Behind the Rent Strike

Brilliant documentary attempt to understand the 14 months' rent strike by the people of Kirkby New Town, near Liverpool, which started just before Christmas in 1973. An analysis of the social conditions is preceded by an interview between the film-maker and an extremely shrewd working-class housewife who debunks this and all other investigations by the media as just another form of bourgeois masturbation. This in itself makes a complacent viewing, which might normally act as an appeaser to liberal conscience, impossible.