Hartlepool, 1963

There are some surprising treasures in the depths of the BBC iPlayer.

In 1962/63, Jack Ashley, then a television producer but later a well-known Labour M.P. and campaigner for disability rights, made a 45-minute film, ‘Waiting for Work’, about unemployment in Hartlepool in the North of England (made before he became totally deaf).

The film could have been from my own childhood: the people, the homes and their contents, the shops, the pubs, the shipyard. Where I am from did not suffer mass unemployment as early as Hartlepool, but here were the same kind of lives I grew up with. Although my father would have been considered white-collar rather than blue, and later ran his own business, this is definitely the kind if background I came from. A real glimpse of a once familiar past.

The film is here (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p053r2q1/waiting-for-work), but as most will not want to sit through 45 minutes, and the iPlayer is not available outside the U.K., here are some screen-shots, probably far too many.  (Update: links to YouTube copy added at end)

There was still work to be had

but the shipyards are silent

and many are on the dole.

Out-of-work men are embarrassed to have to look after the children

and do the housework while their wives are at work. The children don’t like it.

Jack Ashley interviewed families about how unemployment affected them.

Pubs were still busy,

as was the High Street,

but many families were struggling.

Shopkeepers talked of decreased trade,

even the newsagents and hairdressers.

Luxury goods were hard to sell

and the second-hand shops had more sellers than buyers.

A few of those interviewed had been able to find work in the south of England, but those that owned houses in Hartlepool were unable to sell, and many did not want to leave the community of their parents, relatives and friends.

Like most of northern Britain, this was still a mare-orientated monoculture. Few women appear in the film and there are no persons of colour. It would inform today’s woke young things why some older people have the views and language they do, especially the part where unemployed young men (most then left school at 15) talk about how their lives are limited by lack of money. They cannot afford to go to the pictures (cinema) or buy records:

“You have to cut down on all your things ... you can’t be expected to enjoy yourself when you’re on the dole ... it’s very rare I go out with a girl now ... when you take them out you ... have to pay for everything ... you can’t get far with fifteen shillings ... you can’t expect to take them out ”

“Do the girls ever offer to pay for you?”

“They offer, but it’s more or less accepting charity.”

The whole way of life would now be dismissed as unenlightened, and inferior to cultures that have replaced it. 

Some of us were lucky, the beneficiaries of grammar school education, first-rate universities without fees, and student grants so generous that some even managed to save money. Most were not so lucky. I wonder what became of the people in the film. 

 

Update: for those who cannot see iPlayer, the film may be visible (with sub-titles) on YouTube in three segments:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/PxAKfnbFWe0
Part 2: https://youtu.be/sY9Fm4Y9k1c
Part 3: https://youtu.be/XZzTsThUIlU

Pythagoras

It was well-known to the ancient Egyptians, that a triangle with sides of 3, 4 and 5 units makes a right-angle. The Babylonians also knew this four thousand years ago, as they did in India. They used it to measure out precise squares and verticals. I would not be surprised if the ancient Tom Stephenson used it too.

Rotate such a triangle four times by ninety degrees, and you are back to where you began. Put four of them together as shown below on the left and it makes a perfect square. The one on the right is the same with the middle bit filled in.

This works for any right-angled triangle, not just those of size 3-4-5. 

The sides of the square are equal in length to the long sides of the triangles.

I am now going to move the top two triangles, top right to bottom left, and top left to bottom right. Hopefully, the arrows and numbers help make this clear. It results in an L-shape.

The L-shape uses the same pieces as the large square we started with, so the overall area remains exactly the same.

The L-shape can be split into two squares, a large one and a small one, as below. The sides of the smaller square are of the same length as the shortest side of the original triangle (see right-hand side). The sides of the larger square are of the same length as the third side (see left-hand side). 

The two squares still use the same pieces as the large square we started with, so the total area remains exactly the same as it was before we moved things around. 

In other words, the area of the square formed around the longest side of the triangle is the same as the combined areas of the squares formed around the other two sides. 

Or as Pythagoras put it in 550 B.C.: “The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” 

Isn’t that just exquisite. They never showed me that at school.

Pythagoras may have discovered this by moving triangles around in the same way, one of the first to express the structure of nature as numbers, and advance understanding from the world of fact into the world of proof. He offered a hundred oxen to the muses in thanks for the inspiration (Jacob Bronowsti: The Ascent of Man).

And once you know this is true for any right-angled triangle, you can work out how much timber and how many tiles you need for your pitched roof, and are on the way to the kind of trigonometry that allows you to manipulate three-dimensional images on your computer screen.