Penal labour

Penal labour is a generic term for various kinds of unfree labour which prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.

Large-scale implementations of penal labour include labour camps, prison farms, penal colonies, penal military units, or aboard prison ships.

Punitive versus Productive labour

Punitive labour, also known as convict labour, prison labour, or hard labour, is a form of forced labour used in both past and present as an additional form of punishment beyond imprisonment alone. Punitive labour encompasses two types: productive labour, such as industrial work; and intrinsically pointless tasks used as primitive occupational therapy, punishment and/or physical torment.

Hard Labour (film)

Hard Labour is a 1973 television film, directed by Mike Leigh and produced by Tony Garnett which aired as part of the BBC anthology series Play for Today. The film stars Liz Smith in her first major role. The film is the most clearly drawn in all Leigh's work from the background in Higher and Lower Broughton where he grew up. "Though elements of autobiography are buried in all Leigh's films and plays, only Hard Labour is set in Salford, – the scenes in the Stones' house were shot in a house just two doors along from where the Leighs had lived in Cavendish Road."

Cast

Liz Smith as Mrs Thornley
Clifford Kershaw as Mr Thornley
Polly Hemingway as Ann
Bernard Hill as Edward
Alison Steadman as Veronica
Vanessa Harris as Mrs Stone
Cyril Varley as Mr Stone
Ben Kingsley as Naseem

Theme

"The polarity between the worlds of Mrs Stone and the lady who cleans her house (the central figure, Mrs Thornley, the Catholic house-cleaner) is icily delineated. In the middle is the new housing estate, where Mrs Thornley's son, Edward, (played by Bernard Hill in his professional début), a car mechanic, lives with his wife Veronica (Alison Steadman)."