If you've got unemployment, low pay, that was just too bad. But that was the system. That was the sort of economy and philosophy against which I was fighting in the 1930s.
From Barbara Castle
It is true that they paid much more attention to the trade unions because the trade unions were after all speaking for the rights and conditions of working men and women in their employment.
It might have been offset for us if the revenue from our own oil and natural gas that was just developing had been available to the Labor Government, but the oil revenues were just coming in when Labor fell in '79.
It was very much a cry for democratic control at that time. Above all, breaking the accomplished power of a few people to rule the lives of everybody else.
That was not what men and women fought for during the war.
Then, with lots of people doing that without ever looking over their shoulders to see how they were affecting anybody else, it couldn't work, and it didn't work, and it just came to a standstill.
Those were the ideals that drove us to nationalization of the health service.
What we set out to do was to ensure that this system of fair shares and the planning and controls continued after the war, and when we won, that's what we did.
Why not pool your resources? And so we broke into the concept of the sacredness of private property.
You see, another reason for nationalization was that private ownership meant fragmentation.
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