Calling all broadcasters: celebrate in November the founding of the Welfare State 80 years ago

This year we celebrated the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. Another very important anniversary deserving wide publicity this November is to celebrate 80 years since William Beveridge published his Beveridge Report. Many of the recommendations made in that report became the basis of post-war reforms known as the Welfare State. This gave people hope after WW2 and helped millions of us to have better health, housing, education and employment.

Such positive improvements demand a national celebration and would bring us all together to show our gratitude to the founder and how he inspired subsequent governments to tackle the five 'giants' - Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

A centrepiece of the celebrations could be to show Ken Loach's documentary "Spirit of '45". Survivors of pre-war poverty and wartime destruction talk touchingly of their relief as their lives improved thanks to Beveridge.

We are living through very difficult, depressing times. This celebration of the Welfare State will remind us that we have survived difficult times in the past and that answers can be found to our problems.