Downing Street is more than just the Prime Minister’s home. The UK’s best-known address is also a meeting place for the Cabinet and a venue visited by dignitaries from across the world.
Read the transcript for the film below:
Female Voice:
Downing Street is a very familiar street. I keep hearing about it on the TV and all that. I know it has to do with the seat of government, where the prime minister and the Cabinet, they have their assembly, they meet and discuss the governance and the affairs of the country.
Narrator:
She’s right. Since 1735, Downing Street has been home and workplace to British prime ministers, the very nerve centre of government. Behind the door they never really close, the working day starts early.
(clock chimes 5am)
From 5am, shifting litter, awaiting letters.
Cleaner:
They can’t get a letter in there. It’s a dummy. It’s for show.
Narrator:
Last year over a million letters arrived. Even on a quiet day…
Office worker:
You get thousands.
Cleaner:
Some famous people have walked across this threshold, haven’t they, over the years?
Newsreel:
Number 10 must surely hold the record for the number of people that have just called in in passing.
(clock ticks)
Narrator:
In this place, prime ministers are just tenants, immortalised on the stairs only when they leave office. So many famous faces gone, even the light bulbs are gone in sympathy.
Maintenance Man:
Some mornings there could be anything from one to 13, 14. Just gone, yeah.
Narrator:
The lights burn late in this building. They get through 1,000 bulbs a year. In the shadow of his predecessors, today’s prime minister lives and works. This is the famous Cabinet Room.
Cleaner:
This is the prime minister’s chair. This is where he sits, and I’m just giving it a nice polish. That duster was only a new duster yesterday.
Narrator:
The street is rarely silent, host to politicians, pupils and poses on the doorstep.
Male Voice:
Keep your hands off the door, please.
Cleaner:
You get an awful lot of fingerprints on these doors. Every day we have to do the same routine. Whether you’ve got tummy ache or belly ache, a gumboil or toothache, you have to be at this door.
(phone rings)
Narrator:
Every year the Downing Street switchboard receives over 300,000 phone calls.
Tony Blair:
This morning I have meetings with colleagues and I have further such meetings later today.
(people shouting)
Narrator:
The senior ministers in the government, the Cabinet, meet here every Thursday morning.
(clock chimes)
Newsreel:
Sinking foundations, cracking walls, dry rot and, dare one say it, faecal decay. This was the plight of Number 10, but who would dare to pull it down? By 1960 it was agreed that it should be renovated.
Narrator:
Fit today for state banquets, prime ministerial press conferences, private meetings, summits with presidents, receptions for public service workers. These are very busy rooms in ever-changing guises.
Tony Blair:
So please enjoy yourselves this evening and thank you very much for coming here.
(applause)
Narrator:
A home of state, not stately home, a-buzz with life from dawn to dusk.
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