Fame Is the Spur

We meet Hamer Radshaw in the 1870s, a socialist firebrand, his anger over injustice and inequality fuelled by his grandfather's tales of the Peterloo Massacre. We take our leave of him in the 1930s, a doddering member of the peerage, his principles having been picked off one by one over the years. This adaptation of Howard Spring's novel is no Tory satire, but a Labour-committed inveighing against the dangers of demagoguery and of succumbing to the lure of the Establishment. Its interest is mostly socio-political rather than dramatic or cinematic, though individual scenes are quite powerful, notably the force feeding of a suffragette, shot appropriately like something out of a horror film.