When the NHS launched in 1948, it provided care free at the point of use, and spending quickly ran above forecasts. In 1950 the Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell pushed to introduce charges for spectacles and dentures to cut demand and raise money for rearmament. Aneurin Bevan opposed the charges on principle, and the dispute became a bitter split inside Labour. In April 1951 Bevan and Harold Wilson resigned from the Cabinet, and Labour lost the general election later that year.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.