Beveridge revisited: Simon Callow film celebrates the radical co-founder of Britain’s welfare state
Christine Edzard’s The Man With the Plan tours the country with a timely message about tackling want, disease, squalor, idleness and ignoranceA new film that addresses issues fundamental to the...
By Richard Norton-Taylor · The Guardian World
Christine Edzard’s The Man With the Plan tours the country with a timely message about tackling want, disease, squalor, idleness and ignorance A new film that addresses issues fundamental to the new prime minister’s declared mission will star Simon Callow as a historical British political figure. The hero of The Man With the Plan is William Beveridge , who helped to lay the foundations of the postwar welfare state. It shows that the Liberal peer was much more radical than is usually assumed – and certainly far more so than Churchill anticipated when he asked Beveridge to draw up a report into the future of Britain’s fragmented social insurance and national health system after the second world war. Continue reading...