[3] The BBC insisted that the name of the company be changed from "Pilkington" to "Wilkinson", and the location moved from St. Helens to the Staffordshire Potteries.

[2] Passed under the new government of Edward Heath, the Industrial Relations Act 1971 made such unofficial strikes illegal.

The Committee meets in a room above a pub with seven members: Les, Johnny, Eddie, Billy, Bert, Mike and Jerry.

When the General Municipal's leader Holtby arrives to address the meeting, he is booed and pelted with stones, and has to be given a police escort away.

Holtby then tells the media that the Communist Party have infiltrated the workforce, but the workers deny this when asked by journalists.

They are called scabs (a term that is extremely offensive in some parts of England) and spat at, before a scuffle between pickets and police.

Eddie is elected to attend the meeting and obtain written confirmation of the promises made by the General Municipal and the TUC.

The victimised leaders return to London to discuss the agreement signed with the General Electric and TUC, but the request for a meeting is denied.

The film is generally considered to be one of the weaker collaborations between Allen and Loach, and the two men have both expressed their reservations about the picture.

A member of the Communist Party of Great Britain suggested that the film was put out by the BBC to attack trade unions as bureaucratic and dominated by Stalinists.

[2] John Williams described the film as "an unashamedly partial work that shows both the strengths and weaknesses of a politically committed approach to art, in that those characters who have Allen's sympathy are convincingly written and portrayed, while others are often little more than pantomime villains".

[2] Williams feels that the Trotsky quote at the end of the film "seems clumsily inserted, as if Allen and Loach needed to add a wider, revolutionary aspect to the play".

[2] He also suggests that the two films were broadcast by the BBC at a time when many of those in the Plays department held similar politics to Allen and Loach.