The Spirit Of ’45 Review

Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government transformed Britain. In addition to founding the National Health Service, it also nationalised a number of crucial industries in a bid to close the chasm between the country’s haves and have-nots. The scale and speed of the achievement remains staggering, and Ken Loach is right to highlight how quickly the spirit in which these reforms were made was allowed to dissipate. Moreover, there is palpable pain in the testimony of the politicians, union officials and ordinary workers lamenting the decline of authentic socialism. But the climactic anti-Thatcherite diatribe is historically blinkered and naively emotive.