Groundswell: The Grassroots Battle For The NHS And Democracy

History

In Summer 2014 I'd finished writing a fictional screenplay 'The Crunch', a financial armageddon story set in the near future amidst a popular revolt against the British government in a debt-encrusted Britain. The screenplay was a bit of imaginative wish fulfilment. Years of public docility in the face of the free marketeers rampancy, especially since the 2008 Bank Crash, had left me bemused.

The anti-globalisation movement had offered a glimmer of hope but was no longer in the news. A campaign by East Enders to save their housing estate, aided by comedian Russell Brand, was attracting public attention. Then a piece in The Guardian in early September about an NHS grassroots campaign group 999 Call For The NHS completing their recreation of the 1936 Jarrow March to London that same day caught my eye.

I speculated whether, after all, there might be stirrings here of the kind of popular revolts that galvanised the 1960’s and the recent ‘uprisings’ in the Middle East and the Ukraine. Out of curiosity as well as comradeship I joined the last leg of the March from Holborn to Trafalgar Square.

I was moved and struck by the March’s wide range of ordinary people from across the age, class and social spectrum all making the effort to save a British institution that represents so much of the Post-War Dream’s values - the social and compassionate rather than the predatory and self-seeking of the Thatcher and post-Thatcher eras. It was stirring and thought-provoking. I decided to pursue my speculation as a film.

In January 2015, thanks to Ken Loach’s seal of approval to her, I was given access by their founder Joanna Adams to the 999 Call campaign group. With good reason, as the film shows, they were wary of any outsider being admitted to the group's core.

Little did I know that I would find myself documenting a tumultuous journey by them that would encompass the shocks of a 2015 General Election Labour Party loss and Jeremy Corbyn's ascendancy to the leadership of the Labour Party, the first-ever strike by NHS doctors, a Brexit majority vote, the elections of President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Corbyn's downfall in at the General Election in December 2019.

Nor did I know that only after its completion would I realise that, quite unwittingly, Groundswell had captured the rise and fall of a man whose policies offered not only the last hope for saving of the NHS but also for any real change to a Britain long corrupted by free-market fundamentalists since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979.

It was thanks to a small amount of crowd funding, a generous 'angel,' and unpaid contributions from a number of filmmaking colleagues that I was able to make the film on a threadbare budget. Of the latter the outstanding veteran filmmakers Charles Stewart and David Naden enabled the film to achieve lift-off. And the multi-talented Gus Coral followed them to become my indispensable partner-in-crime, without whom its full making and completion would not have been possible.

I learnt an enormous amount from making 'Groundswell' - not just how to shoot and edit a film myself using cheap, domestic camcorders and working with Gus on his home editing set-up - but also fresh ways of looking at politics and economics. And in the campaign community, with women at the forefront, I found the kind of society I would like to belong to.

After a preview at the Regent Cinema in London's West End in July 2018 I toured the film around the country from that autumn and throughout 2019. Whilst it was encouraging that the film got strongly positive reviews it was even more gratifying that it helped raise the morale of campaigners, as the fight to save the NHS is a truly himalayan struggle.

For more on the history of the project see my blogs written during 'Groundswell's production, commencing with my first blog 'Something In The Air' (February 2015) to my last one 'Tumbling Dice - Is Democracy Worth A Bet?' (October 2019).

It provides a unique insider's view of these significant events from the point of view of ordinary grassroots citizens and offers a very different perspective to the misinformation conveyed in the mainstream media. For more information I can be contacted here.