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The Spirit of '45 U rating

Ken Loach's stirring polemical history explores the immense forces that built Britain's Welfare State from the rubble of the Second World War.

Documentary 2013 95 mins

Director: Ken Loach

Overview

Loach's typically uncompromising documentary celebrates the building of the Welfare State in the 1940s, and charges the 1980s Thatcher government - and, by implication, all governments since - with a systematic assault on its values. Wedding archive film with heartfelt interviews from the ordinary people at the heart of the project, Loach's film balances admiration, despair and defiant hope.