5.13

Today I have been watching, inter alia, a DVD called 'The Spirit of '45'. It's a documentary about the first Labour government after the Second World War by legendary leftie filmmaker Ken Loach. This is the government that created the NHS against the firm opposition of out-of-touch Tories like Winston, nationalised most of the key industries and embarked on a massive house building programme. It's more interesting than you might think. The thesis is that people used their experiences of collective effort during the war to forge their expectations of what was possible after it - with the insinuation, of course, that we could still return to that collective spirit to build a very different society. Some of the details of the grinding poverty of many in the 1930s, as well as the struggles of working people living in slum housing to afford simple things like medical care in the days before the NHS are very.... illuminating. Whatever your politics (and personally I'm left of centre) you have to admit the sheer achievement of creating something like the NHS in a time of such dire economic hardship: we were almost bankrupt after six years of war.
A lot of 'The Spirit of '45' feels remarkably relevant to the Britain of the 21st century. It's amazing how the fault lines of British politics have changed so little in all the decades since the 1940s....high five for Clem Attlee! Respeeeeect for the Beveridge Report ....