A false picture of defeat

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ilkwood (Meryl Streep) finds that the corporation is faking test films (inset).

part. together, started working on it her death Karen beat Kerr- family, who brought a lawsuit McGee. against Kerr-McGee, and Cano, who put story too? Martin Thomas reviews ABC MOTION PICTURES 'Silkwood' which opened last week at the Odeon, Leicester Square. KAREN Silkwood was a sort of Sarah Tisdall of the nuclear power industry. Only the state got Sarah Tisdall after she blew their secrets, and the Kerr-McGee Corporation got Karen Silkwood before she blew theirs. And Karen Silkwood didn't get six months. She got killed. Perhaps she was murdered.

Karen was a worker at KerrMcGee's plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma, who was killed in a car crash in 1974 on her way to meet a union official and a newspaper reporter. She had said she had evidence that the company was doctoring test x-ray negatives of its fuel rods.

There is no proof: no documents were found in Karen's car, and maybe the crash was just an accident, or suicide. But many suspect that KerrMcGee engineered Karen's death, and the film goes as far as libel law will permit it, as it shows lights closing up on her just before the crash.

The way the film tells the story, the strip of steel in Karen Silkwood that makes her stand up against KerrMcGee is not so much a "moral imperative" (though she uses that phrase, picking it up from a union official), as gut militancy.

Assertive, awkward, feckless, moody, brittle, lonely, she is first drawn into the issue when an older woman, Thelma, gets contaminated with plutonium at work. Thelma is dragged off, weeping and screaming, to be forcibly hosed down and scrubbed, then plied with empty reassurances by the plant doctor.

After getting contaminated and suffering the same treatment herself, Karen becomes active in the union.

But the film also tells story another way.

The union appears in the film only through a few officials and committtee people - and a few large meetings. Most of Karen's fellow-workers - including her boyfriend Drew, and Dolly who shares their house with them - jeer at her, shy away from her or shun her when she becomes active in the union.

This way of looking at it, Karen ends up as very isolated, half-defeated even before the car crash kills her, driven on only by conscience and not by immediate solidarity with others.

Maybe both ways of telling the story are true. But the film messes it up a bit, I think, by making its axis the relations between Karen, Drew and Dolly (despite the fact that there was no real "Dolly').

Drew and Dolly end up bereaved — and worse, Drew Malcolm X, a revolutionary black leader in the US. who was shot dead in 1965.

Karen: having tried to pressure Karen into dropping union activity, Dolly having perhaps betrayed her to the management.

Defeat all round - for, apart from Karen, Drew and Dolly, no-one else in the film is much more than a walk-on Ma But the very fact that the film was made shows that it wasn't quite like that. After Buzz Hirsch Larry the film soon after they read about Karen's death in the press. Shouldn't they — and Karen's many others — be part of the FRANZ Kafka wrote a classic short story about a bloke who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a dung beetle. In the bowels of M. House, in an area known as the "Files" there are about two hundred dung beetles scurrying about looking either for promotion or a good scive.

The Files is an office that is as big as a football pitch. Bits of paper representing money are filed away in alphabetical order. The "dung beetles" have to sort through these files to remove these bits of paper for repayment and have to file away other bits of paper.

Next to the rows of filing cabinets are rows of desks. The desks are arranged in what are termed "Sections" • There are eight sections in the files and each section is divided into three subsections.

Each sub-section consists of two rows of Clerical Assistants. A Clerical Officer is positioned at the head of each-sub-section. The Executive Officers have their own desks situated several yards away from their section so that they can spy on the Clerical Assistants and Clerical Officers more effectively.

The hierarchical structure of the civil service in general is such that some civil servants think they are far superior to other civil servants. It used to be much worse than it is now. This can be illustrated by the example of the seating arrangements down the files about ten years ago. At that time Clerical Assistants used to sit on wooden stools, the Clerical Officers on chairs without arms and the Executive Officers on chairs with arms. Things have improved since those days. Everyone sits on the same kind of chair.

There is a saying that "the Englishman's home is his castle" (something to do with privacy). The Higher Executive Officer's home is a small room or "box" in a corner of the files.

All the Clerical Assistants, because of the nature of the work, are under thirty, many of them having only just lett school or a Youth Training Scheme. It is thought that management deliberately place older, reactionary Clerical Officers down the files to discipline and influence the young Clerical Assistants. Generally, the Clerical Officers are either middleaged or about due for retirement. Although there are about two token Clerical Officers who are under thirty.

To really get on in the civil service you have to concentrate all your attention on behaving like a mindless shit.

If you want promotion, you