This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as...

This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C.H. Wood of Bradford.  The collection consists of approximately 2500 film and video elements including titles dating back to 1915. Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C.H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region.  C.H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filmmaking.  Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE.  His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications.’ The company closed down in 2002.  See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C.H. Wood. 

Charles Wood was born in Bradford in 1904, and the city was at the centre of many of his films and his large collection of photographs (in 2010 an exhibition of these was put on at Bradford Industrial Museum).  This film is one of many made by city councils to either promote the city, especially with outside businesses, or the policies of the council, as in this case.  The YFA has several of these promotional films made during the post-war reconstruction of the 1950s and ‘60s, and as we can see here, in the following decades too.  C.H. Wood’s made similar promotional films for Arndale in 1963 – a shopping centre opened by Bruce Forsyth – and Sheffield City Council in 1983.

The broadcaster who fronts the film, Geoffrey Wheeler, was a familiar face on TV at the time.  He is perhaps most famous as the quizmaster on the long running TV quiz Top of the Form, as well as occasionally presenting Songs of Praise, recently appearing on their 50th anniversary show in 2011.  He also devised and produced the popular TV game show of the day, Winner Takes All, as well as reading out the questions, and later, in the 1980s, replacing Jimmy Tarbuck as the host.  His brother, Peter, was also a well known radio broadcaster, frequently heard doing voice overs. 

The musical aspects of the film are also worth commenting upon.  As well providing us with an opportunity to listen to the wonderful harmonica sound of Larry Adler – 'The Genevieve Waltz' aptly accompanying a vintage car – there is a rare glimpse of local band ‘The Cresters'.   This oddly named band began life as Mike Sagar & The Cresters around 1960-62, becoming just The Cresters between 1963–1968.  The line-up for this band was Mike Sagar on vocals, Richard Harding on lead guitar, John Harding on bass, Johnnie Casson on drums, and Malcolm Clarke, who died in 1968, on guitar.  They carried on as a three piece until 1984, with Richard Harding on vocals and guitar, John Harding on bass and Johnnie Casson on drums.

Bradford recording engineer and producer Matt Webster, who supplied this information, claims that they released two singles in 1964, and apparently supported the Beatles in Bradford, but doesn’t know the date (the Beatles played in Bradford on three occasions in all at the Gaumont; although they were bottom of the bill at the first in February 1963).  For more on the Bradford music scene see the excellent Bradford’s Noise Of The Valleys 1967-87, put together by Matt Webster and Gary Cavanagh in 2009, with an accompanying CD, and see their website (References).

The need for reconstruction wasn’t due to heavy bombing as Bradford was only bombed once – see the Context for Formation of The Homeguard, Thornton, Bradford  (1939-1945).  Yet despite the low level of bomb damage, the city council undertook wholesale rebuilding of the city centre and housing.  The city, as Nikolaus Pevsner remarked in the 1950s, was essentially Victorian, with many of the public buildings the work of local architects Lockwood and Mawson: in particular the Town Hall and the Wool Exchange.  Many of the commercial buildings showed the architectural stamp of the German merchants who migrated to Bradford in the 1850s and ‘70s – Jews and non-Jews – and who settled in the city (the most famous being Julius Delius, the father of composer Frederik).   See the Contexts for the films Billy Liar on Location - Leeds, Bradford (1962) and 700th Anniversary Of Bradford Market Charter (1951) for more on the rebuilding of Bradford.   

The central concern of this film is with the later phases of the post-war reconstruction in Bradford.  The Council would probably have viewed it as a public information film, although critics may have seen it more as a Council propaganda film.   It may have been prompted by the heavy criticism levelled at this post-war ‘reconstruction’.  In 1962 John Betjeman described the newly emerging Bradford as “international nothingness” (cited in Gavin Stamp).

In particular the film holds up the newly completed Pollard Park Estate as an example of the way forward in development of a housing area benefitting from local amenities and preserving a sense of community.  It notes the refurbishment of those parts which weren’t too bad, and the use of a variety of styles and materials.  Two new schools, Bolling and Carlton Grammar schools, were relocated there, and it also had a children’s home and a welfare residential home.  It is claimed that older people liked the smaller capacity of the flats and easy to keep gardens.  Yet those interviewed in the film don’t appear to be that enthusiastic, and one would have thought they would have used the most positive interviews.

Since the film was made the area has generally become somewhat rundown, and in April 2012 the area benefitted from a £279,000 programme of landscape improvements from Sheffield based development and regeneration company Places for People.  The proposals were part of the Big Lottery Fund’s Green Spaces for People programme, and were drawn up following an extensive consultation with residents.  Part of the idea was to create “natural play areas” rather than large formal play structures for children, as the residents felt that that was less likely to attract vandals.  There is no shortage of ideas about how best to create an environment for people to flourish in, see for example The Future of Community (References), where many of the authors are architects.  The problem is seen by many to be more to do with adequate funding and the general poverty within areas, as well as historic cultures of deprivation.  Research carried out by Peter Lee and Alan Murie for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 1997 stated that: “Housing situations are not simply products of poverty but themselves contribute to the difficulties facing households and affect social integration.”

Bradford is the fourth largest metropolitan district in England, and one of the most deprived.  A more recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that Bradford has one of the highest unemployment rates in the region, and that it has the largest gap between rich SOAs (Super Output Areas) and poor SOAs of any local authority district anywhere in England – the oddly named ‘Super Output Areas’ are small geographical areas used for gathering statistics and  calculating Indices of Deprivation.

The film bases much of its argument around the concept of community, one that has been around for a long time, and is still central in housing policy; but one that is also much contested.   Morag McDermon highlights the problem that any concept of community implies it being inclusive, and that this means that it will exclude those who don’t fit into the inclusive community.  This is especially important for places like Bradford with a large immigrant population, as highlighted in the Cantle Report on the disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001.  This Report brought to the fore the notions of integration and cohesion in community, notions that became central in the setting up of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion in 2006, and its own Report the following year, Our Shared Future.  This, in turn, led to the establishment of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) in 2008. Stephen Muers, Head of Policy and Performance at HCA, has pointed to the many difficulties in defining integration and cohesion, let alone bringing this about.

Pollard Park is still predominantly a white British area, but Bradford as a whole has become more culturally diverse since this film was made.  Apart from the tensions associated with this, aggravated by far right groups, the situation is also characterised by conflicts within Asian communities.  Commentators Kenan Malik and Pnina Werbner have highlighted these divisions, how they have evolved, and their baleful effects (References).  They argue that it was the top down approach of local councils, in the way they supported various religious groups, that has led to disunity as each group fought for a share in the funding.  Thus, Pnina Werbner claims that any real ‘integration and cohesion in community’, both within and between cultural groups (insofar as these aren’t artificial), cannot be a once-and-for-all policy, but requires an ongoing negotiation of differences and ongoing dialog, as well as forging unity through joint community projects.

References

Robert N. Bellah, ‘Community Properly  Understood:  A Defense of “Democratic” Communitarianism’, The Responsive Community 6, no. 1 (Winter 1995/96).

Gary Cavanagh and Matt Webster, Bradford’s Noise Of The Valleys 1967-87, Bank House Books, 2009.

Dave Clements, Donald Alastair, Martin Earnshaw and Austin Williams (editors), The Future of Community: Reports of a Death Greatly Exaggerated, Pluto Press, 2008.

Kenan Malik, From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy, Atlantic Books, 2010.

Gavin Stamp, Britain’s Lost Cities, Aurum Press, London, 2007.

Panikos Panayi, The Settlement of Germans in Britain during the Nineteenth Century

Bradford’s Noise Of The Valleys

Colin Sutton, The Beatles at the Gaumont

Jim Greenhalf, ‘Night the bottom-of-the-bill: Beatles played Bradford’, Telegraph and Argus

Pollard Park in 1977, Telegraph and Argus

Welcome for scheme to boost landscaping, Telegraph and Argus

Pollard Park residents celebrate estate facelift

Peter Lee and Alan Murie, ‘Poverty, Housing Tenure And Social Exclusion’

Morag McDermon, ‘Housing associations, the creation of communities and power relations’ (This draft paper was part of a PhD research which subsequently found its way into a book, Regulating Social Housing: Governing Decline, co-authored with David Cowan, Routledge-Cavendish, 2006.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report, ‘Recession, poverty and sustainable livelihoods in Bradford’, July 2011

Stephen Muers, ‘What is community cohesion, and why is it important?’, The Guardian

Pnina Werbner, ‘The translocation of culture: ‘community cohesion’ and the force  of multiculturalism in history’