Ken Loach and the Spirit of 45 - the last great socialist victory in Britain and me prostate

At times Mrs Belgo Geordie maks the comment that her hubbie is a right gadgie, getting' awld! * Like, he can remember Second World War. She is sure that when he was a bairn he was collecting' bits of shrapnel outta bomb sites and swopping' em for old copies of Viz. Sigh. Hennies can be right cruel to a man when he's down! It were the Dandy! An'niver shrapnel! Why aye we knew they were bits of Nazi planes an' it were fifteen year after when the war finished there were still bomb sites in Newcastle. Aye and slums. The baby bairns school I went to still had a bomb shelter. Filled with rubble, it were a dark cave smellin' of piss where we'd dare one another to go in and take a gander at the dead bodies trapped inside. Although Newcastle dinna take the pasting of London, and not Clyde or Coventry, it were bombed and there were folk killed. Even then in the early sixties there were still rationing of sorts, least things hard to come by. Yer knew there were men who had lost their minds due to being in the war. They shuffled along locked in their own private hell, or drank in a way to forget, not to have a good time. And we niver understood the cost they and the women who kept industry going, paid in war service.

Noo, in 1945 I were not even a twinkle in me dad's eye or as he liked to put it not even " A blurry fart at wrong time." Boot the Second World War left its mark on me life. Me Ma was a Land Army girl and me dad was a communist resistant who escaped Europe an' ended oop in Royal Navy on a small corvette. The Second World War fooked oop both their educations. Different countries same result. In North Shields, schools were closed more often than not. In Belgium, in May 1940, the Germans invaded and me dad left school and became a resistant, ending oop in a Spanish concentration camp before escaping to England in 1943. At end of war me Mam were pregnant with me sista and me dad a train wreck about to happen, who could never return to his country to live - boot remained hard left, anti fascist and against nationalism and war.

Clem Attlee

Goodbye Mr Churchill

They wanted peace but on the terms for which they fought the war. So it were in Britain a socialist revolution occurred through the ballot box. You look at pictures of that time and yer can see folk wanting a change. In a landslide victory - Labour swept aside Winston Churchill; an electorate vowing never to return to the poverty and unemployment of the between the wars years depression. This election shaped post war Britain and for a time made it a better place for nearly all. Ken Loach has crafted a 90 minute documentary revisiting  this event; then its legacy and the cruel and unnecessary dismantling of the post war peoples' dream of having more of a say in a better future - replacing it with greed. Me dad was allus cynical that the radical nationalisation of industry, transport, utilities would pave way to jobs. He saw the same class of rulers take over the process and not the working man or woman. Boot he loved the formation of the national health. So mooch, he trained as a nurse and worked in it till he died. As a family, we saw benefits like council houses with good sanitation, our own room and a garden. That did not cost an arm and a leg to rent. It cost next to nowt to catch bus to school. We had school dinners. Free doctor and dental care. And oop to the 1970s there was work in industry, on the trains and buses, in the merchant marine. There were family holidays to beach (day trips). Sanatoriums for recuperation. And the awld did not end oop in poor house or as tramps. The hospitals were clean and well stocked. A lot of bright working class bairns like that bloody Ted Hughes, went to university. This were our parents dream for the future. No more class. No more poverty. No more wars. Boot as this doc shows, the dream, flawed, unravelled and one Margaret Thatcher then drove a stake through its crumbling heart.

Eileen Thompson nurse and socialist

Ray Davies miner and steel worker

Mr Bevan

A Scouser lad - Sam Watts

What you see now is only a shada of the dream the war generation held. In some ways it were their children, my generation, who dinna' have the strength of keeping up the ideals. We gave into the 'good life' the American dream of consumerism. We dinna pass onto our bairns that you can fight capitalism and win in the ballot box. That unions were good in that they unified people to a common purpose where social justice was not joost a catch phrase boot an example of living and creating a better life for all. So this is reminder of the spirit of that time and of people like Aneurin Bevan who was able to radicalise a country without bloody revolution by being a politician with balls and a big vision. It were a pleasure to watch this and listen to folk interviewed and to hear where they thought it went wrong. And they are still candlelight in darkness, small but fierce flames of hope. And Ken Loach? Bloody class warrior to his core. For that, his humanity, his persistence in telling and retelling the story without losing hope of what happened once could happen again, we should all be grateful. Inspiring and deeply moving. Im off to raise me red flag...

See:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/15/ken-laoch-film-i-daniel-blake-kes-cathy-come-home-interview-simon-hattenstone

This is an exceptional piece about Mr Loach and what drives his film making and a typical typo from the Grauniad

*I had ta visit yon specialist doc this year as me prostate was giving me gyp. He gave me the science saying a man's prostate should be size of a walnut. Mine, having had a good feel and taken pictures was like the mandarin below. Not cancer but enlarged and making peeing like a tap with a bung washer.

Naw thus is what a prostate should look like

Naw when I say a doctor specialist- I had ta watch him like a rheumy eyed hawk because he wanted to turn inta a Mister. This is when a friendly bedside manner doctor morphs inta a green, blood stained gowned butcher who wants ta take to yer using sharp cutty things to disect yer pip! He had that look when he was talking to oos and I kept me back to the door and desk between us. He said, use the image of yon bit of fruit- all he would do is remove the segments leaving the skin. Almost boring, he could do a whole fruit bowl and not break sweat! Pay off would be for me ta pee like an eighteen year old after a night out on eight pints and a curry. We agreed he might make a filum of the inside of the BelgoGeordie bladder, but no, it would not be a submarine piloted by Raquel Welch and he would not pay for Big Al to fly out and hold me hand.

The Belgo Geordie one -copyright BG

And what doos this has to do with Mr Loach's finest film? I was seen through the public system boot if I wanted to hand over a load of money I could go private and have me mandarin gutted at same time. To quote another doctor from "Spirit of 45". They hoped it would never come to arriving at hospital gates and being asked if you have private insurance and if not, you were dumped off stretcher and left to crawl back home. Those times are just about here. I put me name on waiting list for public system. I'll wait me turn. So where is the spirit that fed the 1945 revolution? As Mr Bevan said about the National health Service - it will exist as long as folk are prepared to fight for what is right. Sounds as sensible today as then. Off to peel a mandarin- niver liked cracking walnuts anyhow!
**All photographs were taken using a box brownie and taking stills from Mr Loach's film; so copyright is his like and the memory of the people who shot the original newsreel footages- except for the photos of the Belgo Geordie prostate before and after enlargement and ageing. Aye bonny lad, live long enough and it happens to us awl.