I've always been a strong trade unionist. Actually, I haven't been a 'member' for four years because I believe modern day trade union officials and lay officials are not trade unionists. I think they are weak company men.
However I have always thought this was a great film.
I'm not British, but I have sympathies for a number of labour/trade unionist figures who have protested that trade unions don't operate in the manner as seen in this movie. That is we see a branch taking unilateral, unauthorized action from the head office and just carrying out a wild cat strike over virtually nothing. There's no way any of the unions I've been associated with all my working life could just strike like we see on film.
Nevertheless I think the producers and writers made attempts to be even-handed in the second half of the film, also focusing on the hypocritical attitudes of management. I think too the focus of the film becomes how a family deals with being caught in the middle of a power struggle which is not really of their making.
The ease with which the strike is brought on in the film may be exaggerated, but it is after all only a movie, and they had to get the plot moving somehow. As we all know events in films often don't comport with real life practices!
Remember when Mitt Romney said "Corporations are people"? People made fun of that and while it is a pretty ridiculous statement there is a grain of truth in it, because ultimately every organization or entity set up by human beings is just "people". Government, armies, police, firefighters, small businesses, fraternal organizations, schools, political parties, churches, any such entity devised by and made up of human beings is in that sense "people". This is even more true of unions, whose business is at base "people".
Point being, people are fallacious. They make mistakes, they do stupid things, their noble impulses are compromised by selfishness and greed, they can be nasty, vicious, stupid and even murderous. Therefore, is it any surprise that a group made up of people (in this case, a union) could act so reprehensibly? I think it's easier for the masses of people to act badly than well.
Yes people aren't perfect.
I'm not against the film per se It fits very neatly into the genre of British socio-realist dramas of the period. I'm also the last to complain about film makers having artistic licence over their product.
What I am saying is that I can understand the union ill-will towards the film around the time of its release and I think they had a point. Most of the unionists are simply depicted as being stereotypic caricatures (brain dead, thugs, sheepish, sly, and self-interested). Attenborough apparently had to use all of his charm and labour contacts in an attempt to put a more positive spin on proceedings. Ultimately the old story of "any publicity is good publicity" played out, as the film was a hit.
You make an excellent point about the depiction of union members in this film. Pretty much a bunch of loutish sheep, malcontents and fools, resentful but stupid and easily led by loud-mouthed manipulators.
I'm sure in real life many people did indeed fall into this category. The working class of Britain at that time was not generally known as a reservoir of intellectual depth or social tolerance. How dumb or vicious they could be depends on the individual, but since sending someone to Coventry was a common practice it speaks poorly of those who so willingly fell into this mass brutality and how much disrespect they had for dissent.
Of course, The Angry Silence being a motion picture, it's simpler to resort to clichéd or stock characters for easy audience identification. There is an element of condescension in all this, of elite filmmakers looking down at the lower classes (and for that matter at the upper). The same is true even of a comedy such as The Man in the White Suit, in its way another sharp study of the antagonism between management and labor and many Britons' inability to transcend class differences.