0:00:05 > 0:00:07There is an image of intellectuals
0:00:07 > 0:00:12as being cut off from the real world. Abstract thinkers,
0:00:12 > 0:00:17living a cosy existence in their ivory towers.
0:00:22 > 0:00:25But with the advent of broadcasting,
0:00:25 > 0:00:28scholars became national celebrities.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34They became experts at using radio and television
0:00:34 > 0:00:38to preach their radical views about transforming Britain.
0:00:39 > 0:00:44Love is wise. Hatred is foolish.
0:00:44 > 0:00:46I don't believe there's a feminist alive
0:00:46 > 0:00:48who wants to abolish femaleness.
0:00:50 > 0:00:55In this film, we'll hear from political and economic thinkers
0:00:55 > 0:00:56who were united by one idea -
0:00:56 > 0:01:00that for the first time in history, they'd found
0:01:00 > 0:01:03the key to running a good society.
0:01:03 > 0:01:07All citizens in Britain are, in effect,
0:01:07 > 0:01:11covered for all risks from the cradle to the grave.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16Their conflicting, sometimes dangerous, ideas
0:01:16 > 0:01:20- defined Britain in the 20th century. - ..at the time!
0:01:20 > 0:01:22We believe in the abolition of money.
0:01:22 > 0:01:25We believe in the appropriation of all private property.
0:01:27 > 0:01:30Should we allow governments to secure a better society...
0:01:31 > 0:01:33..or place our trust in the individual?
0:01:35 > 0:01:38Prosperity has never been created by governments.
0:01:39 > 0:01:44And the battle was so bitter, we can still feel its scars today.
0:01:46 > 0:01:48How do you run a free society?
0:01:48 > 0:01:49You haven't been able to.
0:02:14 > 0:02:16Hidden away in the Bloomsbury area of London
0:02:16 > 0:02:20is a statue to one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
0:02:23 > 0:02:25He's slightly forgotten these days,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28but he was a truly revolutionary figure who burst out of the academy
0:02:28 > 0:02:33to try to transform British society.
0:02:35 > 0:02:38His name was Bertrand Russell.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48Russell was a pampered child of the Victorian era,
0:02:48 > 0:02:52born to a wealthy, aristocratic family in 1872.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00The young Russell fell in love with philosophy and mathematics,
0:03:00 > 0:03:06as he explained when looking back on his life on the BBC's Face to Face.
0:03:11 > 0:03:16Now, what was it that provided you with the incentive
0:03:16 > 0:03:19- to become a mathematician? - My first lesson in mathematics
0:03:19 > 0:03:23came from my brother, who started me on Euclid,
0:03:23 > 0:03:26and I thought it was the loveliest stuff I'd ever seen.
0:03:26 > 0:03:29I didn't know there was anything so nice in the world.
0:03:34 > 0:03:37At the start of the 20th century, Russell was a fellow of
0:03:37 > 0:03:41Cambridge University, where he lost himself in the complex,
0:03:41 > 0:03:43abstract world of mathematics and logic.
0:03:47 > 0:03:52He might have expected to end his days in relative obscurity as an academic.
0:03:59 > 0:04:03But in 1914, Russell's world changed forever.
0:04:07 > 0:04:12What episode in your life led you to turn again from philosophy
0:04:12 > 0:04:16to some extent into social work and politics?
0:04:16 > 0:04:17Oh, the first war.
0:04:17 > 0:04:23The first war made me think it just won't do to live in an ivory tower.
0:04:23 > 0:04:25This world is too bad, we must notice it.
0:04:27 > 0:04:32I went all over the place making speeches.
0:04:32 > 0:04:35I did everything I could to help the conscientious objectors.
0:04:35 > 0:04:37I wrote about it everywhere I could.
0:04:37 > 0:04:40No, I did everything I could think of to do.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52Russell was kicked out of Cambridge and even jailed for his activism.
0:04:52 > 0:04:56But he'd discovered a new vocation.
0:04:56 > 0:05:02We all deplore the rapidly-growing feeling in America
0:05:02 > 0:05:08in favour of a nuclear war in the very near future.
0:05:08 > 0:05:11He became a familiar face on British television,
0:05:11 > 0:05:13using the medium to campaign for peace.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21Of course, Russell was a philosopher and an intellectual,
0:05:21 > 0:05:24and one of the great public intellectuals of his time,
0:05:24 > 0:05:26so what he said mattered.
0:05:28 > 0:05:33He was one of those people who grew more and more radical
0:05:33 > 0:05:36as he became older. Normally, it's the opposite.
0:05:36 > 0:05:38His success as a public intellectual
0:05:38 > 0:05:41was due obviously to his intelligence
0:05:41 > 0:05:45on the one hand, but also to his mastery of English.
0:05:45 > 0:05:48He was somebody who never wrote an ugly sentence
0:05:48 > 0:05:50or spoke an ugly sentence.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55He was somebody for whom the English language was a plastic material
0:05:55 > 0:05:58that could be put to his own uses whenever he needed it.
0:05:58 > 0:06:03The worst possibility is human life may be extinguished,
0:06:03 > 0:06:06and it is a very real possibility. Very real.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08And that is the worst.
0:06:08 > 0:06:12But assuming that doesn't happen,
0:06:12 > 0:06:20I can't bear the thought of many hundreds of millions of people
0:06:20 > 0:06:27dying in agony, only and solely because the rulers of the world
0:06:27 > 0:06:29are stupid and wicked,
0:06:29 > 0:06:30and I can't bear it.
0:06:34 > 0:06:36Russell encouraged intellectuals
0:06:36 > 0:06:40to move from the world of abstract thought into direct action.
0:06:43 > 0:06:46One person to follow Russell's lead was his friend,
0:06:46 > 0:06:48the economist John Maynard Keynes.
0:06:54 > 0:06:57The young Keynes rebelled against conventional society.
0:06:57 > 0:07:00He was happily and openly homosexual,
0:07:00 > 0:07:05with daring ideas about shaking up the staid British establishment.
0:07:10 > 0:07:15Keynes was part of the Bloomsbury Group, a circle of avant-garde intellectuals
0:07:15 > 0:07:18that included Russell and the novelist Virginia Woolf.
0:07:22 > 0:07:26But even amongst this high company, his genius stood out.
0:07:29 > 0:07:35Maynard Keynes had the most extraordinary good mind,
0:07:35 > 0:07:40frightfully quick, terrifically quick and incisive.
0:07:40 > 0:07:46And also, an imaginative way of looking at economics,
0:07:46 > 0:07:48which seems to be almost impossible.
0:07:48 > 0:07:50But he did.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54Well, Keynes has fair claim to have changed the world.
0:07:54 > 0:07:56He changed the world obviously,
0:07:56 > 0:08:00he changed the economic world fundamentally, because Keynesianism
0:08:00 > 0:08:05is a fundamental challenge to pretty much all that had gone before.
0:08:05 > 0:08:08But I think the historic significance of Keynes
0:08:08 > 0:08:09is about more than economic theory.
0:08:16 > 0:08:22Like Russell, Keynes was deeply affected by the First World War,
0:08:22 > 0:08:26as he witnessed the tragic fate of the men who'd returned from the trenches.
0:08:31 > 0:08:36The government had promised "a land fit for heroes,"
0:08:36 > 0:08:40but in the '20s and '30s, Keynes could only see poverty
0:08:40 > 0:08:42and, above all, unemployment.
0:08:46 > 0:08:50Unemployment represented waste and insecurity,
0:08:50 > 0:08:52a terrific amount of insecurity.
0:08:52 > 0:08:56People were much closer to the margins of life
0:08:56 > 0:08:59and there was much less social security, so if you lost your job,
0:08:59 > 0:09:06your household was driven into poverty very, very quickly.
0:09:09 > 0:09:15To Keynes, that was not only a great moral crime, but it was unnecessary.
0:09:19 > 0:09:24In 1936, Keynes published his General Theory,
0:09:24 > 0:09:27which overturned all previous economic thinking.
0:09:31 > 0:09:36It argued that governments should spend more, not less,
0:09:36 > 0:09:39during hard times to stimulate the economy.
0:09:43 > 0:09:48It was a ray of hope for people at the time.
0:09:48 > 0:09:51It imparted a sense of urgency,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54and it was very exciting for young economists,
0:09:54 > 0:09:57because it showed why the classical economics was wrong.
0:10:04 > 0:10:09Keynes saw his instincts about the economy proved right
0:10:09 > 0:10:11during the Second World War.
0:10:16 > 0:10:20He called the conflict "The Grand Experiment."
0:10:22 > 0:10:26If the State could spend on armaments in wartime,
0:10:26 > 0:10:30why couldn't it spend money to keep people out of poverty in peacetime?
0:10:34 > 0:10:38It cost us that much to make war for two weeks...
0:10:38 > 0:10:41There is little moving footage of John Maynard Keynes,
0:10:41 > 0:10:43seen here on the left of the screen.
0:10:49 > 0:10:53But in 1945, Keynes made a landmark radio broadcast,
0:10:53 > 0:10:58explaining his radical solution to unemployment.
0:10:58 > 0:11:01'It is not an exaggeration to say
0:11:01 > 0:11:06'that the end of abnormal unemployment is in sight.
0:11:08 > 0:11:13'And it isn't only the unemployed who will feel the difference.
0:11:13 > 0:11:18'A great number besides will be taking home better money each week.
0:11:20 > 0:11:25'And with the demand for efficient labour outrunning the supply,
0:11:25 > 0:11:30'how much more comfortable and secure everyone will feel in his job.
0:11:30 > 0:11:35'The Grand Experiment is begun.
0:11:35 > 0:11:37'If it works,
0:11:37 > 0:11:42'if expenditure on armaments really does cure unemployment, I predict
0:11:42 > 0:11:47'we shall never go back all the way to the old state of affairs.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50'Good may come out of evil.
0:11:50 > 0:11:54'We may learn a trick or two which will come in useful
0:11:54 > 0:11:56'when the day of peace comes.'
0:11:58 > 0:12:02CHEERING
0:12:10 > 0:12:12And when "the day of peace" came,
0:12:12 > 0:12:15Keynes' economic policies were finally put into action.
0:12:21 > 0:12:23The Labour Party took power with
0:12:23 > 0:12:25a truly revolutionary manifesto.
0:12:29 > 0:12:31Clement Attlee's government set about
0:12:31 > 0:12:34creating a fresh vision for Britain.
0:12:37 > 0:12:42'Let's go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake.'
0:12:42 > 0:12:49I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall the sword sleep in my hand.
0:12:49 > 0:12:54'Till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.
0:12:54 > 0:12:57APPLAUSE
0:12:58 > 0:13:03But Keynes' theories formed only one half of this new Jerusalem.
0:13:03 > 0:13:06Just as important were the social ideas of another
0:13:06 > 0:13:09much more strait-laced economist.
0:13:15 > 0:13:17A former head of the London School of Economics,
0:13:17 > 0:13:20Sir William Beveridge was serious, abstemious,
0:13:20 > 0:13:24famous for taking a punishing cold bath every morning.
0:13:28 > 0:13:32He produced a government report infused with Victorian morality,
0:13:32 > 0:13:35proposing a social security scheme to combat
0:13:35 > 0:13:40"want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness."
0:13:44 > 0:13:47The plan was controversial,
0:13:47 > 0:13:50so the timid Beveridge had to sell it to the nation.
0:13:53 > 0:13:55'Sir William summarises the points of his plan.'
0:13:55 > 0:13:59The report proposes, first,
0:13:59 > 0:14:03an all-in scheme of social insurance,
0:14:03 > 0:14:07providing for all citizens and their families
0:14:07 > 0:14:11all the cash benefits needed for security.
0:14:12 > 0:14:17I hope that when you've been able to study the report in detail,
0:14:17 > 0:14:24you'll like it, that it will get adopted, and that so we shall take
0:14:24 > 0:14:30the first step to security with freedom and responsibility.
0:14:30 > 0:14:34That is what we all desire.
0:14:34 > 0:14:37'Thank you, Sir William.'
0:14:38 > 0:14:42What Beveridge offered was a better life.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45Keynes offered security of employment,
0:14:45 > 0:14:46Beveridge offered security
0:14:46 > 0:14:51for all those periods when people weren't in employment.
0:14:51 > 0:14:54So it was a cradle-to-grave system of security.
0:14:57 > 0:14:59It's time for the Longines Chronoscope,
0:14:59 > 0:15:03a presentation of the Longines watch company.
0:15:05 > 0:15:09The report flung this shy academic into the limelight.
0:15:09 > 0:15:11He even spread the gospel of his revolution
0:15:11 > 0:15:14to the capitalist heartland of America.
0:15:16 > 0:15:21In this 1952 interview, in front of some shameless product placement,
0:15:21 > 0:15:23Beveridge discussed his plan.
0:15:25 > 0:15:30All citizens in Britain are in effect covered
0:15:30 > 0:15:33for all risks from the cradle to the grave.
0:15:33 > 0:15:36I think my wife puts it, "from the womb to the tomb."
0:15:36 > 0:15:40But what's most interesting is that Beveridge himself
0:15:40 > 0:15:44didn't like the phrase that's become most associated with him.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47You have been talking about
0:15:47 > 0:15:51- what we might call in this country a welfare state...- I never use
0:15:51 > 0:15:54the term "welfare state". I believe in welfare,
0:15:54 > 0:15:58but I believe people ought to get their welfare
0:15:58 > 0:16:01by co-operation between the state and themselves,
0:16:01 > 0:16:05and not from the state alone. What we give to people
0:16:05 > 0:16:08when they're unemployed, or sick, or retired
0:16:08 > 0:16:12is a bare minimum, just enough to keep body and soul together,
0:16:12 > 0:16:16but not enough for anybody really to be content with.
0:16:16 > 0:16:18What's to prevent a man from merely staying
0:16:18 > 0:16:23on the social unemployment insurance system for ever?
0:16:23 > 0:16:29Nobody really would be content to do so. We always want... He wants
0:16:29 > 0:16:33more than the bare minimum. Practically all people do.
0:16:33 > 0:16:35Thank you very much, Lord Beveridge.
0:16:41 > 0:16:43It all seemed so hopeful.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46The new Jerusalem had finally come.
0:16:49 > 0:16:53The ideas of Keynes and Beveridge triumphed after the war.
0:16:54 > 0:16:57Britain had close to full employment.
0:17:00 > 0:17:01A national health service.
0:17:04 > 0:17:06Free schooling for all.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10The old were given guaranteed pensions.
0:17:12 > 0:17:16And Victorian slums were cleared for new housing.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22The welfare state was supported by both Labour and the Conservatives,
0:17:22 > 0:17:26a time of national consensus after decades of chaos.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32- DAVID MILIBAND:- What happened with Keynesianism is it was married with...
0:17:32 > 0:17:34centre-left politics,
0:17:34 > 0:17:38with a sense of commitment to the welfare state, to building
0:17:38 > 0:17:42the land fit for heroes that wasn't built after the First World War.
0:17:42 > 0:17:48And the Keynesian welfare state that dominated western European politics
0:17:48 > 0:17:51in the 25 years after the Second World War was a seismic change
0:17:51 > 0:17:57because it regulated the market, but it also built a fair society.
0:17:57 > 0:18:01And that's what it made it a remarkable political vehicle,
0:18:01 > 0:18:03not just an economic theory.
0:18:08 > 0:18:10But there were rumblings of discontent
0:18:10 > 0:18:12even in the midst of Utopia.
0:18:15 > 0:18:18This "new Jerusalem" could only be achieved
0:18:18 > 0:18:21through a colossal expanse of the state.
0:18:23 > 0:18:25Bureaucracy and the public sector
0:18:25 > 0:18:28hugely increased in the post-war period.
0:18:31 > 0:18:35Critics feared Britain was becoming a nanny state.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44One thinker, disquieted by the spectre of government interference,
0:18:44 > 0:18:50was Russian emigre and Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
0:18:50 > 0:18:52Why are these highly controversial?
0:18:52 > 0:18:56In the early '60s, Berlin appeared on a discussion programme,
0:18:56 > 0:19:00expressing his hatred of being told what to do.
0:19:00 > 0:19:02How does it stand up intellectually?
0:19:02 > 0:19:04I object to being treated like a child.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07I object to not being reasoned with. I object to paternalism.
0:19:07 > 0:19:10Ultimately, I think what I object to
0:19:10 > 0:19:13is being treated like a schoolboy, being told for my own good,
0:19:13 > 0:19:15being driven in a perfectly beneficent direction
0:19:15 > 0:19:18by perfectly disinterested, pure-hearted...
0:19:18 > 0:19:22governments or manufacturers, doesn't matter which.
0:19:22 > 0:19:24Even if you assume they are pure-hearted men.
0:19:24 > 0:19:28This is exactly what the British Empire felt towards
0:19:28 > 0:19:29coloured people in Africa.
0:19:29 > 0:19:32It's exactly what schoolmasters feel towards children,
0:19:32 > 0:19:35and it always leads to bad consequences in the end.
0:19:35 > 0:19:41'Paternalism was very alien to Isaiah Berlin.'
0:19:41 > 0:19:45He wanted people to be free to live their lives,
0:19:45 > 0:19:50according to their own values and goals, even if that meant
0:19:50 > 0:19:55they ruined their lives or went to disaster or tragedy.
0:19:59 > 0:20:04Berlin became an advocate of liberalism against political dogma,
0:20:04 > 0:20:07a belief that stemmed from his childhood, when he'd witnessed
0:20:07 > 0:20:11the brutal convulsions of the Russian Revolution first-hand.
0:20:11 > 0:20:16CHANTING
0:20:16 > 0:20:19There was a man in the middle of a kind of lynching,
0:20:19 > 0:20:21very, very white, being dragged off by the crowds.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25He was one of these people apparently caught in some rooftop,
0:20:25 > 0:20:29and was being dragged off to an obviously not very nice fate.
0:20:29 > 0:20:32And this was so awful that it made a permanent impression on me,
0:20:32 > 0:20:34and I've never recovered from it quite.
0:20:34 > 0:20:37It's given me a personal distaste for violence...
0:20:37 > 0:20:39which nothing will overcome.
0:20:39 > 0:20:43CHANTING
0:20:46 > 0:20:48What Isaiah Berlin believed
0:20:48 > 0:20:51above all is that no individual
0:20:51 > 0:20:55or government should ever be confident that it knows the truth,
0:20:55 > 0:20:59and therefore all attempts to impose a magic solution on problems,
0:20:59 > 0:21:03be they Communism or certain kinds of right-wing economic doctrinaire behaviour,
0:21:03 > 0:21:06all these things we should be suspicious of,
0:21:06 > 0:21:08because no-one knows the whole truth,
0:21:08 > 0:21:11and scepticism is the only wise position to adopt.
0:21:11 > 0:21:14If you believe there is a single answer to a single question,
0:21:14 > 0:21:17THE true answer, all the other answers being false,
0:21:17 > 0:21:19and all these answers can be put together
0:21:19 > 0:21:23and harmonise with each other and create the perfect universe,
0:21:23 > 0:21:28then there is a temptation, if you think you have it, to do awful things.
0:21:28 > 0:21:32This is a moment when the old order is crumbling, and people like Berlin,
0:21:32 > 0:21:36with his philosophy of liberalism, is really advancing
0:21:36 > 0:21:39what we now think of as the modern way of looking at things,
0:21:39 > 0:21:42which is, leave people free to do as they please,
0:21:42 > 0:21:44so long as they don't harm anyone else.
0:21:50 > 0:21:54Berlin thought repressing individualism would only lead to anarchy...
0:22:02 > 0:22:05..and his worst nightmares seemed to come true
0:22:05 > 0:22:08in the angry decade of the 1960s.
0:22:09 > 0:22:12I'm telling you! Now, don't make me provoke you...
0:22:12 > 0:22:15Students became a force for protest.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19And like Russell before them, they fought for change
0:22:19 > 0:22:23not only on the streets, but also on television.
0:22:24 > 0:22:27What would you do without any students?
0:22:27 > 0:22:29The machine would not run, would it?
0:22:29 > 0:22:32- Wouldn't run?- No, wouldn't run.
0:22:32 > 0:22:34I don't agree with them at all.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36If they're so fed up with being students,
0:22:36 > 0:22:38they can get a job anywhere.
0:22:38 > 0:22:39CHANTING
0:22:40 > 0:22:42'In the Sixties, that was the mood.
0:22:42 > 0:22:47'It was a mood created by full employment, by being very fed up
0:22:47 > 0:22:50'with the boring - in this country - stale...'
0:22:50 > 0:22:53tired, fuddy-duddy '50s.
0:22:53 > 0:22:58A house which is divided against itself cannot stand!
0:22:58 > 0:23:00What we've been talking about here today
0:23:00 > 0:23:02is the problem of racialism...
0:23:05 > 0:23:10This was a country where deference
0:23:10 > 0:23:14played a very important part, and the young generation
0:23:14 > 0:23:20wanted to break with that deferential attitude to authority,
0:23:20 > 0:23:23which was incredibly strong in Britain.
0:23:23 > 0:23:26The fundamental idea behind all the thinkers that then...
0:23:26 > 0:23:32leapt into prominence was that the world is organised hierarchically.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35That there are powers that dominate.
0:23:35 > 0:23:40These powers are not necessarily explicit, some of them are secret.
0:23:40 > 0:23:43We have to dig them out and repudiate them
0:23:43 > 0:23:45and claim our liberation from them.
0:23:45 > 0:23:50There is this bourgeois normality out there which is not
0:23:50 > 0:23:55the consensual, good-natured thing that it pretends,
0:23:55 > 0:23:57it really is a system of domination,
0:23:57 > 0:24:01and we must side with the victims and liberate them.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04And I think that was the sort of general view that suddenly
0:24:04 > 0:24:11became popular among the highly pampered youth of the baby-boom era.
0:24:14 > 0:24:17Do you think that the middle class and the capitalists
0:24:17 > 0:24:21will give up easily, or fight to the end?
0:24:21 > 0:24:23They will fight tooth and nail.
0:24:23 > 0:24:29Until you can push off your oppressor, he will never give in,
0:24:29 > 0:24:31and that had to be through violence.
0:24:36 > 0:24:39Young activists turned to One Dimensional Man,
0:24:39 > 0:24:42by the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse.
0:24:45 > 0:24:48It argued that consumerist society, for all its talk of freedom,
0:24:48 > 0:24:51actually stifled democracy and liberty.
0:24:57 > 0:25:01As a refugee from the Nazis, Marcuse had seen fascism first-hand,
0:25:01 > 0:25:04when he developed a radical Marxist view
0:25:04 > 0:25:06of the repressiveness of the state.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15Marcuse was interviewed by the philosopher Brian Magee
0:25:15 > 0:25:19in the late 1970s, just a year before his death.
0:25:20 > 0:25:24Professor Marcuse, why should it have been to your writings
0:25:24 > 0:25:27that the revolutionary student movements
0:25:27 > 0:25:29of the 1960s and early '70s turned?
0:25:29 > 0:25:34The student generation that became active in these years did not need
0:25:34 > 0:25:38a father figure, or a grandfather figure, in order to
0:25:38 > 0:25:42lead them to protest against a society
0:25:42 > 0:25:46which revealed daily its inequality,
0:25:46 > 0:25:52injustice, cruelty and its general destructiveness.
0:25:52 > 0:25:57I would like to mention racism, sexism,
0:25:57 > 0:26:01the general insecurity,
0:26:01 > 0:26:06the pollution of the environment, the degradation of education,
0:26:06 > 0:26:10the degradation of work, and so on, and so on.
0:26:10 > 0:26:16In other words, what exploded in the '60s and early '70s
0:26:16 > 0:26:23was a blatant contrast between the tremendous available social wealths
0:26:23 > 0:26:28and its miserable, destructive and wasteful use.
0:26:28 > 0:26:30Ho, ho! Ho, ho!
0:26:30 > 0:26:32- Ho Chi Minh.- Ho, ho!
0:26:35 > 0:26:39One of the disciples of Marcuse was a media-savvy Marxist
0:26:39 > 0:26:40called Tariq Ali.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48He propagated revolutionary ideas to students through his newspaper,
0:26:48 > 0:26:49The Black Dwarf.
0:26:52 > 0:26:56We believe that Parliament is completely immaterial
0:26:56 > 0:26:59and is hypocritical, because it leads the people to believe that
0:26:59 > 0:27:02here is something which can help you when it's completely ineffective.
0:27:05 > 0:27:07Black Dwarf.
0:27:10 > 0:27:14In the late Sixties, Ali even smuggled a taste of rebellion
0:27:14 > 0:27:17into people's homes, when he and a group of
0:27:17 > 0:27:19student radicals were given a platform
0:27:19 > 0:27:21during a live broadcast...
0:27:23 > 0:27:26..presented by an establishment figure,
0:27:26 > 0:27:27Robert McKenzie.
0:27:30 > 0:27:32'It was the BBC's idea - it wasn't our idea.
0:27:32 > 0:27:34'We would never have dreamt of it.'
0:27:36 > 0:27:41Obviously, they hoped we'd make fools of ourselves, but they did it.
0:27:41 > 0:27:46Most of us are in fact libertarian Marxists. We believe in all power to the Soviets,
0:27:46 > 0:27:48we believe that that slogan is not dated at all,
0:27:48 > 0:27:50that it has not been properly applied.
0:27:50 > 0:27:52We believe in the abolition of money,
0:27:52 > 0:27:56we believe in the appropriation of all private property,
0:27:56 > 0:28:00and we believe in a large mass of people and their respective jobs they do.
0:28:00 > 0:28:04- This is a very big programme indeed! - Well, these are the bare essentials.
0:28:04 > 0:28:07But the students derailed the live broadcast
0:28:07 > 0:28:11by bursting into the socialist anthem, The Internationale...
0:28:12 > 0:28:14# Internationale... #
0:28:14 > 0:28:17..forcing the producers hastily to put the final credits up.
0:28:18 > 0:28:23# ..Internationale... #
0:28:23 > 0:28:27SINGING CONTINUES
0:28:38 > 0:28:40Well, the next scene after the cameras switched off,
0:28:40 > 0:28:45everyone burst out laughing. Us that we'd done it,
0:28:45 > 0:28:48the camera crews amazed and very friendly and supportive
0:28:48 > 0:28:54and shaking hands, and Bob McKenzie saying, "You got away with it!"
0:28:57 > 0:29:00But it wasn't just university students who protested
0:29:00 > 0:29:02against the status quo.
0:29:06 > 0:29:12Their teachers also attacked the outmoded and old-fashioned institutions of state.
0:29:17 > 0:29:22Ralph Miliband was a Belgian academic who, like Marcuse,
0:29:22 > 0:29:23had fled the Nazis.
0:29:24 > 0:29:28Today, he's famous as the father of Ed and David Miliband.
0:29:32 > 0:29:35But in the '60s, he was well known as a Marxist thinker,
0:29:35 > 0:29:39lambasting the monarchy during this televised debate.
0:29:42 > 0:29:44Dr Miliband,
0:29:44 > 0:29:47do you agree that monarchy remains a valuable institution?
0:29:47 > 0:29:54If you think a nation should sleepwalk through history,
0:29:54 > 0:29:58into the future, if you think that deference
0:29:58 > 0:30:01is an important part of government,
0:30:01 > 0:30:04if you think social hierarchies ought to be preserved...
0:30:04 > 0:30:07in that case you're bound to think that monarchy
0:30:07 > 0:30:10is a valuable institution. If you think, on the other hand,
0:30:10 > 0:30:13that democratic government entails
0:30:13 > 0:30:16a high degree of political rationality,
0:30:16 > 0:30:18then I think you would think not.
0:30:22 > 0:30:25Ralph Miliband wrote a series of books heavily critical
0:30:25 > 0:30:28of what he saw as the bullying imperialism of the British state.
0:30:34 > 0:30:39I think that my dad caught the mood for a couple of reasons.
0:30:39 > 0:30:44Firstly, I think he was a very good teacher, both in person and writing,
0:30:44 > 0:30:47maybe because English wasn't his first language.
0:30:47 > 0:30:51Secondly, it was a time of great struggle
0:30:51 > 0:30:53and it's not just the man, it's the moment.
0:30:53 > 0:30:57And so I think his writing was on the issues of the time,
0:30:57 > 0:31:02because it was a time of great optimism in some ways, but also great fear.
0:31:15 > 0:31:19One cause that really energised Miliband and the left in the 1960s
0:31:19 > 0:31:21was the Vietnam War.
0:31:27 > 0:31:31Miliband was horrified that Harold Wilson's Labour Party
0:31:31 > 0:31:34seemed to be colluding with the Americans during the conflict.
0:31:38 > 0:31:42There is a civil war, with, on one side,
0:31:42 > 0:31:48nationalist, socialist, communist, neutralist forces
0:31:48 > 0:31:52grouped in the National Liberation Front.
0:31:52 > 0:31:56And on the other side there are the military men, the politicians,
0:31:56 > 0:31:59the landowners, the racketeers
0:31:59 > 0:32:02and all the forces of property and privilege.
0:32:06 > 0:32:08He thought it was misbegotten, unjust,
0:32:08 > 0:32:11and potentially disastrous for the world.
0:32:11 > 0:32:16And the justification for American intervention was very weak
0:32:16 > 0:32:21and, further, that it was likely to end in disaster.
0:32:22 > 0:32:25If Mr Wilson genuinely wants peace,
0:32:25 > 0:32:28the first thing he must do is to condemn American bombing.
0:32:37 > 0:32:41The '60s generation fought to change not just politics
0:32:41 > 0:32:44but also social attitudes.
0:32:45 > 0:32:47And one movement, feminism,
0:32:47 > 0:32:50was to transform the status of women in Britain.
0:32:53 > 0:32:58When I was 17, 18, 19, all I thought about was marriage and children.
0:32:58 > 0:33:01I thought it was going to be the most fantastic thing in the world.
0:33:01 > 0:33:05But I suddenly realised that, what was it that I was dreaming about?
0:33:05 > 0:33:08Because it hasn't come true. I've got married, I've got kids,
0:33:08 > 0:33:11but the dream life isn't there.
0:33:11 > 0:33:13Oh, you cow!
0:33:15 > 0:33:20In 1971, the American feminist Selma James made a film for the BBC
0:33:20 > 0:33:24which allowed ordinary British women to talk about their lives.
0:33:26 > 0:33:29'Like millions of women everywhere, I'm a typist.
0:33:29 > 0:33:34'I'm a housewife, a mother and I've been a factory worker.'
0:33:34 > 0:33:38I am one of those people who have always listened to women,
0:33:38 > 0:33:42assuming that what they are is not necessarily what they can be.
0:33:42 > 0:33:45In a house you can't expect the man to do the washing.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49You can't expect him to make beds or anything like that, can you?
0:33:49 > 0:33:51I didn't want to live like Mum and Dad lived,
0:33:51 > 0:33:53Mum doing everything, Dad doing nothing.
0:33:55 > 0:33:58It was my view that if you wanted to find out what was going on,
0:33:58 > 0:34:02you had to ask people, cos they could tell you.
0:34:02 > 0:34:05And, in fact, looking at the film today,
0:34:05 > 0:34:09I find that it is a very good spectrum of views.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12We work an eight-hour day here.
0:34:12 > 0:34:14I'm going home now to do some shopping.
0:34:14 > 0:34:16I don't have a lunch.
0:34:16 > 0:34:18I have a cup of tea, if I'm lucky.
0:34:18 > 0:34:23I come back to work, I do my work, then I go home and do my housework,
0:34:23 > 0:34:25get the tea prepared...
0:34:26 > 0:34:28Working women have two jobs -
0:34:28 > 0:34:31the one they get paid for and the one they don't,
0:34:31 > 0:34:33the running of the home.
0:34:34 > 0:34:37I really felt, and still feel,
0:34:37 > 0:34:44that the fact that women take care of children, almost exclusively,
0:34:44 > 0:34:48is a punishment for us rather than the enjoyment it should be.
0:34:48 > 0:34:51And it's certainly a punishment for men.
0:34:51 > 0:34:53Men are deprived of a great deal in this society
0:34:53 > 0:34:57because women are given these jobs of caring.
0:34:57 > 0:35:00How much time do you spend with your children?
0:35:00 > 0:35:03Well, very little, actually,
0:35:03 > 0:35:05just probably one day per week, which is Sunday.
0:35:05 > 0:35:08We feel very much that men should take a full role
0:35:08 > 0:35:11in bringing up the children and running the household.
0:35:11 > 0:35:13- What do you feel? - I don't agree with that.
0:35:13 > 0:35:15Tell us why. SHE LAUGHS
0:35:15 > 0:35:16Tell us why.
0:35:16 > 0:35:18Men just can't do it.
0:35:18 > 0:35:20Why?
0:35:21 > 0:35:24He hasn't got the patience and the understanding.
0:35:30 > 0:35:33Feminism transformed attitudes to issues like equal pay
0:35:33 > 0:35:35and sex discrimination.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42Not that the BBC always kept pace with this huge social change.
0:35:44 > 0:35:47This is International Woman's Day today
0:35:47 > 0:35:51and you send a male to interview me and a male cameraman.
0:35:51 > 0:35:54Where are your women cameramen, BBC?
0:36:01 > 0:36:05But feminism produced a thinker who shone on screen
0:36:05 > 0:36:08and had no fear of expressing her provocative views.
0:36:08 > 0:36:12Germaine Greer, the radical feminist and author of the bestselling book
0:36:12 > 0:36:15The Female Eunuch, is in Newsday's studio tonight.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18But first, this evening's news summary.
0:36:20 > 0:36:21HE COUGHS
0:36:24 > 0:36:27Greer was an unknown Australian academic,
0:36:27 > 0:36:32but she was to become internationally famous with the incendiary Female Eunuch,
0:36:32 > 0:36:37which argued that society made women into weak, subservient creatures.
0:36:39 > 0:36:44I don't believe there's a feminist alive who wants to abolish femaleness.
0:36:44 > 0:36:47My whole argument has been since the very beginning,
0:36:47 > 0:36:51that we don't know what it is - you have given us a disgusting idea of it.
0:36:51 > 0:36:55A mimsy, useless, pathetic idea of it, which makes even bad mothers.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59Women were already sniffing the air,
0:36:59 > 0:37:01looking out the window thinking,
0:37:01 > 0:37:05"I'm not standing by this bloody sink a moment longer.
0:37:05 > 0:37:09"I'm going to go for a walk without my hat."
0:37:09 > 0:37:11That's what happened.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15The women made the book, the book didn't make the women.
0:37:16 > 0:37:19Such was the book's popularity,
0:37:19 > 0:37:24the BBC even commissioned Greer to narrate a film about her ideas.
0:37:26 > 0:37:31'As long as the energies of women are not properly exercised,
0:37:31 > 0:37:34'their natures are degraded into feebleness and irritability.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38'The greatest service a woman can render her community is to be happy.
0:37:38 > 0:37:42'More and more women are finding the courage to follow their own objective
0:37:42 > 0:37:45'and realise their own potential.'
0:37:52 > 0:37:56But while she was the most famous exponent of feminism,
0:37:56 > 0:37:59Germaine Greer had misgivings about the collective nature
0:37:59 > 0:38:01of the women's liberation movement.
0:38:05 > 0:38:10What's the biggest lesson you've learned in the women's movement?
0:38:10 > 0:38:12The biggest lesson I've learned?
0:38:12 > 0:38:14You must understand I haven't been
0:38:14 > 0:38:17a part of an organised women's movement.
0:38:17 > 0:38:21This is not really because I object to it,
0:38:21 > 0:38:25but because, for various reasons, it hasn't been possible for me.
0:38:25 > 0:38:28So really I'm still where I always was, hanging about on the edges.
0:38:28 > 0:38:32Is the lesson that a lot of women don't want the sort of liberation you want?
0:38:32 > 0:38:34Has that surprised you?
0:38:34 > 0:38:37Well, the thing is this...
0:38:37 > 0:38:40I don't consider my time would be well spent
0:38:40 > 0:38:43marching about the place, sowing despair and disillusion.
0:38:43 > 0:38:47There's quite enough despair and disillusion there already.
0:38:47 > 0:38:51I watched Germaine Greer on the television, she was often there.
0:38:51 > 0:38:55And I'm really amazed at how many perceptions there are,
0:38:55 > 0:38:58what clarity she had, and how articulate
0:38:58 > 0:39:02and precise she is about many things,
0:39:02 > 0:39:07but she has absolutely no sense of the society as a hierarchy,
0:39:07 > 0:39:11and she has no sense of the movement.
0:39:11 > 0:39:17And that's unfortunate because it means she doesn't see a way out.
0:39:17 > 0:39:25Feminism was, from the beginning, very doctrinaire and very prescriptive.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28You had to be the right kind of feminist -
0:39:28 > 0:39:30it's a bit like having the right kind of orgasm.
0:39:30 > 0:39:33There were some people who would tell you
0:39:33 > 0:39:36if you didn't decide that in future you were going to have
0:39:36 > 0:39:41sexual relations with women, then you weren't a real feminist at all.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05But from the mid-1970s,
0:40:05 > 0:40:09the idealism and optimism that had characterised the post-war period was crumbling.
0:40:13 > 0:40:17The "new Jerusalem" was falling apart.
0:40:20 > 0:40:25It was all because Britain had once again hit economic hard times.
0:40:25 > 0:40:29BBC cameras captured food shortages...
0:40:30 > 0:40:31..strikes...
0:40:31 > 0:40:36If you go in, you're scabbing on us. A scab's a scab, as far as we're concerned.
0:40:36 > 0:40:38..electricity cuts.
0:40:38 > 0:40:41We're virtually out of business while the power's off.
0:40:41 > 0:40:44We've no light to work with. It affects us pretty drastically.
0:40:44 > 0:40:48And inflation rocketed.
0:40:52 > 0:40:56I think there was a change in the intellectual climate
0:40:56 > 0:40:59because of the crisis that the socialist model
0:40:59 > 0:41:02under both parties had got into difficulties.
0:41:02 > 0:41:05We visibly weren't succeeding economically as a nation
0:41:05 > 0:41:09and it was causing enormous stress for individual families.
0:41:09 > 0:41:13People were losing jobs, they weren't on decent incomes, it wasn't very pleasant.
0:41:13 > 0:41:18There was a, sort of, kind of sense that Western civilisation was breaking down.
0:41:21 > 0:41:26Specifically, Britain seemed to be a country in great decline.
0:41:29 > 0:41:34Everyone started noticing that Britain had become
0:41:34 > 0:41:36the sick man of Europe
0:41:36 > 0:41:39and people thought that must...
0:41:39 > 0:41:45be something to do with the way it runs its economics and politics.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53In this time of crisis, one thinker had a startling message...
0:41:56 > 0:42:00British economic policy since the Second World War
0:42:00 > 0:42:01was completely wrong.
0:42:06 > 0:42:09The Austrian-born academic Friedrich Hayek
0:42:09 > 0:42:12had been ignored - even vilified -
0:42:12 > 0:42:15for most of his career because of his heretical belief
0:42:15 > 0:42:19that the free market should be left to its own devices.
0:42:22 > 0:42:25I have, incidentally, often regretted
0:42:25 > 0:42:30that there haven't been more bankruptcies in the past,
0:42:30 > 0:42:34as the British economy would be in a better position now
0:42:34 > 0:42:41if more firms had been eliminated, not been artificially kept alive.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48But in the '70s, Hayek broke out of his ivory tower.
0:42:50 > 0:42:53His anti-government polemic, The Road To Serfdom,
0:42:53 > 0:42:58first published in 1944, even became a surprise bestseller.
0:43:00 > 0:43:04Prosperity has never been created by governments.
0:43:04 > 0:43:10The most government can do is not disturb the prospects
0:43:10 > 0:43:15by interfering sillily in things they do not understand.
0:43:15 > 0:43:19I think the big idea from Hayek was this idea
0:43:19 > 0:43:22that a well-intentioned state doing more and more can end up
0:43:22 > 0:43:25suppressing freedoms,
0:43:25 > 0:43:29achieving the opposite of what it sets out to achieve,
0:43:29 > 0:43:32destroying wealth, prosperity, jobs, happiness -
0:43:32 > 0:43:35all those things that politicians ought to be in favour of.
0:43:35 > 0:43:37He's got an arresting thesis.
0:43:37 > 0:43:42His thesis is that a market outcome is, by definition, just
0:43:42 > 0:43:45because it's been freely entered into.
0:43:45 > 0:43:49Now, that is a very pure description of what it means to be on the right of politics,
0:43:49 > 0:43:51because it says that market exchange,
0:43:51 > 0:43:53because it's "free", is necessarily fair.
0:43:53 > 0:43:57So far as our commercial activities
0:43:57 > 0:44:01and economic activities are concerned,
0:44:01 > 0:44:04we will benefit our fellow man most
0:44:04 > 0:44:08if we are guided solely by this striving for gain.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12Isn't it a philosophy based essentially on selfishness?
0:44:12 > 0:44:18That is to say, the only spur, it seems, is gain.
0:44:18 > 0:44:21- What about altruism? Where does that come in?- It doesn't come in.
0:44:27 > 0:44:31Hayek's high-minded philosophy was given concrete form
0:44:31 > 0:44:34by a plain-talking economist from Chicago,
0:44:34 > 0:44:36who was a broadcasting natural...
0:44:39 > 0:44:41Milton Friedman.
0:44:43 > 0:44:46Professor Friedman, you've just written in an article
0:44:46 > 0:44:49and I quote you, "The odds are at least 50-50
0:44:49 > 0:44:54"that within the next five years British freedom and democracy will have been destroyed."
0:44:54 > 0:44:57How do you reach that, to British ears,
0:44:57 > 0:44:59terrifying and apocalyptic conclusion?
0:44:59 > 0:45:03It's a terrifying conclusion to myself and to American ears.
0:45:03 > 0:45:05I certainly hope you don't continue down that road,
0:45:05 > 0:45:10but a candid man must find it hard to see how you're going to get off it.
0:45:16 > 0:45:21Friedman had come up with a theory of how to solve Britain's economic woes,
0:45:21 > 0:45:23monetarism.
0:45:23 > 0:45:26Friedman said Keynes was wrong -
0:45:26 > 0:45:31governments should spend less and print less money in difficult times.
0:45:33 > 0:45:37Taking money out of circulation to combat rising prices.
0:45:38 > 0:45:40Turning off the tap,
0:45:40 > 0:45:43reducing the flow of money and spending power in the economy,
0:45:43 > 0:45:46now has the highest priority.
0:45:46 > 0:45:49The economic theory behind this trend has come to be known as monetarism.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53There's only one way to cure inflation, there aren't any two ways.
0:45:53 > 0:45:56The only way to cure inflation is to slow down the rate
0:45:56 > 0:45:59at which the quantity of money is increasing.
0:46:04 > 0:46:06Friedman had a very powerful argument.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09I think there were bits of it that are wrong,
0:46:09 > 0:46:13and which didn't survive but, at that moment,
0:46:13 > 0:46:17people said, "Well, he's given us a way of governing again."
0:46:20 > 0:46:23Friedman made his theories sound like common sense,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26but they were highly controversial.
0:46:26 > 0:46:29Critics said reducing spending
0:46:29 > 0:46:32would throw millions of people out of work.
0:46:34 > 0:46:38Unfortunately, when you have followed policies as misguided
0:46:38 > 0:46:41as British policies have been these many years,
0:46:41 > 0:46:44there is no way out that is going to be easy and costless.
0:46:44 > 0:46:46Are you saying that means we have to accept
0:46:46 > 0:46:49a higher level of unemployment, whatever happens?
0:46:49 > 0:46:51I am afraid that is likely to be the case.
0:46:51 > 0:46:58In terms of emotion, I think the Keynesians of that day -
0:46:58 > 0:47:01and this was right at the end of the Keynesian era,
0:47:01 > 0:47:03when they were really on the defensive -
0:47:03 > 0:47:07thought Milton Friedman was the embodiment of evil.
0:47:07 > 0:47:12That he wanted to put the clock back to the 1930s.
0:47:12 > 0:47:16I have argued for a long while that monetarism,
0:47:16 > 0:47:20a set of ideas that come from Professor Milton Friedman in modern times,
0:47:20 > 0:47:24I have argued this is not an issue between left and right,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27Conservatives and Labour, Liberals and Conservatives.
0:47:27 > 0:47:29The issue is whether it works or not,
0:47:29 > 0:47:32and I've long argued that it doesn't work.
0:47:39 > 0:47:42This fight between Friedman and the Keynesians
0:47:42 > 0:47:45reached its climax on television.
0:47:48 > 0:47:53In 1976, the BBC travelled to Chicago to film a Labour minister
0:47:53 > 0:47:57confronting Friedman on a hot-tempered episode of Panorama.
0:47:59 > 0:48:01We took a distinguished British economist,
0:48:01 > 0:48:05very much committed to recent British policies, Lord Balogh,
0:48:05 > 0:48:07to challenge Milton Friedman on his home ground.
0:48:07 > 0:48:12Professor Friedman, you've made some very dire predictions about Britain.
0:48:12 > 0:48:15Can you explain what ought to be happening in Britain that isn't happening?
0:48:15 > 0:48:19There is nothing, in my opinion, wrong with Britain
0:48:19 > 0:48:23that could not be set right by a change in the direction of policies
0:48:23 > 0:48:29away from a policy which leads to putting civil servants in charge of everything
0:48:29 > 0:48:33to a policy which gives to the ordinary man control over his own life.
0:48:33 > 0:48:35His policies have never succeeded,
0:48:35 > 0:48:40wherever it was tried, either in America or in England.
0:48:40 > 0:48:43A political economist - and he is,
0:48:43 > 0:48:45after all, a very political economist -
0:48:45 > 0:48:49must take into account the probable consequences,
0:48:49 > 0:48:53politically and socially, of his advice,
0:48:53 > 0:48:55and this he's quite incapable of doing.
0:48:55 > 0:48:57What do you believe those to be?
0:48:57 > 0:49:00Total collapse of the consensus which we had,
0:49:00 > 0:49:04probably a strike, and the decline of the country,
0:49:04 > 0:49:10with absolutely incalculable consequences for the country.
0:49:10 > 0:49:13- What do you say to that? - I say that continued increase
0:49:13 > 0:49:15in government spending
0:49:15 > 0:49:18has produced exactly the results he said the opposite would produce.
0:49:18 > 0:49:21You've had increased growth in government spending,
0:49:21 > 0:49:24you've had increased militancy in the unions,
0:49:24 > 0:49:28and you've had increased unemployment. So apparently...
0:49:28 > 0:49:31Here again Professor Friedman is entirely wrong.
0:49:31 > 0:49:34I don't mean to be invidious on that, I'm just saying...
0:49:34 > 0:49:38Here are the weasel words, you see. Out come the weasel words.
0:49:38 > 0:49:41Can I put to you a quote from a London newspaper, The Guardian,
0:49:41 > 0:49:45which said you are "a cantankerous old bigot,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48"peddling your patent wonder cure and telling the world
0:49:48 > 0:49:52"that those who decline to take your wonder cure will die a very nasty death."
0:49:56 > 0:49:59But Friedman's "wonder cure"
0:49:59 > 0:50:01was to be taken up by an eager patient,
0:50:01 > 0:50:06who was to use the BBC to make monetarism palatable to a British audience...
0:50:08 > 0:50:12An Oxford don and Conservative intellectual, Keith Joseph.
0:50:16 > 0:50:19I thought I was a Conservative, I thought I was a Conservative.
0:50:19 > 0:50:25But all the time I was in favour of shortcuts to utopia,
0:50:25 > 0:50:28I was in favour of the government doing things
0:50:28 > 0:50:31because I was so impatient for good things to be done.
0:50:31 > 0:50:34And I didn't realise that the government generally makes a mess.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39You see, the more ministers try to do, the less well they do it.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45It was Karl Marx who has done more to alter the world, I say for ill...
0:50:45 > 0:50:48Joseph was committed to spreading a new right-wing gospel
0:50:48 > 0:50:52of personal responsibility over state intervention...
0:50:53 > 0:50:58And how did he have the time to write his work?!
0:50:58 > 0:51:03..even preaching his message to roomfuls of bemused-looking students.
0:51:03 > 0:51:07This country is conservative with a small C,
0:51:07 > 0:51:12that's to say, it doesn't believe in collective solutions,
0:51:12 > 0:51:14it cherishes freedom,
0:51:14 > 0:51:18and yet we have allowed this rubber stamp of collectivism
0:51:18 > 0:51:23that has been propagated by socialist intellectuals
0:51:23 > 0:51:26to dominate our lives. And the result is, as I've said before,
0:51:26 > 0:51:30we're now more socialist than any other developed country.
0:51:36 > 0:51:39There's still a little bit sticking up there.
0:51:39 > 0:51:41You can see it in the reflection.
0:51:42 > 0:51:46Joseph was the key advisor to the party's first female leader,
0:51:46 > 0:51:50Margaret Thatcher, who made speeches that tore apart
0:51:50 > 0:51:53the old "consensus" politics of the post-war period.
0:51:58 > 0:52:02We'll bring in a society which lives within its means,
0:52:02 > 0:52:08where public expenditure is cut, and where waste of taxpayers' money
0:52:08 > 0:52:11is ruthlessly expunged.
0:52:11 > 0:52:13APPLAUSE
0:52:13 > 0:52:17Yes, we'll bring in a Conservative society.
0:52:20 > 0:52:23And when Thatcher won the 1979 election,
0:52:23 > 0:52:26the ideas of Hayek and Friedman
0:52:26 > 0:52:29were now at the heart of British government.
0:52:30 > 0:52:34FREIDMAN: The Thatcher government is a kind of an experiment,
0:52:34 > 0:52:37in whether it will be possible in a democratic society
0:52:37 > 0:52:40that has gone as far as Britain has gone, to change course
0:52:40 > 0:52:45in an orderly, effective way, to set Britain on a new road.
0:52:47 > 0:52:51If the Thatcher government succeeds, it will be an example
0:52:51 > 0:52:54that will not be lost on the United States or the rest of the world.
0:52:59 > 0:53:04Under the Conservatives, the government tried to curb spending.
0:53:04 > 0:53:08It privatised many of the industries that it owned
0:53:08 > 0:53:10to encourage free enterprise.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14The stock market was deregulated,
0:53:14 > 0:53:17generating billions of pounds of revenue.
0:53:18 > 0:53:21But as the Keynesians predicted,
0:53:21 > 0:53:24strikes became increasingly embittered
0:53:24 > 0:53:28and joblessness soared to rates not seen since the 1930s.
0:53:31 > 0:53:35REPORTER: Unemployment in Britain is now two and a half million and rising.
0:53:35 > 0:53:38Monetarists always said that unemployment
0:53:38 > 0:53:41was the unavoidable price for cutting inflation,
0:53:41 > 0:53:44but no-one expected Britain's recession to be so severe,
0:53:44 > 0:53:46or so long-lived.
0:53:56 > 0:53:58By the end of the '80s,
0:53:58 > 0:54:01free market values seemed to have triumphed,
0:54:01 > 0:54:03both in west and eastern Europe.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08They've opened the floodgates, and here at Checkpoint Charlie,
0:54:08 > 0:54:13and other gaping holes in the wall, a great human tide is flowing out.
0:54:16 > 0:54:19They're pouring through here by car and on foot,
0:54:19 > 0:54:23to spend an hour, a day, as long as they please, in the west.
0:54:24 > 0:54:28In 1989, the communist system collapsed across eastern Europe.
0:54:30 > 0:54:34Capitalism appeared to have won.
0:54:34 > 0:54:36CHEERING
0:54:41 > 0:54:43And one philosopher preached
0:54:43 > 0:54:47that the ideological battles of the modern age were now over.
0:54:59 > 0:55:03A provocative New York academic, Francis Fukuyama,
0:55:03 > 0:55:07became a celebrity with the last "big idea" of the century.
0:55:08 > 0:55:11Liberal, capitalist democracy,
0:55:11 > 0:55:14championed by Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in America,
0:55:14 > 0:55:18was so suited to human needs, we'd reached the end of history.
0:55:21 > 0:55:25In 1989, an unknown researcher at an American think-tank
0:55:25 > 0:55:29wrote an article for an obscure foreign policy journal.
0:55:29 > 0:55:32But this article was called The End of History.
0:55:32 > 0:55:36In it, Francis Fukuyama argued that the collapse of communism
0:55:36 > 0:55:39and the end of the Cold War had left capitalism
0:55:39 > 0:55:43and liberal democracy without any challengers.
0:55:44 > 0:55:48What you've seen happening in the century
0:55:48 > 0:55:52when we began it, there were many competitors to liberal democracy,
0:55:52 > 0:55:56leftover hereditary monarchies, fascist dictatorships,
0:55:56 > 0:55:58communist totalitarianism
0:55:58 > 0:56:03and virtually all of them have now disappeared by the end of the 20th century.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09What people wanted to hear was that the West had won,
0:56:09 > 0:56:13what we described as our values had now spread,
0:56:13 > 0:56:16not only throughout the former Soviet Union and in Russia,
0:56:16 > 0:56:20which they didn't, certainly not in Russia, not for long,
0:56:20 > 0:56:23but also in China and throughout the entire world.
0:56:23 > 0:56:28It seems to me that liberal democracy is the best arrangement of politics
0:56:28 > 0:56:35by which people can be recognised on a universal and rational basis.
0:56:35 > 0:56:38That ultimately accounts for the fact that communism collapsed,
0:56:38 > 0:56:43because it did not recognise the everyday person's dignity.
0:56:44 > 0:56:50- OK. Those... Every single word raises controversial issues.- Sure.
0:56:50 > 0:56:56That vision of democratic capitalism spreading everywhere,
0:56:56 > 0:56:59carried with it the promise of...
0:57:01 > 0:57:04..permanent peace,
0:57:04 > 0:57:07steady economic growth, the disappearance of war,
0:57:07 > 0:57:12and the gradual vanishing of intractably human conflicts.
0:57:12 > 0:57:16They were all illusions but they're the sort of illusions that are perennially attractive.
0:57:31 > 0:57:33Despite Fukuyama's predictions,
0:57:33 > 0:57:37it seems hard to believe that we now live at "the end of history".
0:57:42 > 0:57:46Cultural and ideological clashes haven't disappeared
0:57:46 > 0:57:51and the financial world is no more predictable than it's ever been.
0:57:56 > 0:57:59Thinkers used broadcasting to try to change the world.
0:57:59 > 0:58:02But it seems unlikely that the battle of ideas,
0:58:02 > 0:58:06the "grand experiments", are likely to end any time soon.
0:58:14 > 0:58:16Make the connections between Great Thinkers
0:58:16 > 0:58:19and discover some surprising new ones
0:58:19 > 0:58:21with the Open University.
0:58:32 > 0:58:35Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:35 > 0:58:38E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk