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The Outsiders: Jessica Mitford John Pilger, Alan Lowery

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The Outsiders: Jessica Mitford John Pilger, Alan Lowery — THE OUTSIDERS: JESSICA MITFORD JOHN PILGER, ALAN LOWERY THE POWER OF THE DOCUMENTARY: BREAKING THE SILENCE thepowerofthedocumentary.com.au A FILM FESTIVAL CURATED BY JOHN PILGER The Outsiders: Jessica Mitford — Presenter: Sound: Jessica Mitford, the ‘red sheep’ of the Treuhaft persuaded her to write an Jessica Mitford died in 1996 at the John Pilger Bob Withey aristocratic Mitford family, left behind article about the corrupt funeral age of 78, having not long completed Director: Film editor: her own charmed background and never business. Called ‘Saint Peter Don't You her final book, The American Way of Alan Lowery Jonathan Morris allowed this privilege to prevent her Call Me’, it appeared in Frontier magazine Death Revisited, which disclosed a Production company: Recommended rating: campaigning for the rights of others – and lifted the lid on the many scandals host of new funeral directors’ scams. Tempest Films PG making her a perfect fit for John Pilger’s of profiteering that plagued the bereaved On her instructions, she was cremated Producer: Colour, 26 mins 1983 interview series The Outsiders. in the United States. without a ceremony and her ashes were Jacky Stoller UK, 1983 scattered at sea. ‘Jessica Mitford,’ said Researcher: Known as ‘Decca’, she was the sister of This became a bestselling book, Pilger, ‘combined a finely honed social Mike Coren romantic novelist Nancy, Diana, the wife The American Way of Death, whose conscience and a wonderful gallows Camera: of fascist Oswald Mosley, and Unity, who revelations of unscrupulous practices humour. She inverted stereotypes. Rik Stratton was obsessed with Hitler. In 1937, she by undertakers led to Congressional I liked her enormously.’ ran away to Spain with Esmond Romilly, hearings. Its author was described by a nephew of Winston Churchill who had the Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein as Anthony Hayward fought on the Republican side against ‘having a winsome manner, an unfailing Journalist and author Franco in the civil war. They married and ear and an instinct for the jugular… settled in the United States. Following his the picture of a slightly dotty English death in the war, she became active in lady’. What he might also have said was the American Communist Party and met that Mitford was a natural sleuth and and married civil rights lawyer Robert outstanding reporter. Treuhaft, settling in Oakland, California. In her interview with Pilger, Mitford The pair were close comrades and explains that her sister Unity’s became targets of the witch-hunting attachment to fascism and love affair Senator Joe McCarthy. Summoned to with Nazi Germany revolted her enough appear before the House Committee on to become a communist. Her parents, Un-American Activities, they refused too, appeased Hitler and Nazism, just to name radical groups and friends and as many of the British ruling class had were dismissed as ‘unresponsive’. supported Hitler’s rise. ‘He had crushed the trade unions, he had crushed the ‘Jessica not only survived McCarthy,’ communist party and he had crushed says Pilger in his introduction. ‘She the Jews,’ says Mitford, ‘and don’t forget went on to become a very different there’s a huge strain of anti-Semitism muckracker herself – and muckraker is that runs through that class in England.’ what she prefers to be called.’ Robert .
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