Summaries

Synopsis

This film is an account of the life of Aneurin Bevan who was the architect of the NHS in post war Britain. He was a Labour MP in the 1945 Labour Government that brought in the welfare state, state education and the NHS. At the start of the film we find him at his country house home with his wife, and he is dying of cancer and in his early 60s. He lives in a rural setting and takes long walks on his own through the woods and down to the valley. He tells his story in his own words to a boy who appears to him, and is his younger self. The boy first appears to him in hospital when he is being diagnosed with cancer, and Nye talks to him. He later meets him in the woods when he takes long walks, and finally near the end of the film in his kitchen at home. He talks with the boy about his own childhood and how he hated that the education system taught children to be obedient and subservient to the upper classes, rather than be creative and explore their full potential. He talked about walking for miles and miles to look for work under the Tory Government and how he had visions of a better future society. He had no food or home, and there was no welfare. Lots of the men at that time went to Spain to fight the Fascist dictator, mainly to get away from the depression in the UK. Some of his speeches are replayed here and were very moving about the capitalist and class system and how much he hated the Tories. He also mentions that he wonders if he will be remembered for creating the NHS, and he talked about how he 'stuffed the doctors mouths with gold' in order to stop them preventing the formation of the NHS because they wanted to continue to charge for their services and not take a salary. He was angry about dying and a theme that continued was that he didn't want to go now, as he felt he had so much more to do. He wanted to be elected to the Leadership of the Labour Party and becoming Prime Minister, but he simply ran out of time and out of life.