Fantasy Speakers’ Corner

Inspired by the recent anniversary of Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech, this was intended to be a blog-post featuring world-famous speeches but it soon became clear that archive footage of such speeches is very rare indeed. Fortunately, however, Jisc MediaHub features many world-famous speakers from the 20th and 21st centuries, so I have assembled a selection of some of them, imagining them at a “Fantasy Speakers’ Corner. We start early in the 20th century, when many events were filmed without sound.

Here is Trotsky speaking at the Kremlin, when he was still in favour with the regime.

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Large Communist Demonstration in Moscow. Leon Trotsky speaks at Kremlin, 1922 (Gaumont Graphic)

The ETV collection is a fascinating historical resource from an Eastern perspective. Footage from the Soviet archives shows Lenin in a number of films, such as Leading the People: Together with the People – a “documentary tracing the history of the Russian Revolution and the role of the people in the USSR and other socialist countries in working to achieve a Communist society during the 20th century”.

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Leading the People: Together with the People ( Educational and Television Films Ltd)

Between the two world wars, there are numerous British clips of Lloyd George in action, this one showing him in rousing form , speaking to 40,000 electors in Rochdale Town Hall Square in 1923.

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Rousing Speech in Lancashire (Gaumont Graphic)

And Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour premier, is seen making a speech in Wolverhampton in 1924 from a car, surrounded by crowds.

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Prime Minister in the Midlands (Gaumont Graphic)

Jennie Lee, the youngest MP in the House of Commons in 1929, opposed MacDonald, but continued in politics, becoming arts minister in the 1964 Labour government and helping to establish the Open University.

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Arts White Paper. Jennie Lee interviewed about plans to develop the Arts in England. (ITV News)

In the Second World War, Frank Capra’s propaganda film, Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike, designed to persuade the US to join the Allies, brilliantly demonstrates Adolf Hitler’s terrifying oratory.

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Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike. (Imperial War Museum)

Winston Churchill’s leadership inspired Britain to resist the Nazi menace and some of his most famous speeches are represented in this moving tribute to him.

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Tribute to Sir Winston Churchill. (Gaumont British News)

After the war, the first hint of a potential thaw in relations between East and West was the death of Stalin, whose moustachioed figure embodied the Eastern threat in the Cold War but whose Georgian accent denied him universal appeal in the USSR.

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Death of Stalin. (Gaumont British News)

The hopes of the West in the 1960s were embodied by two US figures, JF Kennedy and Martin Luther King, seen here promoting racial equality at an event in London in 1964.

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Negro Equality. An address from Martin Luther King, on the subject of black and white equality, to an audience of mainly white people. (ITV News)

Some of King’s dreams were realised across the Atlantic in South Africa, where apartheid was abolished and Nelson Mandela became the first black president of the republic.

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Nelson Mandela Visits UK. (ITN)

Lenin’s image still loomed large in the USSR, even as Mikhail Gorbachev instituted his perestroika reforms, as can be seen in this photo of Gorbachev addressing the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in Moscow, 1986.

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General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. (Getty Images)

20 years after the astonishing election that brought him to power in Poland, Lech Walesa reflected on the optimism and disappointments of the latter years of the 20th century in an interview with AP.

And no-one could deny that one of the defining political figures of that era was Margaret Thatcher, who led reform of the Western economies and staunchly supported leaders such as Gorbachev and Walesa in the East.

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USSR: Thatcher/Gorbachev talks. (Channel 4 News)

Britain again played a major political and military role in the world in the early years of the 21st century, led by the charismatic Tony Blair, who often employed an understated, almost conversational rhetorical style, as when he called on the US and Europe to bury their differences over Iraq in 2004.

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Blair calls on US and Europe to bury differences on Iraq. (AP Archive)

Who would be in your Fantasy Speakers Corner? Take a browse around Jisc MediaHub and share your favourites here in the Comments.

Digital Content for the First World War on JISC MediaHub

In 2014 we will be commemorating the centenary of the First World War. This event will  generate new interest in historic material relating to such a significant part of our history. JISC has funded work to explore what teachers and researchers will require so they can reinterpret this huge event from a 21st Century perspective. You can read more in a new report called Digital Content for the First World War which was undertaken by King’s College, London and makes recommendations about how valuable resources can be made digitally accessible.

JISC MediaHub provides access to many collections containing First World War material. Our previous ‘War Horse’ blog post focused on the important role horses played on the battlefront. In this blog post we are looking at how the war affected the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Are You In This? : IWM (images) c.1916

Hard times followed the onset of WWI and the government wanted to show the British people how they could contribute to the war effort. Food shortages became more common and rationing was eventually introduced.

Yes – Complete Victory if You Eat Less Bread : IWM (images) c.1916

The IWM (images) Collection contains a large number of propaganda posters distributed by the government to encourage the general public to save food; amongst many other initiatives.

Piling up Rations in the Rations Shed: This item is from The First World War Poetry Digital Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit)

 

The role of women began to change as men  departed for the War in their tens of thousands .  Many volunteered to serve as nurses at the Front and we are starting to learn more about their individual stories following the release of new material from the National Archives.

The Scottish Women’s Hospital : In The Cloister of the Abbaye at Royaumont. Dr. Frances Ivens inspecting a French patient. Imperial War Museum (images)

 

Many more women came forward to take over industrial and agricultural jobs which helped keep the economy running. This interesting clip from Gaumont Graphic Newsreel shows a ‘ Women Workers Procession’ in London which was held by the Women’s Social and Political Union to recruit women into  munitions work. Mrs Pankhurst and Lloyd George were key to the organisation of this event.

Women Workers Procession: Gaumont Graphic Newsreel 27-07-1916

The  Great War left its mark on almost every community in the land. Even those living in the far corners of Britain found their lives were changed irrevocably by events played out far from home. The North Highland College Johnston Collection  gives us a unique insight into social change happening around Wick; a coastal town in the top North East corner of Scotland.

Parade after Church Service on Outbreak of the Great War : North Highland College (Johnston Collection) c. 1915

This parade was probably part of a recruiting march taking place throughout the county for one of the Seaforth battallions.

Meanwhile the everyday business of the town had to carry on:

Group photo of Lipton’s staff in Wick, standing outside the shop : North Highland College (Johnston Collection) c.1915

and despite the gravity of the war situation there were still opportunities to have some fun……

Painter and decorator apprentice finishing his time (Brothering) in Market Square :
North Highland College (Johnston Collection) c.1915

Among the treasures of this collection are many studio photographs of men who were about to join the fighting. These photographs would become precious mementoes as families faced an uncertain future. Here a soldier holds his young daughter in a surprisingly informal shot; we can only begin to wonder what their thoughts would have been at such a time.

A Portrait of Mr Clyne and his Daughter – December 1915 : North Highland College (Johnston Collection)

 

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