Stepping up: Green Party leader Zack Polanski in his Croydon-shot video
The Green Party’s latest Party Political Broadcast, shown across the country on the BBC and ITV, offered a message of hope straight from the streets of Croydon.
The Jubilee Bridge underpass, side streets off Church Road and Edridge Road, with the Town Hall tower visible in the background, and Duppas Hill Park all feature prominently as Zack Polanski strides out around the Croydon landmarks.
Polanski has energised the Green Party since he became its leader in September, membership almost trebling in four months to more than 180,000. It is likely to increase further after this little piece of cinematic emotional manipulation.
“I haven’t felt this positive and hopeful about UK politics for a very long time, if ever! Thank you to everyone at the Green Party for making hope normal again,” one member of the public responded after the PPB went out.
“Zack can get us out of Thatcher’s shadow after 40 years,” said another.
“Speaking Truth to Power. Not your average political broadcast, but an uplifting political broadcast of truth, wisdom and hope.”
Movie location: the Greens’ latest Party Political Broadcast was shot in and around the ‘mean streets’ of central Croydon
“One of few politicians that I’d trust to make our country more prosperous and safer.”
Polanski’s two minutes and 45 seconds polemic lays out a clear, anti-capitalist position, as he darts around the car park beneath the Croydon Flyover.
“Why does it feel like everyone’s running all the time?” he begins, first at a jog, before picking up pace.
“You take a second job, sometimes three, just to stay where you are. Wages stuck in 2008. Prices racing ahead… It’s the same story all around the country. Cities, towns, villages, people working full-time, still broke.”
The Green Party has recently used several Croydon members in its social media videos, but on this occasion, it is Polanski, alone, running through Croydon.
The messaging is that we are all trying to run faster, just to stand still.
Until, leaning on some rusting ironworks at the entrance to a park, Polanski calls on us all to pause and consider: “When the rest of us are killing ourselves to create wealth and hardly any of it is coming back to our communities, it’s going somewhere else – upwards to the pockets of the super rich.
“This isn’t just an economic failure. It’s a failure of leadership. The people we elected choose to serve the wealthy and not us. And yes, that is obscene.”
It is powerful stuff, and coming after a week of Trump-dominated madness and hopelessness, its timing may touch a chord with many.
Running for office: film-maker Jeremy Clancy has made good use of his Croydon locations
“Good leaders put people before profit. They know homes are for living in, not landlords’ portfolios. Energy is for warming those homes, not record dividends.
“And rivers are for nature and swimming in, not being poisoned to protect profits…
“It’s how we make hope normal again.”
Polanski’s little mini-movie came too late to be considered for an Oscar, but its filmic qualities – and choice of location – makes it outstanding within its genre.
The PPB was directed by film-maker Jeremy Clancy, who had grown up on the picket lines of the miners’ strike in Derbyshire and Yorkshire, “handing out food parcels… watching the slow dismantling of his town”.
It was during this time, more than 40 years ago, that Clancy realised “film could carry memory, grief and defiance in equal measure”.
A former university lecturer 10 years ago Clancy became more involved in politics and campaigning, serving as chief filmmaker for the Labour Party, during which time he wrote directed three party political broadcasts, producing Labour’s highest-performing campaign content.
He has also worked with Unite the Union, the Fire Brigades Union and charities including Amnesty International.
Together with Polanski and the Greens, he has used Croydon to create a vision that many will remember for a long time indeed.
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