The Spirit Of '45 (U)

Given the continuing capitalist crisis and the political paucity of the mandarins of the Labour Party, Ken Loach has produced a party political programme in The Spirit Of '45 which extols the principles of the socialism he considers relevant today.

Loach wants to follow up the general release of the film with simultaneous screenings in 40 cinemas around Britain on March 17, followed by a Q&A session to debate the feasibility of a new left party.

It's an ambitious and controversial project which has already come under fire, since there have been innumerable attempts to launch such an initiative that have always being sabotaged by sectarians seeking to rerun previous revolutions.

The film is basically in two parts, the first illustrating the fighting spirit that resulted in what Clement Attlee called "a labour movement elected with a socialist policy" and the subsequent struggles to create the NHS and nationalisation before the Conservative election victory of 1951.

Then it jump cuts to 1979 with Thatcher's screeching about Francis of Assisi before launching class war, introducing Friedman's free-market anarchy and reversing previous social advances before declaring that socialism is dead.

Loach skilfully combines amazing archival footage with current commentators to try and create a seamless link between notable socialist and communist comrades along with some fans from the fringes.

Notable among them is Dr Julian Tudor Hart, a communist who had a surgery in south Wales before the NHS. "It wasn't only never again about war but never again about a peace run by and for the rich," he declares.

Caerphilly Labour Councillor Ray Davies, wearing his Spanish civil war beret, recalls the inhuman mining conditions and the determination to put the country back on its feet, despite owing "trillions to the US."

Veteran communist Sam Watts recalls reading the The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and the horrors of flea-bitten hovels being replaced by "fantastic council houses, the best thing that ever happened."

We watch Churchill being booed after likening Labour to the Gestapo and a former military man warning about politically motivated soldiers returning from the front as "pansy pinks."

Post-Thatcher, we witness the courageous fightback by the labour movement, resisting successive privatisations and the subsequent decline in conditions as capitalism cuts corners to cut costs.

The film's epilogue states that nationalisation wasn't under "workers' control," it was simply the state facilitating the free market by dismantling the welfare state.

The point being made is that the major parties extol capitalism despite being broken by the bankers and we have one last chance to ignite and unite the movement to save the welfare state.

Sadly, the film misses out on the great stumbling block - the Liberals who supported Labour in 1945 and who switched to the Tories in 1951, setting up a cycle of collaboration at crisis points.

The latest example is the Con-Dem regime.

The issue is reclaiming the Labour Party while reinvigorating the dispirited to create a coalition of resistance and promoting a people's charter to purge the parasites from the system.

It won't be accomplished by splits or promoting parallel parties a la Loach. It takes rigour to raise class consciousness and, as Watts reminds us, "the working class can change the whole of history."

The curtain comes down as Loach ramps up the colour of all those inspiring images of post-war victors celebrating in Trafalgar Square when Britain wanted to build a brave new world

It's going to take more than films to move the masses.

But, as Lenin said, they do provide powerful propaganda.