Our Jobs are Not for Sale

From the collection of

Media Archive for Central England
MACE is the strategic lead organisation for screen heritage for the East and West Midlands regions. An independent charity based at University of Lincoln, MACE preserves and makes accessible a collection of more than 100,000 historic moving images representative of the diverse cultures and histories of communities throughout the heart of England from the Lincolnshire coast to the Welsh border.

Our Jobs are Not for Sale

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Redundancy amidst the wasteland - the West Midlands lives through uncertain times.

Between 1979 and 1984 the unemployment rate in the West Midlands rose from 5.4% to 15.7%. In 1983 alone there were 35,000 redundancies. This video, produced for West Midlands County Council - a body which was disbanded following the introduction of the Local Government Act of 1985 - uses first-hand accounts to tell some of the personal stories from the men. And it is men who are predominately featured: men who have lost their jobs and roles in life.

The video also acts as a farewell to an era of heavy industry and engineering, typified by the West Midlands' steel works, where the last thing it produced was a metal coffin that was ceremoniously tossed into the furnace.

A campaign video looking at the problem of unemployment in the West Midlands.


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From the collection

People Power: Voices of Protest and Dissent in the Midlands

Getting the message heard, from the placard and megaphone to the campaign video.
These films celebrate the right to protest, with a look at how the campaigners of the 1980s reacted when they were met head on with a radical government sustained by strong electoral majorities. This collection also showcases campaigns that embraced the new medium of video, taking their battles to the next level with tapes of their own, free from television's editorial controls. The material in this collection comes from two sources: television and an independent video production company. On television we find a more genteel approach to activism, where studio discussions take centre stage. Away from television we look to the work of the Trade Union Resource Centre in Birmingham, which helped groups to get their messages across in their own way. So join us as we look back at life in the 1980s, in some ways a depressingly familiar place - with families struggling to survive on meagre incomes, the NHS in crisis, and the most vulnerable in society unprotected.

8 videos in this collection

1

The Labour Party and LGBT Rights

2

Máire O'Shea is Innocent

3

Put People First

4

Our Jobs are Not for Sale

5

Whatever Happened to Student Protest?

6

Protest by Deaf Television Viewers

7

Muhammad Must Stay

8

SCARF Demo 1979

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