White season
Executive producer Richard Klein introduces the season
"The season sets out to question what has happened to Britain's white working class during a sustained period of great change which has swept the country – economically, socially and culturally. This very large group of people are particularly vulnerable to the impact of change and yet there is a clear mood that their voices aren't being heard. So I felt this was an apt time to explore the issues involved.
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"We've looked at several communities across the country including Bradford, Peterborough, Birmingham and Barking. All these areas have undergone major change, and the wide-reaching impact of these seismic social effects are uncovered and brought into sharp focus. Clearly immigration is one of the key issues.
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"The white working class also feels ignored by the political classes. Throughout the films, contributors remark again and again that 'Labour don't care any more' or 'the Conservatives don't care', perhaps explaining the tendency of a small minority to more extreme political views.
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"Take Last Orders as a prime example. Here it is clearly seen that this community feel their culture is unloved and, consequently, they feel marginalised within Britain's modern, overly urban, cosmopolitan, globalised society. Their lives feel very traditional at a time when everyone else is looking to the future. They might feel old-fashioned but actually some of their values are highly laudable.
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"Last Orders, in particular, is a complex film. As a viewer, I watched it and felt that I want them to get kick started and engage with the 21st century I know. But then why should they? There are those within that community who clearly understand the situation but don't know what they can do about it. As a viewer, it makes for a sympathetic understanding of their situation.
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"Amongst these changes taking place in Britain today, immigration is clearly one of the most visible, and one of the most current, so several of the films incorporate immigration within their remit. The white working class have felt the impact of immigration economically much more than any other social group in the country. It is their jobs – manual, semi-manual, semi-skilled, semi-professional – that are most undermined and under threat from a less expensive labour force.
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"However, the films also expose that they can be the makers of their own misfortune. In The Poles Are Coming, Tim Samuel films a group of complaining young men saying they can't get a job because the 'bloody Poles' have taken them, but they then refuse to take a job earning £7 per hour because it would be working the hard hours alongside them. They are unable or unwilling to change in the face of the change that is taking place around them.
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"As a documentary commissioner, I believe in allowing people to be complex and complicated. Within the films we see sympathetic characters with complex and contradictory responses to their circumstances. Some of them are not particularly nice but they are understandable, and some of them are interesting. They are responding to change how human people do – some are hostile, some embrace the changes, some ignore them.
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"What is also apparent is that it is sometimes difficult to determine who is the white working class. British society has changed so much that social boundaries are often blurred but there is clearly a large section of the population that is bewildered by the pace of change, where they find themselves in our society and how they are viewed.
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"Ultimately what we wanted to do is look at all of these issues in a rounded, non-political way and I believe that we've done it. I think that it's a brave thing to try but the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ is one of the fundamental places in broadcasting which should try to explore this.
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"One of the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s remits is to reflect all views and opinions of all sections of society but that is tempered with a responsibility to programmes that don't lead to incitement or hatred. Our contributors often talk in ways that are challenging but they need to be heard to be understood.
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"What I hope is that the season will spark debate amongst our viewers from all parts of society: from those affected or impacted upon by these changes, from those with opinions one way or the other and from those who perhaps feel they have benefited from change. I hope that those coming to the season will absorb a more complex view of the white working class. Also, that many people who come from these communities feel that they have an opportunity to contribute directly or indirectly to the debate."
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Richard Klein
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