WHEN THE PROJECT OF PROGRESS REALLY STEPPED UP
I look forward to seeing Ken Loach’s new film ‘The Spirit of ‘45’.
For Rosie Boycott’s reflections see:
Rosie takes a challenging line:
‘How impossible it would be today: the creation of a welfare state in Britain where extreme social inequality is the norm. In his film The Spirit of ’45, released yesterday, Ken Loach tells the extraordinary story of that year, when Churchill, who had led this country through its “darkest hours”, was soundly defeated in the election that saw Clement Attlee, the determined Putney boy, ushered into Downing Street.
‘Britain was exhausted.
‘There was very little food; there was huge debt; the pleasantries of life which wartime had dried up were still just a memory. And yet, within five short years, the new government managed to transform the nation into something that resembled a socialist democracy.
‘In the January 1947 edition of The Picture Post, the outline of a welfare state is clearly laid out: free healthcare, free schooling, housing, the promise of work and security if you are unable to earn. The public utility companies were nationalised. They belonged to us. It was nothing short of a revolution.
‘Even when the Tories returned to power in 1950, they did not change the new status quo. It was to be the world I grew up in, one where social mobility prevailed and the gap between the pay of the banker, doctor and schoolteacher was nothing to be remarked on.
‘I assumed that some version of this would last forever but, like most people, I bargained without Mrs Thatcher. “This idea had been bouncing around my head for some time,” Loach says. “I was asked if I would do an archive documentary. I think it’s opposite now.
‘We are now in the midst of a great depression and a recession – as we were at the end of the 1930s. There is a large amount of anger at the cuts and at the destruction of the NHS. You wonder, as the remnants of a civilised society are destroyed, whether people might consider an alternative.”
I’m not so sure that we can go back. Much has changed.
But we can continue to search for alternatives to Government by Distraction and Deceit.
Of course I am a War Baby and one who has always felt a special affinity with the Welfare State. After all, it was the 1944 Education Act that gave me the opportunity for higher education. It provided the 11-Plus as a stepping stone to secondary school. It paid my fees for attending the 'direct grant' King’s School, Chester and later gave me a scholarship to take up a place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.
Without this I would probably have ended up selling heifers at the local auction [well, that would not have been so bad - or "A great relief", I hear you say].
I grew up as the step-son of a ‘bailiff’ or farm manager who got £8 per week and a ‘free’ house. Compared to farm labourers who got £6 per week and had to pay rent, it was better money but no fortune.
The picture above shows my mother [at centre on the garden seat] and my widowed grandmother [at right] on a summer holiday at Barmouth, North Wales around April 1945. I am the chubby baby at bottom left and my sister is the bright-eyed 7-year old girl. We are with a lady and her children who were staying at the same boarding house.
My mother’s face is too deep for tears. Almost certainly suffering from post-natal depression [then unknown as a clinical diagnosis], she looks so very sad and anxious. I wish that I could go back and give her a cuddle.
She had lost my father in the RAF in 1943 and her father in the Merchant Navy in 1918.
All this may go some way to explaining my scepticism on the inevitable social benefits of untrammeled neo-liberalism.
As the lady in the Film Trailer says:
‘The Older Generation has an absolute duty to come forward and engage Young People on this issue’.
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