HP Voices

This is a copy of a magazine article from 2012 in which "Janice Turner (Editor) reviews a study by Andrew Dawson and Sean P Holmes of the development of the BECTU History Project – from a reminiscence during an ACTT conference to an internationally important  archive".

Read the original article in full here:- History Project Article SSR April-May 2012 (1113Kb PDF)

Source: Stage, Screen & Radio, 2012

There are many reasons why knowing our history is important, and this is particularly so for trade unionists and trade unions.

In this era of YouTube, the iPhone, 3 D movies, Facebook, ultra high definition television , the BECTU History Project links us to a time when we worked in a different way. It tells the stories of the workers in our industry over the last 100 years – it tells about the challenges they had to overcome, the skills they developed, the enduring human relationships they forged as Britain developed into one of the world’s major centres of the film and television industry.

50 Years of British TV Documentaries: A Diary of Decline, by a film editor - Simon Rose 2014

With his unique perspective of 50 years working in documentaries, Simon Rose describes the profound cultural and political changes that have transformed the genre.

There has been some debate in oral history circles about the merit of full transcriptions over key word summaries. Summaries may certainly be quicker, demand limited resources, and prove useful for search engines, indexing and initial research purposes. However, there can be little doubt that - when it is possible and financially viable -  a full textual rendition of an entire interview recording fundamentally and exponentially enhances the value of the recordings by providing a substantial number of additional and important benefits:-