Classic stuff for anyone from Kirkby or Liverpool.
3000 residents of what was known as Kirkby New Town (close to Liverpool) protested against the Housing Finance Bill in 1973 by refusing to pay rent after a corrupt labour council managed to shuffle a line of dubious contractors to use sub standard materials to create homes, which , not surprisingly, suffered from an array of problems.
This documentary gives a glimpse of the ‘violent tensions’ and the social conditions experienced by residents, including appalling housing conditions and dire job prospects.
Update - the user has not allowed embedding. (this would enable us to have it showing here) This is a bit, er, out of order, seems as we’re on that video! It’s like stealing a piece of soul and copyrighting it.
Some GREAT footage of old Kirkby looking like Belfast. But look at the smiles on the kids. Ahh. Chopper bikes, one car per road, graffiti on the graffiti. Plenty of people telling it like it is - calling the councillors corrupt and telling us the media is rotten to the core. The press barons are certainly rotten to the their core.
Below, two of the kids in the Kirkby rent strike video. There is a man interviewed who points to the lack of facilities in 1973 for the kids to play - we see the kids playing in the roads as the man points to a fenced off field and says that the councillors do not give a damn.
So, what you can do is view our YobTube page - and play the playlist we have set up of episodes 1 to 8. About 70 minutes or so.
Click here to go to our YouTube page.
Choose the playlist by clicking on the link ‘playlists’ at the top of the page.
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24 Responses to “Kirkby Rent Strike Video Online”
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From the scene in the Headmasters office in Ruffwood. Two pupils are grilled by the head…
“Michael, why did you rub soap onto the face of a fellow pupil?”
Another teacher informs us…
“on 3 occasions he has used bad language to members of staff”
I think he is still on detention.
Some of the police might spot themselves having a bit of push and shove with the general public.
At one point, a picket is called outside Walton Jail - and one of the pickets shouts through a megaphone “there are more criminals there in the police that there are inside the jail.”
At least we had a better line of put downs for the police - its all “f*** the police” these days. Even that’s often misspelt.
Walton Jail in 1973 - be good to hear some stories of the old days.
Sadly, the former leader of Kirkby Council who eventually got jailed - could not at this point entertain us with his memories of jail.
heres the embed for 1
just ripped the lot.Some old faces there.Bruce Scot.Tony Boyle.Brian and eileen owen and May Stone.
If anyone else wants to own this video - then go the computer help guide up in the top comments at the right hand side of this website.
I’ve only downloaded the videos so far but will rip them all later and add to my collection. (note ‘rip’ in this instance means to copy and convert a movie format. Just a modern version of putting a cassette recorder in front of the old gramophone and recording.
There is a DVD of this documentary floating around Kirkby - along with other documentaries that the producer did at the time. There is also good one on Glasgow loan sharks in the 70s maybe 80s. There are 7 or 9 as I recall, all by this same producer or documentary maker.
It would be nice to have a proper rip because YouTube videos are scaled down and lower resolution than the original.
But still, a great find.
There is a classic piece on the Kirkby video were the police came to the school assembly to give all the Ruffwood pupils a talk about the police.
The speech is priceless - he terrifies the kids with an apocalyptic view of human nature, claiming their mates would kick them in their faces if there was a fire in a room and only one had the chance of getting out some window.
He was explaining shoplifting - which was a big problem in Kirkby back then. It was a ‘dare’ thing with some lads, and the inspector (not sure of his rank) was explaining how the lads who told you to shoplift would leave you in the lurch.
How that gets to being in some room with a blazing fire and only time for one of you to escape is another matter.
Good one though.
The original vid: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_55WjQjaumU
Was converted from DVD using the ‘DIVX’ codec… the ’script’ of which will be contained in any other conversion….. It is no malicious code.,, It is so far impossible to include malicious code in any video format. Especially in .FLV format.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_55WjQjaumU
FOONian
As in the delightful ‘hymn’ up to our necks in Foonian blood?
Anyway mate - the video which had the script was the heroin video which is on some other news article.
All the Kirkby rent vids seem ok but it’s not impossible to embed malicious code into a video, either via the media or embedded video players.
Take this for example…
“Increasingly the actual code, often JavaScript, used to attack PCs is hidden in Flash animations or scrambled so anyone who examines the source of a page can’t easily identify it, said Jose Nazario, a senior software engineer at Arbor Networks, in a presentation at the CanSecWest security confab in Vancouver.”
There, as might imagine, some devious gits out there. I keep waiting for the first MP3 to be given a virus.
Ah now your mistaking ‘video’ with ‘media player’. Media players have exploits….. Video does not. ;o)
I could put up the ‘behind the rent strike’ vid so people could download it.. Maybe on ‘Fileden’ or even ‘Googlevideo’…Though, if you search ISOHUNT. org ..you can d/l via bittorrent.
Anyways…keep the faith, and remember..I’m neither a fork nor a spoon x
God Bless FOONian you and may God forgive us our copyright sins as we grab a copy on bittorrent.
Title: Behind the Rent Strike
Director: Nick Broomfield
Year: 1979
Language: English
Subtitles: n/a (could be done though!)
Size: 795 MB (834,594,863 bytes)
Video Codec: DivX 6.4.0
Video Bitrate: 1586 kbps
Resolution: 640 x 464
Qf: 0.214 bits/pixel
Framerate: 25.000
Audio Specs: 0×0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3
Audio Bitrate: 192 kb/s tot , Joint Stereo
Fs: 48000 Hz
Runtime: 54:48.480
Source: DVD
Description: Broomfield\’s graduation project from the National Film and Television School, the film is about the rent strike in Kirkby New Town in 1973, when 3000 residents protested against the Housing Finance Bill. It shows the violent clashes between residents and the police and the social conditions experienced by residents, including appalling housing and job prospects.
If anyone is unsure of how to download via bittorrent, search online - there are tons of tutorials - BUT, we’ll do a quick guide soon on the best bittorrent clients and the various nagging problems that come up for beginners such as rar files, .daa files and the infernal .UIF files or .iso and many more besides!
Plus, port forwarding is always a popular one. Its the only way to speed up the downloads for those using routers.
F00Nian.
I’t’s so simple to do.I could simply stop a frame and copy and paste the code in.It was’nt the rent strike vid anyway,it was a tracking perservering cookie using windows ad
May I suggest then, that the weary amongst us use VideoLans VLC media player to play their videos, and audio files….
http://www.videolan.org/
Howse that for spam gang? ;o)
VLC player is good for video, and is a must have as it plays formats other players do not play.
Windows media player is just a pile of bloated software and awful for video - sound is not too bad if your audio card can be configured - but I prefer Winamp for music or might use Media player classic to play stuff like .ape files (pure copy of the original CD wav at half the size)and some other audio or video which VLC player might not play.
As for the virus - I understand how you can grab a frame of a movie, and look at the hard code and add code - but are we talking windows media player exploits specific?
I use ‘Sound forge’ for playing and editing my audio files. SF now supports .flac formats :0o .
For video I use videolan , ‘DivX player’ and ‘media player classic’. With these two programes I can play all my video-files.
Formats supported are .vob(dvd) .flv .mov .mpeg(1)(2)+(4) .avi/.Divx .. I steer clear of .rm ‘Real Media’ files. I detest ‘Real player’ and ‘quicktime’.
I’m still very dubious that a movie file can contain a so-called virus. But.. admittedly,it is possible to include ‘code’ within some streaming video, which would allow the ‘media player’ to be exploited. But for this to occur, you would have to be online, and actively streaming a video to your computer.
Most media players have such exploits, especially the brand name players such as Windows media player. Most of these exploits though are quickly patched by the manufacturers .
Anyways lets stop worrying, and get downloading .. :0)
Does anyone know how to find or get hold of another documentary about Kirkby made in the 70’s called Kirkby - A Self Portrait?
It was made by Ray Gosling, and focused on the state of the houses, the vandalism, unemployment etc in the town. I remember watching it being filmed around the back of the Woodpecker pub on Bigdale Drive, and may even be in it.
There was a big fuss kicked up over it at the time, the residents thought it showed the worst aspects of the town, and I seem to remember the filmakers gave them their some camera equipment and let them film their own follow up - though I am not sure if that ever saw the light of day.
Spotted some of the old faces outside Walton gaol as well,Joe Burns telling the sgnt it was a picket and the cop saying something along the lines cant be a picket coz there is no strike!!There seems to be a lack of willpower to organise such things at the moment,but I have a feeling these type of people are still around to fight injustice but are dormant and when conditions change for the worse again in the economic cycle they will re-surface.The changes in society are not only made by the accademics and well to do,but by the down trodden when they are forced into corners.
If you want a program that will convert any video file to any other then get this.
http://www.nchsoftware.com/prism/
it will even convert .flv to .avi or mpeg4
Spit You seem well up on computors,maybe you can list more of these useful sites on here.Cheers for the info.
HALCYON DAZE.I have. Take a look at computer help on the left hand side.
Alan Smithee, the Kirkby - A Self Portrait documentary might be out there on DVD.
I heard someone was passing around a bunch of Kirkby documentary’s that had been converted to DVD from video. Perhaps the owners re-released some of the material.
It would be good to see them all again.
In fact, anyone with any video of Kirkby, perhaps home video, shots of Kirkby, or the schools and especially any old events plays, concerts or whatever - then get in touch.
was this by Ray Gosling?
I remember the Ray Gosling documentary being shown and also all the woman in the townie the next day saying they were going to hang Ray Gosling by his B–ls if he ever came to kirkby again,if anyone has any info were i can get a copy of that or any other footage of old kirkby i will be most greatful,
thanks, martin.nolan@live.co.uk
If anybody is interested you can see the whole program “Behind The Rent Strike” at
http://www.hackneyindependent.org/films/behind_the_rent_strike_1974.html
Also, a program about Liverpool by the same director can be found on the same site at
http://www.hackneyindependent.org/films/who_cares_1971.html