Writer and filmmaker Barney Pell Scholes discusses the influence behind his new Pears Short Film Fund-winning project
The Pears Short Film Fund was set up by UK Jewish Film in 2006 to offer opportunities to create cinema engaging with British Jewish life. Previous winners have been shortlisted for Oscars, nominated for BAFTAs and won awards around the world. One of this year’s winners, The Soldier on Smithdown Road, is set in Liverpool in 1947, during a little-documented spate of antisemitic attacks in the north of England, and it premieres at this year’s UK Jewish Film Festival. Here, its writer and co-director Barney Pell Scholes (pictured below) explores the inspiration behind the film.
The Soldier on Smithdown Road, which is co-directed with Thomas Harnett O’Meara, is based on the experiences of my paternal grandparents, Louis and Rachel (Rae) Scholes. The film retells a story of great family pride and dramatises a largely forgotten event in British Jewish history.
In 1947, in British Mandate Palestine, Zionist paramilitary groups were fighting for an independent Jewish state. One of the most radical and violent of these groups was the Irgun. After British authorities sentenced three Irgun fighters to death, the Irgun kidnapped two British sergeants in retaliation. When the British went ahead with the executions of the Irgun prisoners, the Irgun hanged the British soldiers and booby-trapped their bodies. This episode became known as ‘The Sergeants’ Affair’.
Graphic pictures of the sergeants’ hanging bodies featured on the front pages of several British tabloids. Despite widespread condemnation of the Irgun’s actions by both British Jews and the Haganah (the umbrella paramilitary organisation), the headlines triggered a wave of antisemitic rioting across the UK.
In Liverpool, a mob marched towards my great-grandparents’ shop on Smithdown Road, where my grandma Rae worked. My grandpa Louis, who had served as an RAF airman during World War II, put on his uniform and stood outside the shop with a friend to defend it. Facing down the mob, he told them he’d served his country with pride and prevented them from entering the shop. The film is a fictionalised retelling of this piece of family folklore.
As well as telling an exciting story, I wanted to make a film that both explores the precarious nature of being a British Jew and complex questions of identity. Most Jews are painfully familiar with the feeling that their loyalty will always be questioned, and their Judaism will always make them a target in the context of geopolitical events. I wanted the film to address the fact that, even today, too many are willing to stand by and watch as these sorts of events happen.
Liverpudlian Jews are enormously under-represented in the history of British Jewry. Once a thriving community with several synagogues, it now has few Jews left in the city, and the number is dwindling. I want my film to serve as a lasting testimony both to the Liverpool Jewish community and the memory of my grandparents.
By Barney Pell Scholes
The Soldier on Smithdown Road is screening at the UK Jewish Film Festival (20 Nov, Manchester; 22 Nov, Liverpool). Barney Pell Scholes is a writer and filmmaker. barneypellscholes.com
This article appears in the Autumn 2023 issue of JR.