The 1970s: Golden Years, or should we Look Back In Anger?

I’ve been spreading some nostalgia about the place on Facebook over the past week or so. In particular I have busied myself by designing memes, essentially through the simple expedient of adding thoughtful slogans to photographs which have either been lifted from the web or borrowed from my own hard drive.

As I’ve said many times before I have a real weakness for the 1970s, in particular for the period around 1976. But as well as giving pleasure to many my recent activities have aroused hostile emotions amongst some, who seem to look back to that decade with an extraordinary sense of bitterness.

Perhaps not entirely without reason, the unbelievers point to the ignorance of its social attitudes, its political extremism, its violence, its hijackings, its industrial unrest, its shortages, its Cold War fought all across the globe by proxy, the absurdity (to many) of its fashion and culture – and, more recently, of the unspoken sexual depravity of too many of its key personalities which was not to emerge into the gaze of daylight until, in some cases, 35 years or so later. Looking back, I’m rather relieved that I didn’t join Gary’s gang.

POWER OF ROMANCE

Nostalgia’s beauty and its weakness both lie in the fact that we tend to see the past through rose-tinted spectacles. The power of romance is so immense that for many of us it trumps any amount of adversity. Although like any other teenager I spent much of the 1970s in a state of fear, in anxiety, in conflict and in sorrow the simple fact is that I remember nothing about that period that was not steeped in pure joy. At least, that was, until the last few years of the decade, when I completely went off the rails and lost touch entirely with the spirit of the ‘70s while others were enjoying its final throes to the sound of the Bee Gees or post-Pistols New Wave, according to their fancy.

It is pointless trying to make the case for the seventies over modernity on technical grounds, far less on diversity. Television was three channels (although the dial on our TV sets always seemed to have about thirty settings – futuristic or what?) and they all finished at around 10.30 in the evening when the more traditionally patriotic of viewers would stand to attention for the National Anthem. The service then continued with a small spot of light on the screen and a white noise for the benefit of those who couldn’t be bothered to get up and switch it off.

The telephone was fixed to the wall and to speak to another person involved a multi-part operation in which the dial was turned several times (assuming the neighbours who shared the party line were not on the ‘phone) and the person on the other end, if at home, would then answer. No mobile telephones, no texting, no voicemail, no saved address book, and certainly no e-mail. If you didn’t know the other person’s telephone number though help was close at hand, with a telephone directory the size of an encyclopedia containing the names, addresses and telephone numbers of more or less everybody in the hemisphere.

PLATFORM SHOES

Then of course there was the telephone box, at least one of which was always only a short walk away, and the (also bright red) post box for sending letters, a far more important medium then than today in the absence of home computer technology.

Out on the street, whilst the gun crime that we see today was almost non-existent and confined where it did exist to discreet closed-door gangland feuds, small-time violence was always in the air. Platform shoes did not deter any lad from kicking seven bells out of another upon the slightest provocation, and yet nobody ever seemed to get seriously hurt. Football thuggery was on every spartan, overcrowded terrace, but had not yet achieved the sophistication of the besuited and post-adolescent knife gangs of the 1980s and beyond. One could walk around a football ground in pursuit of “aggro” – little silk scarf tied to the wrist, flares flapping in the cold winter wind. Much swearing and pointing, against a sumptuous backdrop of heavily fried onions amassed upon cheap hot dogs. Everybody went home in one piece.

In the wider world everything seemed to have broken down. Strikes and more strikes, refuse piled up in the streets, power cuts and three-day weeks due to lack of fuel. Wars were being fought in Africa, in Asia, in the Americas – always the same, with regional quarrels fought over regional issues but with one side inevitably being “Russian backed” and the other “US backed”. Two superpowers, each too cautious to confront the other in open combat, using their little brothers to settle their playground squabbles.

But it was in film and music that the 1970s stood out for me, and much of it was pretty simple stuff. There was some hugely creative material around too – Mike Oldfield had unleashed Tubular Bells upon an unsuspecting but unexpectedly grateful public and Bowie was setting every trend for the decade and beyond. But the glam era was innocent, lots of fun, flamboyant and competitive. I recall the unspoken contest that seemed to be taking place between Gary Glitter and Elton John, when each would appear on Top of the Pops in a more highly-stacked pair of platform boots than the other had done on the last occasion. In any other era they would have seemed ridiculous, as indeed would we in our multi-coloured loon pants and tank tops, luminous socks and wide-awake butterfly collars, but it was a flippant dress code for a flippant age. Nobody could parody us or our musical heroes, for we parodied ourselves.

Alongside glam came disco, but as befits the 1970s it was a different type of disco to anything that came before or since. George McCrae, Van McCoy, Candi Staton, Barry White – each played their part in leaving a lasting imprint on that magical age.

WILD EXTREMES

When the music I loved and from which I drew comfort did take its bow as the decade ploughed relentlessly on towards its dotage, young people began to turn to wild extremes, marching and counter-marching. Politics seemed to define everything in the later seventies once the musical and cultural pack had been shuffled and the new bands had stepped up to take their turn in the limelight. There was an ugliness about the whole thing, and a sense that the magic spell was soon to unravel forever.

The critics go so wrong when they sneer upon the values – part innocence, part ignorance – that informed our 1970s way of life. The humour was unsanitised, our trust in our cult figures naïve, our empathy with the less fortunate patchy and incomplete. But we weren’t being serious. We were just having fun. The whole ethos of the 1970s was, for us, about not taking ourselves too seriously and having loads of fun. And we did it in a way and in a style that has never nearly been rivalled by any subsequent generation.

The 1970s had a cast and a playlist that reads like a veritable Role of Honour. Long hair, Pan’s People, Mivvi lollies, Stewpot, Concorde, glam rock, Look-In, Steve Harley, Georgie Best, Green Shield stamps, platform shoes and loon pants, the Capri Ghia, Rollermania, Morecambe and Wise, CB radio, Chopper bicycles, Dial-a-disc, lollipops and candy cheroots, Angel Delight, Ziggy Stardust, Oxford Bags, milk machines, The Hustle, Starsky and Hutch, pinball, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs, The Goodies, Pomagne at the fairground, tank tops, Top of the Pops, Radio Luxembourg, Evel Knievel, watch out there’s a Humphrey about, Candid Camera, the glorious summer of ’76. The streets were dark but we strutted them without fear, the youth clubs were church halls with table-tennis tables and paint that crumbled. It didn’t have to be smart, practical or politically correct. It didn’t even have to make any sense. It was raw, it was barren, at times it was bleak. But it was our time.

For those of us who are of a certain age the spirit of the seventies came not from what was provided for us. It came from within us. It came from the age we were at the time and the experiences we all went through together. That is why it is futile to look down upon it with disdain from the ivory tower of the age in which we live today.

Those who truly feel the spirit of the seventies will understand me when I say it never leaves you. Periodically something is said in conversation or posted on the web that invokes that inner sense which cannot be put into words. For those who look back to the 1970s with sadness I feel pity. For good or for bad, there will never be its like again.

Why "A Community In Action"?

I have been asked this question more than once, bearing in mind that many of the articles, particularly the more recent ones, have focused on issues of national and even international import.

The short answer is that when this blog began I was a community councillor for Isleworth, and the majority of my material was based upon my experiences in that role. Now that I, although still a proud activist with the ICG, have effectively moved on from matters local electoral, it could be said that there is a case for changing the name.

I have resisted the temptation to do so. We are all part of a community, indeed in most cases we are probably part of more than one community. As well as our local neighbourhoods there are also communities to be found on the web - not least on Facebook, communities revolving around work and communities centred on our individual social and sporting interests. Indeed, cliché though it may be, we are more than ever a global community.

It is my hope and aim that readers and users of this blog will become something of a community in their own right. What binds all communities is a common interest and common action. Let's leave it as it is.

Incidentally this blog now has its very own Facebook Page. If you get a moment please click here and like us. Many thanks.

Who gets shafted in coalition - David or Goliath?

I have read some interesting articles and discussions around the place following the emergence of the Cameron-Clegg coalition from the recent general election.

On Facebook and the local Internet community forums much complaining has taken place, a lot of it to the effect that any agreement would be Conservative dominated and that the Liberal Democrats would end up playing patsy to their larger partner. Understandably a lot of this has emanated from members or supporters of the Labour Party, who could be assumed to be unhappy with the coalition if for no other reason than that it replaced their own regime and that they are not part of it.

Reading the News at the BBC and elsewhere it seems there are rumblings of discontent from some on the right wing of the Conservative Party, who seem surprised and upset that a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition appears unlikely to pursue a purebred Conservative agenda.

An uneasy sense of deja vu overcame me when I read the particular concerns of Lord Tebbit. The reason for this was that I had beheld similar outbreaks of incredulity on occasions as a member of the previous administration at the London Borough of Hounslow, in which the Community Group had itself been a junior partner to the Conservatives, when it had been explained to those concerned that as a coalition the administration would be taking some aspects of the Community Group's programme on board as part of its overall policy portfolio.

What sometimes gets overlooked during the debate as to whether it is the senior or the junior partner that is calling the tune is that political parties and groups are themselves often coalitions of a kind, and the larger the party or group in question the more of a coalition it presumably is. The Leader of Hounslow Council under the coalition administration was a moderate and pragmatic man. It would be fair to say (although usually disputed by Labour for tactical reasons) that on the mundane issues of policy the Community Group on the council had more in common with the "moderate" wing of the Conservative Group - for want of a better term - than with its right wing. And, more significantly, the moderate wing of the Conservative Group had more in common with us.

If I can put that another way, it wasn't always with regret that the Conservative leadership would abandon proposals from its right wing "because the Community Group won't accept them". The Prime Minister would appear to be using his being in coalition with the Liberal Democrats as an opportunity to shape his own policy programme in much the same way, to the evident annoyance of the headbangers.

Of course where the Community Group was more "extreme" than its Conservative partners of both left and right, in the areas of culture change and democratisation, we met a lot more resistance and eventually, in my view, failed to break down the establishment sufficiently in a way that would have prevented the Old Order from being rebuilt, as it is now likely to be.

The Liberal Democrats in government will similarly find their partners to be less co-operative in areas where there are real differences between themselves and the Prime Minister's team.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the mix. For the moment I am just pleased that Clegg would appear to be holding his ground in the face of what must have been some quite formidable pressure.

Sometimes it's not possible to repair the damage we cause

Being a technological caveman it took me a couple of years longer than most to discover the phenomenon that is Facebook.

But, prompted by my twelve-year-old twins who use it as a means through which to communicate with the world, I have finally activated the account that I'd forgotten I set up some time ago and I spent most of last night trawling through lists of friends of friends to see who was on there that I knew. Throughout the night I fired off a couple of dozen friend requests, and have received several returns, some from people with whom I'd lost contact years ago.

Two of these were brothers who attended my primary school. For the purposes of this article I'll call them Jimmy and Robert. I remember both of them well, Jimmy being about my own age and Robert a couple of years older. There were both really nice lads, well liked by everyone. I can't remember either of them ever getting into an altercation with a fellow pupil - not even me, and as a kid I made it my business to upset most of the other kids at some point or another.

Jimmy's and Robert's roots are in the Caribbean. They hail from a very famous sporting family in the West Indies. My recollection of Jimmy was that he could throw a cricket ball seemingly for miles. He also went on to become a very good boxer, although his progress was hampered by a nose which gushed with blood whenever you called it a name.

I had seen Jimmy more recently than Robert. He provided the disco at mine and Caroline's wedding back in 1995 (I do hope I haven't got the date wrong!). Although he himself had moved out of the area some of his folks still resided locally and I was able to make contact with him.

Well last night I came across them both and I sent off a request to them both to become my Facebook friends. A few hours passed before Jimmy responded, accepting my request and joining my thus far embarrassingly small but thankfully growing list. But this afternoon I received a message from Robert informing me that he had no wish to have anything to do with me on account of my political history.

I have to say I was quite hurt when I read Robert's response. Their different ethnicity hadn't even registered when I had sent off the request, just as it had seldom registered at primary school. It just simply wasn't an issue. I had almost forgotten that for so many years I had been an active member and organiser of the National Front. Robert's reply to me provided a disarming reminder of that dark period of my life.

The sense of hurt which I felt upon reading his words was not directed at Robert himself, but was more a reflection of my own feeling of shame at the unhappiness that I must clearly have caused to such a decent man to inspire him to react in that way. During the course of my political work as an independent community councillor I come across politicians all the time who speak to me and even drink with me privately one evening and then announce publicly the next day that they would never have anything to do with me because of my past political activities. This is tacky politicking at its worst and I really couldn't give a toss for the feelings of such people. But Robert's comments provided me with a sobering reminder that it is sometimes wrong to assume that any damage caused by our actions can always later be repaired.

If my experience today strikes a cord with anybody who is still labouring under the illusion that they can reconcile their far-right activity with a "normal" life outside of extremist politics then they should think again, and think carefully. The deeper you sink, the more difficult it is to get back to where you need to be should you ever wish to reconnect with the real world.