Labour Intensive

With Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 we once again depart from the arena of film as a form of entertainment – this movie does not set out to brighten your day, make you laugh, or provide you with any kind of respite from reality: quite the opposite, in fact. It’s a film with an agenda and an axe to grind, it’s entirely partisan and very forthright about it. As a result – and especially considering the subject matter involved – this is a film which is going to repel large numbers of people simply because of its nature. To talk about it solely in terms of its merits and flaws as a piece of cinema is likewise to almost miss the point of it.

Although, as the title suggests, The Spirit of ’45 is at least partly about Britain in the years immediately following the Second World War, it is also really about the state of the country today. The film’s thesis is that the first Labour government, elected in 1945, brought about one of the greatest and most positive transformations in the country’s history, creating the NHS and the welfare state, nationalising utilities and transport, creating masses of decent, affordable housing, and so on. (The film’s contributors go into some detail concerning the awfulness of slum life in the 1930s – this is very much Road to Wigan Pier territory.)

This is attributed to the sense of national unity and empowerment created by the country’s successes in the war, and the belief that things really could be changed for the better, and the film is utterly unequivocal in presenting these reforms as a wholly good thing. Extracts from the Labour Party Manifesto are reverently recited, and no-one has a bad word to say about any of it, just as the later section of the film covering the rolling-back of much of this work by the Thatcher administration pulls no punches in portraying this as a wholly retrogressive and socially destructive undertaking.

Well, my personal politics are – broadly speaking – very much on the same wavelength as those of the makers of this film, and I agree with most of what they suggest here. But for me the film doesn’t directly address one of the more insidious consequences of the Thatcher era, which is that mainstream British politics are now almost entirely bereft of ideology. Voters aren’t asked to choose between genuinely different viewpoints and principles any more – at an election, you’re not making a philosophical statement, but choosing which person you believe will be a more competent administrator. Thatcher, with the aid of the massively Rightward-leaning UK press, managed to shut down this whole area of debate, leaving the British Left cowed and reluctant to declare itself as genuinely socialist: ‘socialist’ has become a word with overwhelmingly negative associations in British mainstream politics.

The Spirit of ’45 opts not to address this, in favour of recounting more concrete examples of the negative impact of Thatcher. But I think this is a mistake – if the film wants to be a wake-up call for young people today, a reminder of what their grandparents and great-grandparents achieved in the name of Socialism, then it has to acknowledge that this flavour of politics has a massive image problem at the moment. But it seems oblivious to this, just as it seems almost reluctant to engage with a wider audience beyond the Left-leaning faithful. As I say, I’m sympathetic to the film’s agenda, but even I found a lengthy disquisition on the benefits of regulating the labour market for dock workers rather dry and unnecessarily detailed.

And, as with all films like this, I think including a few contrary or neutral voices would have increased its effectiveness considerably. There are problems with the concept of the NHS, just as there are issues with the idea of a universal welfare state – but the film doesn’t even acknowledge these exist, let alone engage with them. It’s very easy to instinctively demonise the Right, much harder to critically examine the capitalist position and produce arguments to debunk it – and the film opts for the first course.

This is a film with its heart in the right place, that talks a lot of sense about many issues still relevant to our lives today. If the rebirth of socialist thinking which it seems to be fervently hoping for comes about, no one would be happier than me. But I don’t think The Spirit of ’45 is going to be the instrument of that change (I can’t imagine what could be, but that’s another set of problems), simply because it does not seem interested enough in reaching for an audience beyond those who already agree with it. Laudable, but very worthy: comfort viewing for old-school Lefties.