Having said that, though, I predict an Australia vs New Zealand final this time around.

Australia is going to have to do a lot of work to make it to the final. They were rotten last year, and they just got beaten by minnow Manu Samoa on the weekend, which is probably as bad as it gets. If they continue current form they won’t make it past the first round.

how on earth did you put a racist angle on an old journalistic mistake ???

Sorry, my mistake, I read it as “as if they were all blacks” and considering it was 1905 and the way of thinking back then, I put two and two together and got three. My mistake.

they may have played in the kit before but the name stems from the stated tour

Yes I know that but your quote, the source of which you did not cite, states “the name stuck, and an all-black uniform was adopted” as if the uniform was an afterthought to the name being applied. As we both know, it wasn’t.

i’d bone up on your team if i was you !! it is a well known debate

Yes the story is well known indeed and we hear it over and over every year.

As for boning up, no need. We are getting All Black this, All Black that fed though every media outlet at the moment, and have done for some while. A lot of people are looking forward to the cup being over and done with, it gets a bit tedious.

Arthur Pewtey, personally I don’t care what your lot wears, I probably won’t be watching your games unless for a few seconds if I turn the tele on and mistake it for an All Black game because of the ripped off uniforms. Even if they meet my team they are not allowed to wear that uniform, but it’s unlikely they will with the current state of the England team. Plus it is not psychologically detrimental to me at all, I’m not playing.

I think it is well worth the nation registering a protest over this blatantly bizarre decision England has made to copy the host’s long trademarked look. It seems extremely desperate, trying to tap into the mana that the All Black strip has. It will be a great boost to England’s morale when they arrive here though and see all the signs up saying Go All Blacks, etc. They’ll probably assume it’s for them.

I wonder how the actual England players feel being made to dress as posers and wannabes.

That is wrong Tornado. New Zealand was playing in black shirts with a silver fern logo from their first ever international match when they toured New South Wales in 1894.

By 1905 whilst touring Britain the team had changed from white shorts with the black shirt to black shorts. So with black jumper, shorts and socks, a Daily Mail reporter wrote them up as the All Blacks simply because of their colours they wore when reporting which team did what, just as a reporter might refer to a team as ‘the reds’ or ‘the blues’. I have never ever heard anything with that racist angle to the story. And there are photos of the team wearing black on that tour and well before it, so the idea that his statement prompted the change to black is a nonsense. See the photos on Wikipedia’s page for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_national_rugby_union_team

This idea of England “paying tribute” to NZ, what a lot of rot. Did they dress in green and gold with Aborigine designs at the last World Cup? No. They are simply trying a psychological tactic and it’s pretty bloody pathetic.

Till now England’s ‘away’ kit has been dark grey and red. Not black.

Whereas NZ’s kit has been all black for 128 years. The only time they wear the white shirt is when they play Scotland who have the dark blue, which would be too confusing in the heat of battle. Other than that they wear black at home and away.

The picture shown on TV here showed a Maori design around the rose, and Dr Ranginui Walker, a well known scholar and somewhat radical when if comes to other cultures using Maori design was interviewed about his shock and dismay. Even NZ Prime Minister John Key called the English team “wannabes” for taking the black strip on our home grounds.

Still, there’s usually a black shirted team that chokes in the semi-finals of the RWC. Maybe this time it won’t be our team.

Tangmere 1940

Roughly the wartime generation – those born between say, 1935 and 1945.

John Green

So you say those with the right to feel that special esceptionally close connection to Bomber Command are those who were small children and infants during WWII? Really? Surely if anyone could claim a more special connection to those times it is those who were there as adults then, involved in the fighting – the actual veterans, not a bunch of kids who would have known diddly squat about it at the time? There are wartime veterans, and after that it’s all second-hand knowledge.

If you were born between 1935 and 1945 you really have no more right to claim to have any closer connection than anyone else who is not a veteran, as far as I am concerned. You certainly have a right to feel close to the subject, but so do all the other younger generations. .

It is the younger generations like Andy Saunders, TwinOtter, myself and many others here who have the challenge of continuing to ensure the stories of those who fought are not forgotten. And we younger ones have to pass that mantle on down through future generations. All the way along that chain from one generation to the next there will be special connections made between history stories and the younger people who the stories touch and inspire.

My generation born in the 1970’s have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to make personal connections with WWII veterans, get to know them and talk to them directly, one to one, about the experience of being in the war (some of them in Bomber Command). The next generation down from mine born in the 1990’s are also lucky to have the tail end of that experience, many of them having great-grandfather still alive, though most don’t realise the significance of what it means yet.

After that, from here on in as the wartime generation – those now in their late 80’s and older – pass away, the only way such special connections can be made with Bomber Command or any other aspect of WWII will be through second-hand experience – filmed interviews, audio recordings, books, articles and other documentation.

It is there that those more creative ways of telling stories such as costume-dramas are so necessary in bringing those times to life, telling a historic story whilst connecting the viewers with the emotion, pathos, characters and historic events that dramatised accounts do so well. Already this is a well established fact – most people my generation wouldn’t know about Bomber Command if they hadn’t seen Dambusters, or the Battle of Britain if it were not for the film of that name. These costume dramas, or more correctly docu-dramas, play a crucial part in getting younger generations interested in the first place in a topic. I don’t just mean WWII here, any historical account is more inspiring to the novice if they see it re-enacted out in a well made, accurate dramatic film.

For all those who watch such a thing, it will inspire some of those younger minds to look into the subject further, explore more, read up and eventually pass on what they have learned to others. In terms of Bomber Command it will make those youngsters of the future realise what the meaning is behind the BBMF Lancaster, and not just think it’s only another aeroplane. It will help them appreciate the personal sacrifices made, and it will inspire them to look for more information.

If such storytelling through docu-drama were not allowed to happen, then people will not have any interest to simply go look at ORB’s, logbooks, interviews, and historical documents from cold, just off the sreet. Why would they? They have not been inspired by the story. It’s just history, ancient and boring old history, and means nothing without that emotional attachment that has triggered the brain. Without having that spark that sets the young people on that path to discover more, the history will all be forgotten in generations to come.

By the way, I was under the mistaken impression John Green that you were an actual veteran of Bomber Command the way you were writing. If you were born between 1935-1945 you cannot be, and I guess you’re just another enthusiast with an opinion like the rest of the younger ones here?

Some contributors are continuing the claim that this proposed TV production is a documentary. I don’t think that that can be possible. A documentary to be a documentary must rely on the re-telling of the facts – plain and unvarnished facts in all reasonable detail.

With all due respect, I’m afraid you are wrong. A documentary programme can be made in many, many forms and from many different viewpoints and still remain within the documentary genre. There are loads of different styles of documentary – expositional, interactive, observational, and docu-drama are four of the more popular styles and sub-genres. There are many others, hybrids or offshoots of these four, and then also styles such a mockumentary (a totally scripted, often comedic takeon a subject, filmed in documentary style, yet still a sub-genre of documentary).

You then have other influences on these styles, such as the director’s bias, their political slant and the whole point that they are trying to prove by making the film. People do not simply go out and make a documentary about stuff without any reason (even if it comes across that way). Some directors will take a neutral stance and tell a story from all sides while others will take one particular point of view that they use in editing their footage to guide the viewer into understanding and perhaps agreeing with their point of view on the topic. A good director will do this without the viewer even realising they are being played along one route of many possibilities.

Your comments about “costume drama” not being documentary are wrong. If a factual story is being told through the use of characters or a played-out-script recreating the way an event or events actually happened (in the film maker’s point of view based on their research of the evidence) then it is a documentary. A biopic film on someone’s life, for example Ghandi (1982) is indeed a documentary, in the docu-drama genre.

Some of the best documentaries made in recent years have been a mix of genres, through expositional, interactive and docu-drama.

Expositional Documentary draws on using real film footage, photos, interviews with actual people who were there, quoting documented test, etc, with a voice of god narrator).

Interactive is when the subjects talk directly with the camera and with other subjects in the film, if I recall rightly.

Docu-drama recreates scenes using actors, re-enactors, aeroplanes, ships or whatever, to tell the story in a dramatised way but based on the facts.

A great example of a hybrid between these three is the series The Seven Wonders of the Industrialised World, in which a narrator tells part of the story, photos and blueprints form the day, even film footage if it existed, were all used in the expositiional way; but they also recreated the main characters in a dramatic way and the viewer watched them interacting with each other and also dircetly with the camera as if interviewed – their scripts almost entirely taken from material the real people they’re playing had written in real life; The interactive nature of that where a charact like Brunel is there being interviewed by the BBC, his real words being spoken by a very good actor – that to me is so much more engaging than a bland narration.

So, costime-drama can be documentary and can be done very well. Walking With Dinosaurs is costume drama. No real life dinosaurs there, but their story as best the eveidence could provide at the time was put across pretty convincningly.

I really would have no issues watching a documentary that recreated a bomber crew telling their story, young actors with old men’s words as their scripts perhaps.

In criminology, witnesses to a crime that is in many instances of recent date will differ markedly in their reports. This is an observable truism. How fallible then are the memories of those wartime personnel still alive but all around the age of ninety years ? Their memories, gathered for the most part under conditions of stress and fatigue must surely be in many vital instances prone to error.

So what you’re saying is that documentary makers should not film veterans as their stories will be completely different from the truth?

Didn’t you say you were there? I assume by this you mean that you are a veteran of Bomber Command? Do you trust your own memories of those days? Or are you saying that you’d like the documentary taylored specifically for your own subjective view and political bias of the war, so it doesn’t upset you when you watch it? I really don’t see what you’re getting at.

The producers of this story, just like the contributors to this Forum will be much younger than the veterans we’re discussing.

So? I don’t see many 90 year olds who are that keen to make their own documentaries about themselves so that’s the nature of things. However thankfully a lot of them are very willing to share their stories and memories with the younger generations, even with film makers!

They will not be able to duplicate the speech and behavioural patterns prevalent in the 1940s.

If the director and crew choose to go to that length of accuracy it would not be hard to do at all. But most crews would not consider such detailing necessary in order to tell their story.

I have noticed that people who work in TV while enjoying life ‘high on the hog’ are principally Socialist in political outlook. If so, they will generally, not be supportive of those magnificent men of Bomber Command during WW2.

Wow, sweeping one-eyed views there, and no doubt wildly innaccurate.

I am a film maker. I am broke. I am not socialist and I have a high regard for our veterans. My best mate works in film making and till recently was a director and producer at a TV company. He is not at all wealthy. He is conservative. And he also has a lot of respect for veterans. In fact I work a lot with WWII veterans, I have been involved ina major project recording interviews with several hundered of them. I talk to other people about it from all walks of life – they see me with the camera and ask what I’m doing – and so far I have not had one person react in a negative way towards the idea of recording veterans stories. I get so many compliments for doing what I’m doing it is bloody humbling. I have met many great heroes in this project. lot of them were with Bomber Command. Some are now no longer with us.

It is virtually impossible to write or speak about history without the taint of bias.

Correct. The same applies to anything, not just history.

Cultural, political and social bias will colour the result. It is next to impossible to render a neutral interpretation. All of the above is why I think that what will emerge as a TV program will be the costume drama to which I’ve referred.

As I have said, costume drama can be documentary if done right. But just because a film maker may have a political view or just an idea or agenda he or she was to make the main focus of a story, and no matte how they as the person who decides how to compel that story to the viewer based on heir interpretation of the facts, that does not in any way decide that if their view is different from your’s that it will instantly be ‘costume drama’ as you put it.

It is actually good, very good, to watch a documentary made by someone with different – tangental or opposing – views from your own, as it will make you think about the subject more, turn the issues over in your head, compare your established views on the subject with those being presented by the film maker, and then use those views to decide whetehr you’re still comfortable with what you always though was right, or to challenge your own views and read up more on the topic. In a nutsell, it’s called learning. Not everything we see for ourselves is the whole truth, and cerrtain;y not everything we read or view on TV (even in the documentaries you didn’t find challenging).

I hope, as do others on this Forum that this production will do justice to the illustrious memory of Bomber Command and the fortitude and skill ot its aircrew.

So do I. I hope it is presented in a thoughtful, balanced way. I hope it brings out many previously unseen stories and points of view. I hope it becomes a great record for future generations to learn from too. By the sound of things the crew plan to show some actual flying and firing of guns in re-enactments, and I applaud this so long as it’s done in a way that reflects the way things were done back in the war. Old black and white footage can only portray so much, and the documentary footage taken back then is of course so faked and staged in so many cases, a more natiralistic, full colour recration will be in my opinion much more interesting to many viewers.

I hope that the film makers find the necessary equipment they need to make a great new documentary. Good luck.