With a new Labour government only just in power, The Promise at Chichester’s Minerva Theatre took us back to a Labour party, many from working class roots, who won the 1945 election and set out to build a ‘New Jerusalem’ for Britain.

They introduced reforms for better housing with indoor toilets, raised the school leaving age to 15, created jobs for the vast number of unemployed and founded a National Health Service providing free medical care for all.

Author Paul Unwin has written “an imaginary work” on how, in the aftermath of the Second World War, this new cabinet fought, sometimes with each other, to get their reforms on the statute book.

With controlled direction by Jonathan Kent, a strong cast - including Reece Dinsdale, Andrew Woodall, Clive Wood, Allison McKenzie, Richard Harrington, Miles Richardson, Peter Hamilton Dyer, David Robb and Felixe Forde - produce fine acting to bring history makers Clement Attlee, Ernie Bevin, Joan Vincent, Jennie Lee, Nye Bevan, Hugh Dalton, Richard Stafford Cripps and Lord Moran to life.

Politics forms the background but the play’s core tells the true story of firebrand Ellen Wilkinson, played in a star performance by Clare Burt, who was known as ‘Red Ellen’ because of her red hair and being a founding member of Britain’s Communist Party.

Ellen also had an affair with another fiery, married cabinet minister, Herbert Morrison - wittily portrayed by Reece Dinsdale - and their romance is played out in hotel bedrooms or her flat, as bombs fall on London.

Asthma, smoking, barbiturates and war cabinet stress lead to Ellen’s early death, but not before she is made minister of education and sees the new health service come into force.

Sheila Checkley