Return to Action

This film explains retraining options to disabled men and women and focuses on the work of government-run centres which offered opportunities for people to try out new trades before employment and training. The opportunities allowed people to go on to become bricklayers, lawyers, teachers, and countless other professions and depicted a government gently encouraging disabled members of society to gain meaningful employment.

Produced on behalf of the Ministry of Labour this film provides an indication of the kind of activities the government provided in order to help disabled people back into work. Themes of encouragement and rehabilitation run throughout the film, and the opportunities available at the training centres are heartwarming. Descriptions of depression and the representation of spaces such an occupational therapy room show innovative, forward-thinking, and perhaps even surprising solutions to the social and economic concern of disabled people being excluded from employment. This government film is a public record, preserved and presented by the BFI National Archive on behalf of The National Archives, home to more than 1,000 years of British history.