Firstly can I please put the record straight - this is NOT a movie, but a TV drama made by the BBC in 1966.
Carol White plays "Cathy", the mother, Ray Brooks the father. Through circumstances they find themselves destitute with nowhere to live.
Carol White's performance was absolutely without parallel, and I defy anyone who is a parent, to remain dry-eyed when the Social Welfare people find her seated on a bench with her children in a London railway station. The children are wrenched out of their mother's arms, the children screaming for their mother, and "Cathy" hysterical with emotion, trying to prevent their removal. How could we ever have lived with such a barbaric system? This drama served as a landmark in Social Services methods within the UK, and Carol White's superb portrayal will forever be regarded as instrumental in bringing about change.
I would like to be able to report that such things no longer happen in the UK, but I cannot. Perhaps in not such a heart-wrenching way, children are still removed from their families on the pretext of "child welfare" priorities. Priorities that are distorted by the setting of Government adoption targets - so just who is helping who here?
This is not family viewing, but is an important historical account of a time that none of us should be proud.
Carol White plays "Cathy", the mother, Ray Brooks the father. Through circumstances they find themselves destitute with nowhere to live.
Carol White's performance was absolutely without parallel, and I defy anyone who is a parent, to remain dry-eyed when the Social Welfare people find her seated on a bench with her children in a London railway station. The children are wrenched out of their mother's arms, the children screaming for their mother, and "Cathy" hysterical with emotion, trying to prevent their removal. How could we ever have lived with such a barbaric system? This drama served as a landmark in Social Services methods within the UK, and Carol White's superb portrayal will forever be regarded as instrumental in bringing about change.
I would like to be able to report that such things no longer happen in the UK, but I cannot. Perhaps in not such a heart-wrenching way, children are still removed from their families on the pretext of "child welfare" priorities. Priorities that are distorted by the setting of Government adoption targets - so just who is helping who here?
This is not family viewing, but is an important historical account of a time that none of us should be proud.