but my grandparents and great grandparents were themselves slaves to a system that exploited, used and abused them. I shouldn't have to explain this. If you want to understand then visit the museums devoted to the cotton mills, the pits and the workhouses. Going further, remember the 'Pal's Battalions', the children of the pits and the cotton mills fed into the 'meat grinders' of Loos, The Somme, Ypres and Paschendaele. Don't give me a fucking guilt trip. Our grandparents paid for their descendant's security in blood.

TimelineProvision TP You've got a million chips on your shoulder. As regards black people, my grandparents probably never saw a black man as Britain was a monoracial society back then. Even I didn't see black people 'in the flesh' until I moved to multiracial southern England. I'm simply not interested in 'black oppression' and 'white racism'. Sorry.

john kevin wilshaw So you're saying that cute black kids are everywhere now ... thanks!

MrCagivaman here here

The only thing I can make out is the children voting in majority for ‘Stephanie’.

That's just it - they don't know. Don't know what has been lost.

Instead of tarts you mean or worse? I agree, they follow trends like demented ewes.

What is ?

sheene71 Cheer up, there's still plenty of white people in the world.