es ‘

There is a warm, poignant mo-
ment in The Sailor’s Return when
the white Victorian sailor and the
Black wife he has brought back to
England from Dahomey in
Africa take a horseback ride to
the seashore for a summer’s night
swim.

There, with the moonlight
bouncing off the stony English
beach and the beads of seawater
on their skins, they lie together
and reaffirm their love. It is a
beautiful moment.

But for the most part, life for
William Targett (played by
British TV actor Tom Bell) and
his African bride Tulip (Shope
Shodeinde) is rough. It is the
1860’s and the village folk in rural
England don’t take too kindly to
Targett being married to a Black
woman and having a son by her.
Everything goes wrong. Tulip,
homesick for her country, is
shaken by the rector’s advice that
she and her son’s dark skin will
keep them out of heaven. Racial
insults are a daily occurrence. The
couple’s business, a pub, isn’t do-
ing well. It is only the love of
Targett, his brother Harry
\ (George Costigan) and Tom,

THE SAILOR’S RETURN. Starring Tom
Bell, Shope Shodeinde. Directed by Jack
Gold, produced by Otto Plaschkes. A Pan
Canadian release. At the Bay Theatre,
Vancouver.

(Mick Ford) the potboy, that
keeps Tulip going.

To be sure, it is England in the
19th century, a time when British
companies were in the forefront
of slavery and the slave trade.
British landowners, for example,
controlled or owned outright
most of the West Indies.
Although the film is set in the

- period immediately after slavery

was Officially abolished in the
British Colonies (1834), The co-
lonial mentality was still pervasive
among ordinary English people.
There were few inter-racial mar-
riages.

All this perhaps explains why
Tulip is portrayed as far from be-
ing the average African woman
of her time. She is a tribal princess
whose dowry finances Targett’s
business. Her background makes
it easy for her to laugh at the
weather-beaten working shoes of
the pub’s customers.

Yet her relationship with the
kindly: Targett has something

A film of love — and bigotry

about it which makes A Sailor’s
Return worth seeing. The film
doesn’t explain the reason for
racial attitudes in Britain which
still divide working people to this
day. But it does remind us of the
potential of erasing those divi-
sions.

. The script, based on a 1924
novel by British writer David
Garnett does have a number of
insights which are quite useful to-
day.

Both Bell and Shodeeinde, a
Nigerian-born actress now living
in England, put in some good per-
formances as does the potboy, (a
potboy washes the tankards and
pots in the pub) Mick Ford), who,
like Shodeinde, is a drama
graduate of Manchester Universi-
ty.

Well done were the lighting ef-

fects in the film. Lighting

cameraman Brian Tufano’s work
is a real pleasure, in depicting
both the rustic English coun-
tryside (the film was shot in

Dorset and in the Cotswold

region of Glouchestershire) and

the shadowy interiors.
If you’re looking for a film to
see, why not start with this one?
—Joe Mann

Tulip (Shope Shodeinde) and her husband William Targett (Tom Bell) in |
a scene from The Sailor's Return,

“st

,

PRY

There were New Wave bands
rubbing shoulders with the
Leipzig State Opera Company,
motorcycle acts, a children’s
festival, Soviet acrobats and,

people, as the British Com-
munist daily Morning Star
celebrated its 50th anniversary
with a huge ‘‘Beat the Tory
Blues” festival in London’s
Alexandra Palace June 15.

The press festival, marking 50
years of the Morning Star and
its predecessor, the Daily
Worker, had been months in the
making, with scores of events
scheduled from noon till mid-
night, both inside the palace —
known as the Ally Pally — and
on the adjoining park grounds.

More than 50 British
organizations had displays and
booths in the hall as did
representatives of 15 different
countries and several trade
unions including the powerful
National Jnion of Public
Employees and the Transport
and General Workers Union.

There was something for all tastes at the Moming Star's huge press
festival in London June 15 as the Au Pairs (top) performed for
thousands outside while the Leipzig State Opera Company from the
GDR delighted an audience inside the hall at the Alexandra Palace.

Thousands throng Star's
50th birthday festival

above all, tens of thousands of.
monster rally where Todd told

TGWU national organizer
Ron Todd joined Communist
Party leader Gordon McLen-
nan, London print union leader
John Mitchell and Labor MP
Reg Race on the platform for a

the crowd that his ‘‘greatest
wish is that millions of workers
would make the decision to
discard the Express, Mail and
the Sun and give support to the
Morning Star.”’

The Star itself called the event
“the biggest of its kind since the
Tories‘ came back to _power”’
and one ‘‘that might have made
Mrs. Thatcher and Sir Keith
Joseph worried for their
future.”’

It’s June 16 edition reported:
“To the cheers of the audience
gathered in the great hall of the
palace, Labor MP Reg Race
declared: ‘The Morning Star
has an important role in
defeating the Tories and in turn-
ing back the repressive tide from

Downing Street.’ ””

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JUNE 27, 1980—Page 10

Another lingering question
of the CIA’s role in Chile ©

Alfred Hitchcock may be dead
but the Central Intelligence Agency
is alive and well and living in just
about every part of the world where
American interests are being
threatened by struggles for national
liberation. Nowhere, as the recent
PBS educational network
documentry on the CIA revealed,

was the degree of its covert activity .

more apparent than during the
coup in Chile in 1973.

The Execution of Charles Hor-
man: An American Sacrifice
begins where the documentary left
off. Focusing on the tragic ex-
perience of a young American
journalist living in Chile at the time
of the coup, who stumbled upon
information of covert U.S. activity
there, the author, former lawyer
Thomas Hauser, skilfully weaves
the political and personal into a
powerful tale of deception, intrigue
and love.

The Execution of Charles Hor-
man is to Chile what the films War
Games and On The Beach are to
nuclear war — it takes incidents
that stagger the imagination and
translates them into human terms.

From the moment we’re in-
troduced to the Horman family;
from the image we form of Charles
from his mother’s touching
reminiscence, we know Charles.
We suffer his sensitivity; share his
sense of morality, and, as the story
progresses, we become Charles.
We awaken with him in bewildered
dread one morning in a hotel room
at the resort near Valparaiso to the
sound of American military music
and news of the coup; of the mass
arrests and tortures in Santiago.
We accompany him through every
ensuing event — from his acciden-
tal meeting with U.S. Navy man
Arthur Creter, who boastfully con-
fides: ‘‘We came to do a job and
we’ve done it’”’ (a piece of informa-
tion which directly leads to
Charles’ death) — through the next
five days of terror which culminate
in his arrest and incarceration
(along with 75,000 other Chileans)
in the National Stadium.

However, Charles Horman was
not a Chilean. He was an American
—oneftwo Americans to die in the

THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES HOR-
MAN: AN AMERICAN SACRIFICE. By
Thomas Hauser. Discus Book, 1980.

coup -— and the reasons for his
death have still to be officially
answered.

Three questions torment
Charles’ parents:

1) Was Charles executed?

2) Was there a government
cover-up?

3) Did the U.S. government have
foreknowledge of Charles’ death?

Ed Horman’s failure to gain
satisfaction from the response of
the U.S. State Department regar-
ding his son’s whereabouts pro-
voke him into embarking on his
own terrifying odyssey to Chile, to
investigate personally his son’s
mysterious disappearance.

Through the labyrinth of self-
serving bureaucrats, military men,
morgues, hospitals — even the Na-
tional Stadium — Ed doggedly
pursues his son’s fate; his faith in
his government gradually giving
way to disillusionment, as the U.S.
consulate in Chile does nothing to
assist him in his search, but only
persists in bolstering the flimsy
fabrications of the Chilean govern-
ment.

When Charles’s death is finally
verified by the economic program
advisor at the Ford Foundation of-
fice in Chile, Ed’s earlier suspicions
are confirmed. Charles was killed
not only because of his increasing
awareness of American interven-
tion in Chile, but by the direct order
of the U.S. government which
feared he knew too much about
their participation in the coup. Ed
later discovers that before he even

_ departed for Chile the U.S. govern-

ment had been informed by the
Chilean military that his son was
dead.

“It was a cover-up of a
cover-up,’’ Ed ruefully remarks
recalling that the nightmare in
Chile coincided with the Watergate
scandal. ‘‘Reluctantly,’’ he admits,
“Thave reached the conclusion that
the government of Chile is being
shielded from blame for a very sim-
ple reason. If the finger of guilt is

pointed at them, they will point 1
right back at Washington.”’

With this book Thomas Hauser
has presented and won his greatest
battle for justice. For four years the
U.S. Department of “State has”
refused to hold the government of ,
Chile responsible for Charles HOt
man’s death. To date, several Con-
gressional committees have touG®
ed on the Horman case, but nome
has undertaken a full-scale 1
vestigation.

However, Hauser does not leave
us on a note of despair. He doesnt
allow us to givein toa feeling of i
potence in the face of the
appearance of the fascist spectl®
Rather the book serves
strengthen our sense of vigilan®

i

and reaffirm our political comm

ment.

Inthe words of Charles’ mothe
Elizabeth: ‘“‘I’ve learned the
way. People who are loved call
killed. Charles’ death taught mete
lesson of political responsibility:

used to think that Icould till thes!

of my own little plot of land andlet

the rest of the world care for its O™.
problems. What our country did Je
Vietnam, what happened to pe0P I
overseas, was no concern of mine:
was wrong. I know now that each

of us is obliged to fight for what —

right and take responsibility oe
what our government does. If oA
don’t, sooner or later it will aff
us eee. nigh
Charles’ parents paid a # i,
price for their political educatiO™
Will we? —Deborah Fou

for

Pens for Grenad@

The recently formed ed
Grenada Association has appeal le
for material support to the peOP
of Grenada. the

A popular revolution swept ©
tiny Caribbean country last yea

The Ontario Teachers Fed int
tion has donated 2,000 ballpe ss
pens to the Association which’ {0
pledged to send 10,000 pens nas
Grenada to assist the revoluti¢
government’s literacy campalg™,

The Canada-Grenada Assoce
tion can be contacted at Box 9
P.S. ‘0’, Toronto, Ont. M44