IN HIS film The Spirit of 45, Ken Loach depicts an era of both austerity and hope.
A nation that remembered with great clarity the inhumanity of the coalition Conservative and National Labour government of the pre-war years and had endured the trials of the great war against fascism was — like the people of Europe as a whole — keen for a new start.
The most striking visual motif of the film was the star quality of the human beings who, through heroic endeavour, made a profound change in the way life was lived by working people.
An incidental feature is the star quality of people depicted in newsreel whose bodies more closely resembled in their slender form present-day film stars rather than the contemporary reality.
This was due to the striking improvement in the general health of the working population that wartime rationing entailed. This is the silent tribute that a more equitable distribution of food pays to human welfare.
Undercapitalised industries like coal, rail, civil aviation, energy, steel and road transport were taken into public ownership while the NHS and the introduction of National Insurance-funded benefits took some of the sting out of unemployment and health worries.
The new Labour government made pensions for working people a new guarantee of independence in old age.
The legend, perhaps best described as a bourgeois myth, has it that the post-war period was one of political consensus. It is true that the Conservatives did not feel able to challenge the Labour initiative in nationalising about one fifth of the British economy, or oppose mass council house-building, or press home their opposition to the NHS.
And neither did Labour object to the shift from wartime anti-fascist unity to unending colonial wars or the cold war confrontation with the socialist states.
Indeed, it was under Labour that free NHS dental treatment and the provision of spectacles were sacrificed to pay for the war on the Korean people and conscription continued into the era of continuing colonial wars.
Angela Rayner, upon whose personality some on the left project their hopes, says a Labour government today would not nationalise industries that will cost a lot of money.
When our prototypical post-war Labour government nationalised basic industry and utilities, it did so because the private owners took profits rather than investing in new machinery, more advanced technology and a more highly skilled workforce. Industries were nationalised because they needed the investment that private owners inevitably neglect unless compelled.
Typically, today’s privatised water enterprises carry a debt mountain that matches the profits extracted by their private owners. There is no rational reason why profiteers whose stewardship of vital industries and utilities has left them failing to meet the requirements of a modern economy should be compensated for their neglect and failure unless, that is, the rights of private owners are held to trump the interests of the nation and people.
The present Labour leadership is mainly concerned to assure our ruling class and its representatives in big business, the banks and state institutions that a Labour government would not change the direction of government policy enough to threaten the status quo.
The issue here is ownership. Where once the Bank of England was under government stewardship Gordon Brown gave it away. So long as the vital commanding heights of our economy are in private hands, government has very limited tools to hand.
Lack of investment is a principal cause of Britain’s economic problems. Labour needs to frankly accept that growth is dependent on investment and the place to find money is from the people who have it. Tax the rich.
