A series of four programmes 2: To Bedford from Busso
In the late 1940s the demand to rebuild a war-shattered Britain led the brick-making companies centred in the county town of Bedford to set up a recruiting office in Naples. In that first batch of Italian foreign contract labour who arrived to work in Bedford's brickfields were five men from a hill village called Busso.
Bedford now has an Italian community of nearly 10,000 people and the Mitri family have lived and worked in Bedford for more than 25 years. Yet Carmine, the head of the family who was the first to come, speaks no English and the family returns ' home' each summer to join in the fiesta of Busso's patron saint.
The film returns to Busso from Bedford and explores what has become a stable relationship between very different worlds.
Film recordists JACK Curtis , RON blight Film cameraman JOHN TILEY Producer KEN little