Cinema: Black & White in Britain

Flame in the Streets. “Jacko, you’ve got more principles than a monkey’s got fleas.” That’s what the factory owner says, and any mug at the bench would say the same of Jacko Palmer (John Mills). He’s the best man in the shop, bar none. He’s a hard worker, a faithful husband, a devoted father and a loyal subject of the Queen. But first, last and always Jacko is a union man: first at every meeting and the last to go, president of the shop council since the year dot. What’s right for the union is right for Jacko. and what’s wrong for the union he fights till he sweats till his hat floats.

Race prejudice, in Jacko’s opinion, is wrong for the union, a democratic organization in which the color of a man’s skin counts no more than the color of his socks, as long as his dues are paid. So one night when some chaps stand up and start blithering about the “bloody spades,” old Jacko sees red, and before they can pull their ears in he’s giving them what for in five sharps and never mind the broken windows. Jolly good show. But is it anything more than a show? How deep are Jacko’s principles rooted? Before the hot words are cool on his tongue, destiny asks him the trite but inevitable and possibly decisive question: Would you want your daughter to marry a Negro?

Jacko’s answer is apparently intended to represent the answer of the average working-class Englishman: “Lord knows I wish she wouldn’t. But if the poor dear is all that set on ruining her life, I don’t see how I can stop her. As I see it, we shall all have to button up and take the bitter with the better.” The answer, though skillfully expounded by Actor Mills, is less than illuminating, and the film, as a discussion of the race problem in Britain, is less than memorable. But it is sincere and careful, and it usefully reminds a many-colored humanity that the cause and cure of the race complex is everywhere the same. Fear alone builds barriers between men, and love alone can cast out fear.