"MEET THE PEOPLE" — British Workers at the Microphone

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 489, 5 November 1948, Page 17

"MEET THE PEOPLE" — British Workers at the Microphone

[DURING the darkest months of the war, when London was experiencing continuous night bombing raids, the words on everybody's lips were, "Britain can take it." Now that Britain is building up her export trade and home industries once more, the new catchword of the times is, "Britain can make it." A new series of BBC documentaries called Meet the People, written along the same lines as their famous _ programme A Harbour Called Mulberry, introduces listeners to some of the actual people who are doing their bit. towards getting Britain’s+industry going again. They are not top-liners or big names, but some of the ordinary men and women whose steady, unpublicised and unglamourised work is making all the difference between success and faflure in Britain to-day. The programmes not only introduce the workmen themselves, but their families and friends and associates all have their say and help to build up an authentic picture of contemporary social conditions in the industrial and agricultural areas of England. The first person to speak is Jack Feek, a foreman teemer at a Sheffield steelworks. He is in charge of a gang which pours the molten steel from the

furnaces into the moulds, and he knows a lot about the early stages in the production of high-grade steel. Members of his family, ‘fellow-workmen and employers fill out his story into a firsthand description of the problems facing the British steel industry. John Nimlin drives a hammerhead crane in a famous shipyard on Clydebank, and Willie Mitchell is.a driller in a yard on the other side of the river. Between them they draw, in the second | programme, a true and vivid picture of | the life of the men who build British | ships, set against the background of conditions in an industry that has had | its share of ups and downs in the last | two decades. An account of the British small" farmer’s lot is given by several members of the Whitlock family, who have worked on the land for 300 years in the village of Pitton near Salisbury, and | the final programme in the series is the | story of Ida Holden, a winder in a cotton spinning "mill in Bolton, Lancashire. She and her friends and family describe the textile industry. Meet the People starts from 4YA at. ‘2.1 p.m. on Sunday, November 14, and will be heard later from the other National stations. | .