Dylan press conference, 1986, Brett Whiteley Studio, Sydney

Brendon Stretch 2013 - filmstretch video production Sydney.

Thought I'd post this previously unseen recording of a Dylan press conference from 1986. I shot it in Brett Whiteley's studio and it's sat on the shelf since then. I found the old tape and thought I'd share it to celebrate the 24th May. Happy Birthday Bob Dylan and thanks for everything you've shared with us over the years. 

Norman Bethune in Spain – Mobile Blood Transfusion Unit

In July 1936, the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War gave Bethune the opportunity to fight for the communist cause and against fascism. This was a conflict between the Republicans Loyalists duly elected by the Spanish population and the fascists led by Franco, and supported by Hitler, Mussolini and, many say, the Spanish Catholic Church. Bethune viewed the conflict as a matter of ‘Republican good versus Fascist evil’.

With some prominent Canadian antifascists, he helped form the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy and, in late October 1936, sailed from Quebec City to Spain. Once in Madrid, he quickly realized that the Republican forces needed a blood transfusion service and a blood bank, a concept that he had likely learned from Archibald, who had himself used blood transfusions during World War I.

When the Spanish authorities received his ideas with great enthusiasm, he left for France and England to buy equipment and learn the latest techniques in blood typing, storage and transfusions. On his return to Spain, he designed a mobile transfusion vehicle that incorporated a refrigerator, a sterilizing unit and an incubator. The unit, called Servicio Canadiense de Transfusion de Sangre Al Fiente also contained equipment and containers for drawing and giving blood transfusions on the battlefield. 

Norman Bethune Operating in China

While researching tuberculosis and its treatment, he came across the writings of the famous American thoracic surgeon, John Alexander from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and instantly put his hopes for cure on a form of collapse therapy called ‘artificially induced pneumothorax’, a technique that had first been described at the end of the 19th century by an Italian physician, Carlo Forlanini.

Initially, the physicians at the sanatorium were reluctant to perform a procedure that they considered to be risky and advocated bed rest (the preferred therapy). After much discussion, however, one of the physicians, Dr Earle Warren, agreed to induce a therapeutic pneumothorax on Bethune’s left lung. Unfortunately, Dr Warren accidentally punctured the lung, creating a tension pneumothorax, which had to be drained on an urgent basis. 

Despite this complication, Bethune made a complete recovery and, within two months, his sputum had turned negative and he was discharged from the sanatorium in December 1927. For several years thereafter, Bethune continued to have ‘pneumothorax refills’ and even had a left phrenicectomy performed by John Alexander himself. His tuberculosis apparently never recurred despite the extreme conditions of deprivation of food and rest on the battlefields of China.

Bethune always felt that if poverty could be eliminated, tuberculosis would disappear. On joining l’hôpital du Sacré-Coeur, he freely provided his services to the poor and established a free-of-charge clinic, which was held on Saturday mornings in the Montreal suburb of Verdun. 

He was way ahead of his time in using radio broadcasts for public education on tuberculosis. In a paper published in 1932 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Bethune quoted a remark made by Edward Livingston Trudeau, the sanatorium founder:

There is a rich man’s tuberculosis and a poor man’s tuberculosis. The rich man recovers and the poor man dies.

Bethune added:

We, as a people, can get rid of tuberculosis, when once we make up our minds it is worthwhile to spend enough money to do so. Better education of doctors, public education to the point of phthisiophobia, enforced periodic physical and X-ray examinations, early diagnosis, early bed-rest, early compression, isolation and protection of the young are our remedies.

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Jack Jones – Unsung Hero

Unsung Hero: The Jack Jones Story - Trailer from Hurricane Films on Vimeo.
Film Directed by Sol Papadopoulos

Jack Jones was fated to be a militant trade unionist and socialist, being christened James Larkin Jones in tribute to Liverpool-born Irish labour movement colossus Big Jim Larkin.

But the stimulus to the late transport union T&GWU leader’s lifetime of struggle was the poverty-stricken existence into which he was born, before following his father and brothers into the organised resistance to capitalist brutality.

His life story, encapsulated in Hurricane Film's Unsung Hero, draws on archive film — including the sight of cattle being driven outside Liverpool's St George’s Hall, the site of so many massive working-class mobilisations — and personal testimonies. It will be premiered on Friday in his home city’s Philharmonic Hall.

The enterprise, funded by Unite the union, north-west region of Unison and the City of Liverpool, does its subject proud.

Trade unionists and Labour Party members who worked for decades alongside Jones will appreciate the film but it may have greater validity for younger viewers who may never have heard of him.

As journalist Owen Jones points out, the casual labour system that meant dockers didn’t know if they had work from one day to the next has returned to torment young workers today through the gig economy, zero-hours contracts and related employment insecurity.

Jack Jones notes, in a succession of enlightening interviews spliced through the film, that trade unionists talking about their childhood poverty has become a bit of a joke. But it was real for him.

He really did sleep four to a bed with three brothers, living in a two-up, two down-slum outside Garston docks where his father would seek day work.

As a schoolboy, he ran messages on his bike for the local Council of Action during the 1926 General Strike before joining the world of work at 14, first in a factory and, at 16, in the docks where he was swift to begin organising for the T&GWU.

His lifelong internationalism was expressed in taking on the job of Liverpool organiser of the Aid Spain movement before the Labour Party finally agreed to his longstanding demand to be sent to the front in the ranks of the 15th International Brigade.

Film narrator Brian Reade has him presenting a letter from T&GWU general secretary Ernest Bevin to Spanish comrades but the text illustrated is from a Liverpool Trades Council & Labour Party missive to “the Glorious International Brigade,” introducing their volunteer, apologising for the “cowardly attitude of the capitalist government” and looking forward to the day when workers “will destroy capitalism and will establish … the socialist state.”

Not really sentiments usually associated with Bevin but Jones praises his work as Minister of Labour in the wartime coalition government, placing it on a par with Winston Churchill’s role.

Jones’s service in Spain ended at the battle of Gandesa, with a bullet wound to the right shoulder and shrapnel in his left arm and leg, returning to wed Evelyn, a Manchester communist previously married to his comrade George Brown who was killed in Spain.

Unison’s first general secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe, to whose memory the film is also dedicated, called Jack and Evelyn “almost one person,” such was their closeness.

But he recalls her ability to, figuratively, “smack him round” on questions concerning morality, internationalism and trade unionism.

Jones’s rise to the top of the union saw him take new initiatives on equal pay, anti-racism and opposition to apartheid in the 1970s. He was constantly interviewed on TV and called into 10 Downing Street for talks with Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, as well as Tory Edward Heath, to resolve industrial disputes.

Many observers thought he was running the country and current TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady calls him “the best prime minister we never had.”

He had a stand-up row at a Tribune Labour Party rally with Ian Mikardo MP over Jones’s backing for a social contract of “planned growth of incomes” that the left saw as pay restraint and opposed strongly.

When his own union voted to end the contract, Jones said he had always backed membership-led democracy, “so I couldn’t complain if I was defeated.”

On retirement, he refused Callaghan’s offer of a government post and a peerage, confirming his reputation as someone who couldn’t be bought. He and Evelyn remained in their council flat in south London while he built up the National Pensioners Convention to counter the injustices suffered by retired workers and their families.

Comprehensive availability of free bus travel for over-60s stands as a reminder of one key struggle he led.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey sums his predecessor up as a “man of the people,” who realised that organisation was essential to win anything — a lesson now applied in the battles over zero-hours contracts and the gig economy.

Unsung Hero is far more than a soft-tinged reminiscence of a leader fighting the battles of yesteryear. Conditions change over decades but similar ploys enlisted by employers to weaken trade unions and boost profits tend to recur.

Jack Jones’s “organise, organise, organise” mantra holds similar lessons for unorganised workers today as it did earlier in the docks, car factories and elsewhere.

This excellent film is unlikely to be shown in commercial cinemas. All the more reason for trade unions to make it available to their members and those they wish to organise.

There will be free screenings of Unsung Hero at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on June 15, tickets: liverpoolphil.com and at TUC Congress House in London on July 2, organised by TUC London East and South East Region, tickets: lese@tuc.org.uk.

Unsung Hero is available free for screenings by organisations and festivals, contact hurricanefilms.net