The Spirit of '45 Page #5

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but we had jam scones for tea.

Do you remember that?

Each and every one of us.

Food was still rationed.

We had jam scones for tea

and, oh, dear God, that was marvellous.

I never met the man myself, but I do

realise that he was a visionary.

He was very, very passionate

about this vision of his.

I admire anyone who can take

and drive through a scheme that big,

countrywide.

People don't have

to worry about being ill.

When they are ill,

they know that they will get

the best possible impartial treatment,

because there's no commercial element

to the relationship

between a doctor and a patient.

So if you go to your doctor

you know the advice that you get

will be based on

what's best for you clinically.

It won't be about selling you care

if you can afford it

or withholding care from you

if you can't afford it.

I'd been to see a family

in which there was a child

that was coughing, pretty sick.

So I left a bottle of medicine,

as one did in those days.

I came back the next day

and the mother met me at the door.

I said, "Hows little Johnny?"

And she said, "Oh, he's fine."

I heard a lot of coughing and

spluttering at the top of the stairs.

I said,

"He doesn't sound terribly good."

'Would you like me to go up

and see him?"

She said, 'Well, Doctor, no,

it's not Johnny,

ifs Bill, his brother."

"I've given him some of the medicine

that you left for Johnny."

I said, "Well, let me go up

and see him."

She said, "I'm sorry, Doctor.

We can't afford it."

And I said, "Today, July 5th,

it'll cost you nothing."

And I was able to go up and I've never

forgotten that moment in my life.

Dentures.

Of course, dentistry was free

under the NHS initially.

It jolly well ain't now, as I know it.

But I think that was it.

There was this huge surge.

People got spectacles

for the first time in their lives.

I actually know one old man

who carried it around with him.

It was the bottom of a bottle

a glass bottle.

He used to use that

as a spyglass to read with.

He got his first pair of specs

when he was about 70.

Julian Tudor Hart

is an extraordinary GP.

He works in a small mining village

in the Welsh valleys called Glynncorrwg.

There he revolutionised the way

GPs provide care for their patients.

They identified all those people

who they knew needed looking after.

The people with high blood pressure.

So they made a register

and they called them in.

Instead of saying,

"Come back when you feel sick,"

they said,

"I'm going to see you regularly

and sort your blood pressure out."

By so doing, they reduced the deaths

by complications by nearly 50 percent.

Ever since then,

we've had proactive healthcare.

I think

we can use the health service

as a model for socialism.

I think we can learn how to be socialist

in the health service.

I think the health service,

a free service where we pool the risks

so that everybody feels responsible

for everybody else,

we are our brothers' keepers

and our sisters' keepers.

- Hiya, Tom.

- Good morning, Doc.

How are you?

I think my chest

is worse than usual.

I think I caught a cold. I'm full up.

Feeling comfortable

with being your brother's

and your sister's keeper

is very, very important.

It means you are

a more civilised country.

I am very proud that our country

produced the National Health Service.

If I were an American,

I would be ashamed

that I live in such a rich country

that still can't afford

to have generous ideas.

Well, there'd been a debate

going on for almost 40 years

about the benefits

of nationalisation of the railways.

They saw the waste

and the duplication of railway lines

and the bureaucracy

of the private companies

and said that society would benefit

from public ownership.

It formed a sort of unstoppable argument

to say that the railways

had to be nationalised

for the public interest

and also in order

to rebuild the country.

It was a queer system of working

because we could have a train

leave Exeter Central

going, say, down to North Devon,

and he could go down the bank

and stay there 45 minutes

for a pathway through Exeter St David's,

because the signalmen

on the Great Western

were told to give preference

to the Great Western.

You were working against each other.

The whole history

of the railways in Britain

is an example of why railways

are a natural monopoly.

Numerous railway lines were built,

often connecting

the same cities together.

Subsequently the companies

that owned them went bankrupt.

The clear lesson of that is that

the railways are a natural monopoly,

in the same way that providing

drinking water or providing electricity

or gas or any other utility item.

(NEWSREEL)

In 1947, by Act of Parliament,

Britain set up

the British Transport Commission.

Its task:

To make all transport work as one.

Don't forget, it wasn't

the nationalisation of the railways.

It was public ownership

of all forms of transport,

which was road haulage,

it was airways,

it was, you know, everything that...

and the canals, everything.

One of the first dramatic steps

was to get rid of something in Euston

called the clearing house

which was a huge office,

full of about 400 clerks

whose job was to pass chitties

from one to another

representing charges

from one private railway company

on another private railway company

for use of their engines, their wagons,

their rolling stock,

their signal boxes,

whatever it might be.

So there was a sort of a paper economy

to represent the charges

and the notional costs

between the different

private railway companies

which employed

hundreds and hundreds of clerks

in essentially

a completely unnecessary task.

In 1948, with the creation

of the British Railways Board,

that clearing house was abolished

and those clerks went to do other jobs,

productive, socially useful jobs

in the railway industry.

The advertising department

seemed to have a heyday

because they recruited more staff

and they had ladders

and buckets of paste and so forth.

They were altering everything.

Wages increased under nationalisation.

Eventually, in the 1950s,

it brought about

probably the most important

industrial agreement in Britain

ever negotiated by trade unions,

which was an agreement

which effectively meant no compulsory

redundancies for railway workers.

# Without rhythm #

# A train could never go without rhythm #

# A troop could never roll

without rhythm #

# The day would never go because rhythm #

# Is the thing that makes

the world go round #

# Without rhythm #

# A poet couldn't rhyme without rhythm #

# Could never tell the time

without rhythm #

# Wouldn't hear the chime because rhythm #

# Is the thing that makes

the clock go round I

In the 1930s, first of all,

there was a tremendous depression

in the coalface.

The mines were run

by private enterprise.

They were opened and closed

at the drop of a hat.

Markets determined whether miners

worked or did not work

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