Skip to main content

Plot

When a young man from an economically depressed area of England (played by Michael Redgrave) decides that his calling is to help the beleaguered workers in his area, he takes as his symbol a sword passed down to him by an ancestor who picked it up at the Battle of Peterloo in 1819, where it had been used against workers. Beginning as an idealistic defender of the oppressed workers, he rises to power in the Parliament, where he discovers that power corrupts and he becomes the very type of politician he had originally set out to displace. Sometimes slow-moving, this is an interesting look into the reasons why the Labor and the Conservative factions are at loggerheads with each other in Great Britain. Very loosely based on labor leader Ramsay MacDonald's climb to power, the story was adapted by Howard Spring and is a combination of both fact and fiction.
MPAA Rating:
Genre(s):
Drama
Run Time:
116min.
Distributor(s):
General Film Distributors
Director(s):
John Boulting , Roy Boulting
Starring:
Michael Redgrave , Rosamund John , Bernard Miles , Carla Lehmann , Hugh Burden
Themes:
Fighting the System,Rise To Power
Tone:
Earnest,Intimate,Literate
Keywords:
Britain,Parliament,corruption,fame,government,labor [work],labor-relations,leader,life,lord,oppression,political-corruption,politician,power,sword,transformation,worker,working-class