Hello sailor: Plymouth, 1966

 

This excellent short film from 1966 shows what Plymouth has been up to, 25 years after the blitz which devastated the city.

It's a breathless dash through buildings of houses, high flats, schools, a new civic centre and law courts, roads, bridges, bus and train station. Despite the enormous amount of work that has been completed our narrator is keen to point out how much is still left to do, and how inadequate the building of schools, for example, will be for the predicted population boom of the 70s.

Plymouth did a lot of excellent things. These days the council are quick to turn their back on those postwar achievements. This film reminds us how brilliant many of them were.