The Spirit of '45 Page #8

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My grandfather started to hear

about the new-town proposals

after the election.

So, they applied for a council house.

He was offered work building the houses.

This arrived in April, 1947,

only a year after Stevenage

was designated as a new town.

"Dear sir, I am now able to inform you

that the house

will be ready for your occupation

about 19th of April, 1947."

"The rent will be, until further notice,

17 shillings and four pence per week,

including rates and water charges."

"Yours faithfully,

Clerk of the Council."

Ah, gosh!

And this is some photographs of him

with his workmates

building various things in the new town.

That's the bandstand that he built.

You say he carried this

round with him?

Yes, he carried it

in his wallet for the rest of his life.

There were only a few things

he carried in his wallet.

The telegram he received

when he was working in the West Country

to say my mother had been born

and the letter of commendation

he'd got from the Festival of Britain.

So it was up there in the sort of

great events of his life, I think.

I think the achievements

of that government

rank alongside the achievements of

any other government that's ever been,

anywhere in the world.

I think that took British people

from real, real poverty

where they didn't have any hope.

It brought full employment,

it brought housing,

it brought many, many opportunities.

The people who got that through should

be looked upon as working-class heroes.

They lifted us from an era

when poverty was rife,

when illness was rife,

and it allowed everybody to have

healthcare from the cradle to the grave.

And anybody vino tampers with that,

people should attack them

in as many ways as possible.

# Life is just a bowl of cherries #

# So live and laugh at it all #

I would just like to remember

some words of St Francis of Assisi

which I think are really just

particularly apt at the moment.

"Where there is discord

may we bring harmony.

'Where there is error,

may we bring truth."

'Where there is doubt,

may we bring faith."

"And where there is despair,

may we bring hope."

Along came Thatcher

and suddenly

it was all about the individual.

You know, the important thing was

let's get rich and it's all about me.

And the public services

really suffered under this.

British industry

had become uncompetitive

because of a lack of investment.

The second factor was that

there was a mass overcapacity

in the world's, you know,

production bases.

And suddenly it all came

to a crashing halt in the mid '70s

and then again at the end of the '70s.

And Britain and the world was faced

with trying to reduce

the industrial capacity.

But also in Britain in particular,

they tried to increase

the rate of profit.

And there's a real intellectual assault

on the ideas of Keynesianism,

of nationalisation,

of state intervention

which Margaret Thatcher

starts to carry through.

Buys into it wholesale.

So rather than the state being seen

in its traditional reformist role,

as something which controls industry

and is a partial barrier between the

working population and the free market,

it becomes something which facilitates

the influence of the free market

in privatising and deregulating

the economy,

and in generating

the dismantling of the welfare state.

It was driven really by people like

Milton Friedman and the Chicago School

who developed a model of capitalism

which said that capitalism

should be completely uncontrolled

that it should be

let rip in every direction,

every form of control removed,

and that it would find its own solutions

under its own momentum.

It meant

actually taking on the working class

to reduce their wages,

but also, you know, for the redundancies

that we saw in steel,

in shipbuilding, in the coal industry.

And it was a necessity of,

if you like, the private economy.

And that means

they have to break the unions.

It means they have to have

the ability to hire and fire.

It means they have to have the ability

to reduce wages and welfare.

These treble lines of blue

that escort the scabs

through the gates,

where the pickets cannot picket.

They cannot talk to them.

They cannot get to them.

They cannot get anywhere near.

Now, the police are not neutral.

That is very important.

The police have been shown to the

British people that they're not neutral

when the working class

decided to fight for their rights.

This is the thing you want

to be filming. It's a police state.

You saw yourselves. There was men

just standing on the car park.

The police came in

inciting, pushing men about.

If that's not police incitement,

I don't know what is.

# There are slanderous tongues #

# Always ready to wrong #

# And murder the fine reputation #

# Of the lads with big feet #

# Who by pounding the beat #

# Are protecting the peace of the nation #

They got me on the floor,

spread-eagled me,

a copper on each arm, one on each leg.

Then they started to hit my arms

and legs with a truncheon, methodically,

until I had no power

or grip left in my arms.

Then they just proceeded

to twist them straight up my back.

I think he wanted to take it home

for a souvenir.

Now why do police go in with such venom?

They seem to enjoy inflicting pain

and suffering on the working man.

Why? Who tells them

to go beat a picket's head?

Who tells them to inflict pain,

try to kill him?

Because that's what they're doing.

You stand there in the push

and all you feel, all of a sudden,

a fell a at the side of you

collapses in a pile on the floor.

'What's up with you?"

He's just been kneed in the groin.

I've seen police do it.

I've no skin left on my shins where

they've run their boots down your shin.

But if you look at him the wrong way,

you're nicked.

I want to know,

who gives them the power to do this?

Who tells them to beat me,

a working man, with a stick?

Who is it? I want to know.

I think it was a betrayal

of the British people

because the mines were owned

since 1947 by the government,

for and on behalf of the British people.

There's no work

whatsoever in these communities.

No industry is being brought in,

none whatsoever.

Without work, you cannot have dignity

and you cannot have respect.

At least in mining

it was rough and it was tumble,

but you got the comradeship.

You got discipline.

A lot of it was self-discipline

that you taught yourself.

You were reliant upon each other.

You were making sure

that anybody working with you

learnt how to do the job properly

because it could be your life at risk

and not only theirs.

Communities are full of drugs,

they're full of problems

of all sorts of types

that were never there

when the mines were working.

What that government done

destroyed all them structures

that you had,

all your nationalised industries,

and although

they always gave her fantastic credit

for giving working men and women

ownership of their own homes,

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