The Spirit of '45

An excellent film in terms of explaining both what the title says, "The Spirit of 1945" leading to the massive victory of the Labour Party in the UK general election of that year and also the roots of that victory. Loach (correctly) goes back to the end of the First World War and how the promises of "A Land fit for Heroes" was betrayed and millions of working men and their families instead spent most of the inter-war years (not just the so-called "Hungry Thirties") living in poverty and destitution. Their children were determined to build a better Britain and, as Loach shows, this feeling was also shared by many people from much wealthier backgrounds as well (in which bodies during the war such as the Army Bureau of Contemporary Affairs also played a significant role). Loach does not shy away from showing the weaknesses of the Labour Government's policies (e.g. very much "top down" and with no trace of the kind of Mitbestimmung which helped to rebuild West German industry in the same period), but he nevertheless paints far too positive a picture of what Attlee's governments actually achieved.

By going straight from this period (1945-51) to the arrival of "the Wicked Witch" (Thatcher) in Downing Street in 1979, he is able to skate right over how much the Labour Government had NOT accomplished and just how rotten much of British industry and society was by the early-/mid-1970s (and which provided the environment in which Thatcher could only have come to power.) The short-sightedness of union leaders, for example, in focusing purely and simply on short-term economic gain for their members and rejecting totally Castle's "In Place of Strife" proposlas plus "holding the public to ransom" on unlimited occasions in the 1960s and 1970s is simply ignored as not fitting in with the polemic.

In conclusion, watch this film to explain why the Labour election landslide happened, but if you want to know "what happened next", watch the 1959 comedy "I'm all right,Jack" as well. For every stalwart nurse and miner shown in Loach's film, there were unfortunately far too many "Fred Kites" leading their unions in the years after Attlee left office as well!

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Ken Loach has quite a backlog of work as a performance film maker, but his latest work, laying his unashamed socialist leanings firmly on the line, is presented in a documentary format. Loach thrusts us back in time to the immediate post war years, where with a country in ruins and millions sick and injured, there was no shortage of work and so the people had the power, coming together to re-build the country and form one huge powerful united front that let them decide their own fate, all under the thrust of a powerful Labour movement. The real main objective of the movement was not to go back to the appalling poverty of before the war, which nobody noticed and was just accepted by those who lived in it. Flash forward twenty five years or so, to the arrival of Thatcher.

The main trouble, when politics is presented as art, is that you are naturally going to spur on and impress those who agree with you and form the most spiteful critics out of those who think you don't know what you're talking about. Like the most high horsed (but probably best) Michael Moore offering, Ken Loach here bombards us with a presentation of faces, talking heads, if you will, of a mostly much older generation who vividly bring the original socialist movement back to life, and try to paint a portrait of the sort of things that originally spurned it on.

Reminding me of Moore's work a little, as it does, it's all naturally quite one sided and could even be seen as somewhat self indulgent/important, but where Loach gets it right is by managing to make the film's argument so persuasive anyway, genuinely managing to craft a scene where the poor/lower classes generally had no voice and by realizing their combined power, improved things for themselves and their families, only to have it all snatched back from them many years later.

It never feels pretentious in any way. It's just the work of a proud and accomplished director, maybe wearing his heart on his sleeve a little, maybe not being as subtle as he could be, but presenting something made with such insight and, well, spirit you can't help but be impressed anyway. *****

"The Spirit of '45" reminds us of the air of progress occurring in British politics immediately after World War II. It takes back to the founding of welfare state and the nationalization of the health service, transport, energy and other areas of public life. The faces we see at the beginning of the film of young Britons celebrating in the fountains at Trafalgar Square symbolize the hope of a nation. But Loach is also worried about the spirit of modern Britain. The second part ponders a different mood than the one of the 1940s: Thatcherism and the more recent failures of organized labor to live up to its founding principles. On the whole this is a tender and humane film, a compelling mix of interviews, with archive footage. The film works all at once as a lament, a celebration and a wake- up call to modern politicians, it's only a bit boring.

Why did Churchill lose the elections of 1945. Were people simply ungrateful? According to Ken Loach, there were two main reasons. People remembered the misery after WW1 and they had realized that if the state was able to organize the war victory, it should also be able to win victory in peace.

So it came during Clement Attlee; nationalization of health care, of electricity, of the railways, of the coal mines. And at the same time Britain changed into a welfare state.

It's a very effective documentary, but two questions remain unanswered. How was it all financed and why did Churchill come back in 1951? Anyway, it's refreshing to watch how politics once was in charge.

Some people have complained that the film is not objective, I think they're missing the point.

The point of this documentary is to capture the essence of that time. What our parents and grandparents had endured and how they faced up to the future with hope for a better world than that passed away with war.

That working together in commonality could build a better world for future generations and they did just that. The achievements of the Atlee government still reverberate down the decades and are with us still.

They did what they did in far harder times than now, are we so useless that we cannot do it?