Manifesto (2022) Forlorn yet unbowed (Cinema Review)

Manifesto, currently doing the rounds in selected cinemas, is the final instalment in the Hope Trilogy from Liverpudlian director Daniel Draper. The previous films in this series included the Dennis Skinner documentary Nature of the Beast and The Big Meeting, a documentary about the Durham Miners Gala. Slotted neatly in between that film and this, was a brief diversion (or rather a busman’s holiday) for Draper; a co-directing gig with Allan Melia on Almost Liverpool 8, a love letter to a postcode which I had previously reviewed here. It proved to be a natural transitional step towards Manifesto which is also set in Liverpool, specifically Walton, the constituency Draper has lived most of his life in and which just happens to be the safest Labour constituency in the country.

Shot over the course of three years, Draper’s film follows the highs and lows faced by the loyal socialists, activists and party members on the front line of a city that has seen a 63% cut to its budget since the Tories came to power in 2010, making the constituency of Walton one of the most deprived in the country. Embedded on the Walton CLP campaign trail and beyond, Draper gained unique and authentic access to the issues facing the working class of Britain. Issues such as the NHS and public services, education, the environment, workers’ rights and the economy raise their heads time and again throughout the film and on the doorstep, as does the issue of mainstream media bias and the vilification of Jeremy Corbyn.

Tellingly, Brexit doesn’t feature that much – apart from one cameo from a market trader only interested in the sound of his own prejudiced voice and not the reasoned and rational arguments that Walton’s MP Dan Carden calmly and politely tries to put across – which ultimately supports one of the CLP’s members contention that the withdrawal from the EU is essentially just a Trojan Horse to implement the division that Boris Johnson’s campaign and subsequent period in office (coming to a spectacular close as I write) were fuelled upon. Given that the 2019 General Election has been coined, by official consensus, the Brexit Election, one wonders if this supports the vocalised concerns about the mainstream media heard here, or whether the lack of communication or thought given to the Remain and Leave camps played its part in the tragedy that ultimately concluded Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.

As someone who campaigned for Labour on Merseyside in 2019, the sequences on the doorsteps and street corners here in which people bemoan their frustration at the media’s smearing of Jeremy Corbyn’s character is one I identify with. Again, the media and Tory MP’s, of both the Blue and Red variety, would have it that every person they met on the campaign trail said that they could not vote for Corbyn, and that’s just not something I saw myself personally. As a film reviewer, one of the yardsticks I go by regarding my taste and whether my opinion is right is whether I’m saying something completely different to The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw. Ah yes, Bradshaw, the gift that keeps on giving to me over the years. In his review of Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You from 2019, he argued that “Many people will see this film as a portrayal of real issues facing people – not silly old Brexit, which only worries people in the London bubble. Does the director himself feel like this? I don’t know. But I can only say that the European Union is the modern-day nursery of employment rights, and outside it is where working people will find more cynicism, more cruelty, more exploitation, more economic isolation and more poverty.” seemingly oblivious of the fact that the lack of workers’ rights that were available to the central character in Loach’s movie was occurring whilst we were still in the EU. I found it highly ironic that Bradshaw used the term ‘London bubble’ when he was clearly residing in it himself if he was as unaware of the fact as he seems that the gig economy was happening in the here and now and not as some kind of portent of a Brexit Britain.

Then, as now, my solution to the gig economy and the ongoing erosion of workers’ rights was a socialist Labour government, it’s a shame that such a solution was not seen by those in that ‘London bubble’ who see themselves as liberal or left-leaning, yet couldn’t support Jeremy Corbyn. In his review of Manifesto on 14th June, Bradshaw does it again, remarking that “The subject of antisemitism is aired and curtly dismissed as entirely irrelevant: “Just a few cases.” (Numerically, yes, maybe – but when those few cases include the people in charge, you’ve got a problem.)” That’s a Guardian journalist once again implying that the leader of the Labour party was an antisemite and, in doing so, is totally ignoring the finding of the EHRC report that wholly exonerated Corbyn personally of antisemitism. Is it any wonder that the voices heard here are so fed up with the media’s smears? Likewise, Bradshaw posits that Walton CLP’s commitment to fighting on is likely to mean “swallowing your pride, biting your tongue and getting behind Starmer, the way Starmer bit his tongue and got behind Corbyn”. Presumably, this is the same Sir Keir Starmer who supported Owen Smith in the disastrously inept 2016 ‘Chicken coup’ against Corbyn? The same Starmer who, as Shadow Brexit minister, ensured that the leadership moved away from their position of respecting the EU referendum result ( a stance that almost got them a win in the 2017 General Election) in favour of pushing for yet another vote, thereby assuring his own personal ambition and ascendency to the Labour leadership? A moment whose eve of which is captured candidly here when what-you-see-is-what-you-get West Derby MP Ian Byrne tellingly dips his head and wrinkles his nose at one constituent’s vocal support for Starmer (the equally centrist Lisa Nandy having been, he goes on to admit, his second choice).

You can of course argue a great deal about politics, but one of the things that everyone ought to agree on is that what the people of Liverpool said here is wholly correct; the mainstream media did Corbyn dirty. You also have to wonder just how can Walton CLP bite its tongue and get behind Starmer when the leadership is expelling without reason the likes of Alan Gibbons, its hardworking and committed socialist Secretary, as seen in the film’s latter stages.

Manifesto is not a film that seeks to glamourise the subject or indeed the work of local party and grassroots activists. Instead, Draper shoots in a fly-on-the-wall style, allowing his subjects to speak for themselves whilst, forming the spine of the film, are frequent readings from the socialist bible, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a life-changing novel written in 1914 by Robert Tressell, whose remains lie in a pauper’s grave in Walton. It may not seek glamour, but there’s still something inherently beautiful to me, not only about Tressell’s words, which are still relevant today but on seeing them in parallel to the activism from committed socialists in everyday neighbourhoods that I recognise but are captured here with an authentic beauty nonetheless. There is a kind of bleak beauty, forlorn yet unbowed, which arguably could describe how the CLP sees itself in the wake of 2019. It is a beauty that lies many miles away from Westminster and its coked-up, blue-sky focus group pitches of a flag-laden sham Utopia they hope will play well to the masses. Walton – and places like it – are where those masses actually live and it’s about time someone actually took the opportunity to listen to them, as opposed to presuming what it is they should believe or desire. Manifesto reminds us that, however much the mainstream media seeks to trivialise it as such, politics is not some game schooled to the privileged who must seize it as their birthright on the playing fields of Eton, politics is about the people and for the people. This may be the end of the Hope Trilogy but, as the final moments of Manifesto shows, there’s arguably a different story to be told from here onwards, and I hope Draper considers doing so.

Oh and as one passer-by shouts at one point “If you don’t vote Labour you’re a n*nce” Liverpool, you beautiful scally b*st*rd you.

Mark on Manifesto (2022)