People’s Flag – pt 4

Part 4 – ‘Who Runs The Country?’ 1964 to 1979,

60 mins 16mm/DVD, 1986-88

Part 4 covers the end of the post-war boom. It looks at the Wilson government’s attempts to modernise the British economy, its inability to control the unions and how the ‘special relationship’ with the US led to a failure to condemn the Vietnam war. The film shows how disillusionment with Labour led to the rise of new left forces, how attacks on black people began as the economy declined, the sending of troops to the North of Ireland in 1969, the industrial militancy of the 1970s and the defeat of Heath by the miners. It covers the 1974 Labour government’s election on a radical manifesto, with Tony Benn as Industry Minister, and its eventual attempts to impose the ‘social contract’. The film ends with Labour’s defeat by the Tories in 1979 which signalled the end of welfare capitalism.