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I caught the second episode of Andrew Marr's History Of Modern Britain, which covered the period 1955 to 1963. It's hard to get inside the heads of anyone under the age of 25, who will be seeing this in the same way that I see the Second World War or the Great Depression. And all of the material was familiar. After all, I have taught Modern British Politics at University. It would be worrying if I wasn't familiar with most of the stuff.
The focus was, unsurprisingly, the Profumo affair, with Suez a close second. This is fair enough and was astute of Marr, (is he by any chance related to Johnny Marr? Well, no, obviously not, since Andrew Marr is Scottish and Johnny Marr is a Mancunian, while Andrew Marr is Andrew Marr's real name, whereas Johnny Marr's isn't), because Suez defined the end of not just an Empire, but also of the image of an Empire. As soon as the Americans, quite sensibly, said to the UK: "fuck off, we aren't helping you on this one, although we reserve the right to ask for support in return in the near or far future should we decide on a similar escapade", then Britain had to withdraw from Suez with its tail between its legs.
The Profumo Affair, in turn, indicated an end to the era of "I know my place" (although the famous Cleese/Barker/Corbett sketch that mocked that would not appear on TV until five years or so later). No longer was there one rule for the rich and another for the poor when it came to sexual liaisons. No longer would newspapers practise benign deference. Peter Cook not only lambasted Macmillan when the man was in the audience of Beyond The Fringe'; but also provided the financial backing for Private Eye, sort of the radical blog of the day, sold as it was in pubs on a Friday night, until it suddenly took off in popularity and was stocked everywhere except for WH Smiths, which thought that this kind of rudeness towards our superiors jsut was't on.
Marr also astutely observed that the pivotal moment of that pivotal event was when Mandy Rice-Davies issued the rhetorical question )in reference to Lord Astor's denial that he had sex with her): "He would say that, wouldn't he?". How apt that a girl who today would probably be appearing on Big Brother, a girl who was the Jade of her day, should, by her very lack of deference to a Lord (a Lord!, in the High Court, no less!) define that a new age had dawned. The plebs didn't like it, and they weren't going to shut up. On top of that, she knew what dirty old hypocrites most of the male ruling class were, and she wasn't afraid to say so.
The whole show has the image of distant history now, even though I can remember the period covered by the tail-end of the show (the end of the Conservative Administration in 1964).
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It set me thinking. One of my jobs when in my early 20s was as a temp typist, it being a rarity that men could touch-type in those days. One job I had was with the UK arm of some huge US engineering company that built oil-refineries worldwide. I can't remember the name of it, although it did show me something of which I had not been aware at the time -- that a large percentage of people in office jobs (an area to which the likes of the Birks working class were not expected to aspire) were as thick as shit, had no imagination, and worked for large organisations because it provided a monthly salary and little chance that their incompetence would be exposed.
One day I got offered overtime on a Saturday (it was the day of the Bjorn Borg v John McEnroe final at Wimbledon). Even then I used to enjoy working on my own in offices. Fewer distractions from the mass stupid.
Anyhoo, my task for this Saturday (and the next) was to retype some very long documents so that the exchange rates were right. Apparently in the interim between the original drafting of the documents and the stage where building was nearer to commencement, the exchange rates had moved too much to ignore. These days, this would be a couple of minutes' work on the computer. But in those days it meant that the stuff actually had to be manually retyped, onto stencil, ready for duplicating. A 15-hour job.
Different times.
++++
The focus was, unsurprisingly, the Profumo affair, with Suez a close second. This is fair enough and was astute of Marr, (is he by any chance related to Johnny Marr? Well, no, obviously not, since Andrew Marr is Scottish and Johnny Marr is a Mancunian, while Andrew Marr is Andrew Marr's real name, whereas Johnny Marr's isn't), because Suez defined the end of not just an Empire, but also of the image of an Empire. As soon as the Americans, quite sensibly, said to the UK: "fuck off, we aren't helping you on this one, although we reserve the right to ask for support in return in the near or far future should we decide on a similar escapade", then Britain had to withdraw from Suez with its tail between its legs.
The Profumo Affair, in turn, indicated an end to the era of "I know my place" (although the famous Cleese/Barker/Corbett sketch that mocked that would not appear on TV until five years or so later). No longer was there one rule for the rich and another for the poor when it came to sexual liaisons. No longer would newspapers practise benign deference. Peter Cook not only lambasted Macmillan when the man was in the audience of Beyond The Fringe'; but also provided the financial backing for Private Eye, sort of the radical blog of the day, sold as it was in pubs on a Friday night, until it suddenly took off in popularity and was stocked everywhere except for WH Smiths, which thought that this kind of rudeness towards our superiors jsut was't on.
Marr also astutely observed that the pivotal moment of that pivotal event was when Mandy Rice-Davies issued the rhetorical question )in reference to Lord Astor's denial that he had sex with her): "He would say that, wouldn't he?". How apt that a girl who today would probably be appearing on Big Brother, a girl who was the Jade of her day, should, by her very lack of deference to a Lord (a Lord!, in the High Court, no less!) define that a new age had dawned. The plebs didn't like it, and they weren't going to shut up. On top of that, she knew what dirty old hypocrites most of the male ruling class were, and she wasn't afraid to say so.
The whole show has the image of distant history now, even though I can remember the period covered by the tail-end of the show (the end of the Conservative Administration in 1964).
+++++++
It set me thinking. One of my jobs when in my early 20s was as a temp typist, it being a rarity that men could touch-type in those days. One job I had was with the UK arm of some huge US engineering company that built oil-refineries worldwide. I can't remember the name of it, although it did show me something of which I had not been aware at the time -- that a large percentage of people in office jobs (an area to which the likes of the Birks working class were not expected to aspire) were as thick as shit, had no imagination, and worked for large organisations because it provided a monthly salary and little chance that their incompetence would be exposed.
One day I got offered overtime on a Saturday (it was the day of the Bjorn Borg v John McEnroe final at Wimbledon). Even then I used to enjoy working on my own in offices. Fewer distractions from the mass stupid.
Anyhoo, my task for this Saturday (and the next) was to retype some very long documents so that the exchange rates were right. Apparently in the interim between the original drafting of the documents and the stage where building was nearer to commencement, the exchange rates had moved too much to ignore. These days, this would be a couple of minutes' work on the computer. But in those days it meant that the stuff actually had to be manually retyped, onto stencil, ready for duplicating. A 15-hour job.
Different times.
++++
