Borstal

Isn't there a better way than doing this? These guys have no chance.

But that also goes back to Scum and the fact that when Scum was made, they were saying, we have to stop the Borstal system.

And actually Scum was a part of the discussion about what's happening with Borstal is not working.

And so I do think that any movie that is addressing that and actually might have an audience is significant.

Yeah.

He then joined his friend at the seaside and had the audacity to offer the man one of his own stolen cigars.

He was sentenced to three years in Borstal and was sent to Hoseley Bay Colony.

One of the men who knew him during his time there later recalled...

He was blue-eyed, curly-haired and lazy with a genius for dodging hard work and lying his way into favour.

They regarded him as a spy and a tale-bearer.

When a national emergency was declared at the outbreak of World War II, all inmates who had served six months or more in Borstal were released to join the war effort.

Heath enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps in October 1939, and within six months he was posted to Palestine.

After almost a year there, Heath was in trouble again for obtaining a second paybook under false pretenses and going AWOL.

But even with those three things, that's a hell of a lot to achieve.

And I mean, his own personal history in terms of the time he spent in Borstal and in prison, his connection with the Republican movement, the queries about his sexuality, which are less queries, I think, than just people covering things up later on for various reasons.

And of course, above all, the really dangerous drinking.

Let's go back to when he comes to a particular prominence.

We are going to puncture your pomposity right now.

Don't even try it.

So he sent us to three years in prison in Boston.

Now there is a wider

people would carry records, you know, because it was a display, you know, it's like no one was tattooed.

The only people who were tattooed were people who came out of Borstal or the army.

No one would be willingly tattooed unless, of course, it would have been, you know, a compass and some quink, something which would dissolve into like a birthmark.

Yeah.

By 1959, doctors had recommended special schooling for Reeve.

He subsequently attended an approved school and later underwent Borstal training.

His recorded criminal history began when he was 12.

On 16 October 1961, he appeared before courts for shop-breaking and he received a fit person order.

A later psychiatric report described Reeve as having developed a pronounced interest in knives, firearms and killing.

It referred to writings and drawings containing violent material, which psychiatrists regarded as evidence of a long-standing preoccupation with violence.

During 1964, Reeve absented himself from Borstal and travelled to Colchester.

According to the psychiatric report, he had expressed an intention to kill four boys who he had believed had harmed his brother David.

The synopsis, Colin Smith is a rebellious working class teenager from Nottingham with little enthusiasm for the factory life apparently awaiting him.

Following his father's death and an unsuccessful bakery robbery, Colin is caught and sent to Ruxton Towers, Borstal.

There, the governor discovers Colin's ability as a cross-country runner.

It gives him privileges and allows him to train alone, hoping Colin will defeat the runner from a prestigious public school in an upcoming competition.

During those solitary runs, Colin remembers the events that brought him to Borstal and gradually realises that his talent is being appropriated by precisely the people and the institutions he despises, which brings us to one of the great acts of bloody-mindedness in British cinema.

Does this still work sort of 60 years later? I think it does.

It's obviously a film of its time, quite aggressively so in places, but you can almost smell the early 60s in this one.

This whole metaphor is blindingly obvious throughout