It’s a crucial, fascinating story – the tale, as playwright Paul Unwin says, of how “group of people created something pretty bloody wonderful in an imperfect world,” our country’s National Health Service.
Paul’s play The Promise is in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from Friday, July 19-Saturday, August 17.
Paul’s play The Promise is in Chichester’s Minerva Theatre from Friday, July 19-Saturday, August 17.
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00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Fantastic
00:06to speak again to Paul Unwin. Now, Paul, you have a truly fascinating, zeitgeisty play
00:12coming up at Chichester Westfield Theatre and the Minerva Theatre, The Promise, a play
00:16about the landmark post-war Labour government who embraced a moment of incredible change
00:23and created the NHS. Goodness, it's perfect timing to do this, isn't it?
00:29Well, it's all actually down to the wonderful new Artistic Director of the Festival Theatre,
00:33Justin Alderbert, who came to see a workshop and they supported a workshop reading of the
00:41play months ago, just under a year ago, and he phoned from the train going back to Chichester
00:51saying we must put this play on. I think we both knew that there was going to be a general
00:57election at some point this year, but when then we discovered that the play was going
01:03to open, I think a week after this general election, it felt like, oh my, you know, I
01:12suddenly felt like I was the most zeitgeisty writer in Britain. And the play really is
01:17about a Labour government taking on a country that is in disarray in all kinds of ways,
01:24has huge debts, has big problems with Europe, has problems with America, has changed its
01:31international standing. I mean, fair enough, Britain has not now been bombed and hasn't
01:37got a million young men and women serving overseas in dangerous war zones, but the echoes
01:43and the similarities of the problems of taking over, of trying to build a vision of what Britain
01:52could become under pressure, after what could be a landslide election. We're talking just
01:59before the election, so I don't say anything that's too...
02:03Absolutely. But you were saying one of the really, truly fascinating things as you were
02:07discovering, the personalities, the people who made it happen. And these were clashing
02:13personalities to an extent, weren't they?
02:16When I first set out to do a play about the birth of the NHS, I had no idea. When I
02:21started to do research and I met these extraordinary characters, I mean, the key moment for me
02:26was this photograph of the Attlee cabinet. And right on the end of it was this tiny,
02:32the only woman in the picture. And then I found out who she was. It's this Labour socialist
02:39MP who became a cabinet minister, was the head of education, the minister of education in
02:44Attlee's government, Ellen Wilkinson. And I dug into her story and found this
02:51firebrand of a personality with complex personal life, with complex personal history,
03:00who then fought, pushed the Labour government to run for election in 1945. And then around
03:09there are these other characters. Of course, there's the famous Nye Bevan, but then there's
03:12Ernie Bevin, who this orphaned at seven was working in the docks in Bristol at 14, who
03:20went on to form the TGWU, was the one European politician Stalin famously said, I've met my
03:28match with this, you know, this bear of a man. Then there's Clement Attlee, then there's
03:33Violet Attlee, his wife, who drove him through the 1945 election. They drove around the country
03:38in this Morris or Austin Morris, I'm sure someone's saying that a bit wrong, tiny car she
03:43drove, apparently she was a terrible driver, but she insisted on being with Clem wherever he
03:48went. Clem Attlee, who Churchill actually said, a taxi pulled up in Downing Street and no one
03:54got out. An empty taxi pulled up in Downing Street, and no one got out. Oh, Clement Attlee
03:58got out. He was so uncharismatic. And yet, these people created, to my mind, the Britain
04:07that we have all grown up with. And their passion, their commitment, I hope in the play,
04:14their sense of humour. We are three and a half weeks into the rehearsal. It's not a dry play.
04:24It's funny. They're very rude to each other. And I hope it's very moving. It's about the
04:32human capacity to go, we can make things better.
04:35Absolutely. And of course, we should always hold the NHS in mind. But what are you wanting
04:40us to think about the NHS, having seen this? Is it a plea to protect it? What does it say?
04:47Of course, it's a plea to protect. It's a plea to recognise how complex, even at its birth,
04:54it was. It's more than a noble ambition. And it has a degree of utopianism about it.
05:05It's a complex social entity. But when I reflect on what it now means to be British,
05:12what it now means to be proud of the country I live in, I would say the NHS is high, if not
05:20the top of that list. This notion that anything can happen to you and there will be free at the
05:29point of need care for you seems to me to be very, very profoundly about who we are.
05:37And I mean, you know, I co-created the BBC series Casualty many, many years ago, on the back of
05:45having been terribly ill. And really what happened there was I was ill and I had had a bad accident,
05:51lay in a hospital going, this is extraordinary. I'm surrounded by people at all sorts of different
05:56stages of their life. I was in hospital for too long, so I had too much time to think.
05:59But you know, I saw people die. I saw people coming injured. I saw people walk out fixed.
06:04But what I always saw was nurses and a medical system that never asked of anything of us.
06:12We were cared for. We were treated. Our bums were washed. Our noses were blown. And we were
06:19helped through this traumatic personal experience. And they're all illnesses, personal and intimate.
06:26And I came up with, I had this sense that it felt like all of society, by it being free,
06:33was rooting for your getting better. And that then, in my mind, became a wonderful example
06:40of what it is to be to be British. We do care for each other. We should care for each other.
06:45Absolute best in the country, isn't it?
06:47And when we don't, we go foully wrong. When we recognise our ability to care for each other,
06:59something happens. And it's so interesting talking about a town like Chichester. I mean,
07:03I happened to get married in Chichester. And seeing that theatre flourish and knowing
07:11a bit about a local theatre like that is opening its doors to as broad a community as possible.
07:22And like your newspaper, a local newspaper speaking locally is the stuff of us all
07:29telling each other our stories, caring for each other, building something more than the sum of
07:35our parts. And that, I think, is what the NHS is. It's more than the sum of our parts. Actually,
07:39yeah, it's slightly, it's a lot else.
07:43Well, as the father of two NHS doctors, I absolutely concur. Paul, it's a really fascinating
07:50play, but also a really, really important one. Really lovely to speak to you again. Thank you.
07:56And you, Phil. Thank you.