Fame Is The Spur

Loosely based on the life of labor leader Ramsay MacDonald, this adaptation of a "faction" novel (mixing fiction and fact) by Howard Spring doesn't quite hold together, but it does provide an interesting, albeit lengthy, look at the reasons why the Labor and Conservative parties often clash in Great Britain. Redgrave, a young man from the hard-hit North, decides to devote his life to the welfare of his fellow laborers. A sword picked up by his grandfather after it was used to slash workers at the Battle of Peterloo (1819) is his Excalibur. He becomes the British version of Willie Stark as he rouses the workers with rhetoric and finally winds up in Parliament as a L...