The Dream Died

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the country, indeed the planet is in a bad way, and that the government hasn’t a clue how to deal with it, society is crumbling and optimism has seldom been at a lower ebb. Yet only 50 years ago Prime Minister MacMillan was saying, with some justification, “you have never had it so good”

MacMillan’s epitaph was “A man so powerful he could do anything he wanted to…. So he didn’t” I had to think about that, but what a powerful epitaph that is.

Of course he took the leadership after the second devastating world war in 25 years, rationing was still in place on many items. But he was right, there was a tremendous feeling of relief in the air after the dark days of the war, because so many men, and women, had perished, people now had some money so manufacturing was thriving and there were plenty of jobs.

The class system, which started to crumble with the loss of the Titanic, and further through the first world war was falling apart. By the mid-fifties maids were only found in the very richest households, and the NHS was delivering credible medicine and treatment to the masses. Housing was improving dramatically with the huge council housing estates being erected in the suburbs of most major cities.

Things were looking up for most families.

This, however, was the start of the road to the situation we now find ourselves in.

Historically people had large families, a throwback to the days of high infant mortality, and lived in small areas, generation after generation. Now families were settling down to more manageable numbers, the fear of mortality and further wars had been more or less neutralized in most areas (now this is a very good development in many ways but that is not the subject of this article). However, young married couples were able to get good accommodation in council houses, and started to move away from their parents and grandparents, which had the effect of narrowing their field of immediate support, This was the start of the break-down of the extended family, which was so important a part of the community support network.

As the fifties grew into the sixties, youth culture started to grow, before then, youngsters had looked exactly like their parents, youngsters were now finding their own styles and ways of living. The arts were at the forefront of this revolution. Youth culture took on new identities, the Teddy Boys, Angry Young Men, Beatniks, Mods, Rocker, Hippies… these groups all defined by the music they favoured and dress style the adopted. Youth had become almost another race, almost another species

The “Swinging Sixties” were so creative for the arts, but also rather devisive as part of the joy of the ‘scene’ for the youngsters was that their music and heroes offended their parents, the more offense they caused, the better they liked them. With the Summer of Love came the hippy generation, which I fully bought into.

But by now a significant number of the younger generation were living, albeit vicariously, the rock’n’roll life style.

More and more younger people were leaving home to live in the bigger cities where there was perceived to be more “action”, and more people were starting to play music, travelling with their songs, setting up new bases in different cities.

This was wonderful for the arts, a real cross pollination of ideas and cultures, thriving centres for music, poetry, writing, painting, and despite the mountains of utter rot we thrilled to, this was possibly the most creative period in the arts since the renaissance. Consequently I was in a sort of heaven.

On the other hand, along with the new styles we took a freedom, partly because we could, after the austerity of the war and the earlier great depression and wanted to live in our way, without the stultifying pressures and strictures of the 3 piece suit, bowler hat and nine to five.

We shunned the values of our parents, and more than any other, thought that the enlightenment from the marijuana, the dabbling with Buddhist texts, the freedom to love whoever we wanted to whenever we wanted to, the anti-war protests, ban the bomb marches and the rest made us better than previous generations, made us think we had the answers, made us know better.

We ran headlong into a glorious new morning of enlightenment and freedom. Who were we kidding? We were running when we had barely learned to walk. With hindsight it was always going to blow up in our faces.

Of course as our parents and grandparents were retiring, we had to start taking some responsibility. And we hadn’t a clue!!!

Our life styles had split so many families up, yes we could write, ring, go home for Christmas and so on, but we didn’t have the day to day support in bringing up our children and living our lives. We were now having families, miles away from family, it was becoming fashionable to live in a cellular way, once married, or at least co-habiting, it was not done to stay near our parents… families were now just the couple and their children, no parents, grandparents on hand, no life-long neighbours to support you. In fact we barely knew who our neighbours were now.

We still craved our freedom, and took it now vicariously by giving our children even more freedom than we took as youths and young adults.

Of course they accepted that freedom, and like us, took their own, took the boundaries several steps further. In short, they rebelled against us and rejected our values

By the end of the Seventies a new phenomenon arrived on the scene. Mrs Thatcher. Whatever you feel about her politics is irrelevant. What she did was to pit the working man against the authorities, she set out to crush the miners protest against pit closures (whether this was right or wrong doesn’t matter here) and her tactics were, well, aggressive. There was massive anger within the country over this, as the miners strike riots split the country, split families.

She also did much with the rates, or council tax, or poll-tax or whatever it was called. Again her stance was unmoving, and however unpopular there was no compromise, no discussion, and it caused massive civil unrest.

The streets of most cities in England erupted in an orgy of violence and flames in the spring of 1981.

Now many of the people who had been the backbone of a stable country were retiring, the hippy generation were basically now gaining the positions of influence, and families are now spread across the four corners of the country, if not the world. What chance was there for a society where the leaders were more used to saying “wow man look at the groovy colours”

The main influence of Thatchers rule was to both destroy our manufacturing industries along with the unions and to convince everyone that they could, and should, own everything and have wealth.

Of course in some ways you cant argue with that, but it led to a headlong rush into commercialism, everyone was out to make the fast buck, the survival of the richest, and a person’s worth was judged by bank balance and size of motor car, not what they are and do.

There are some wealthy people, wealthy beyond imagining, are also wonderful generous human beings, Bill Gates springs to mind. There are good, bad and indifferent in any group, any selection of people.

The tensions created under Thatchers watch were not defused, there remained tension between haves and have-nots, and as the world shrank with round the clock reporting, satellities and the rest, news expanded to offer more and more revelations of ‘foul play’ amongst the movers and shakers, creating even more dissatisfaction among the population.

The increase in net immigration has fuelled the tensions, adding a horrifying, tragic and undesirable racial element to the mix. The issue is not about ‘race’ or ‘job’s here, it is a logistical issue of space. In the UK now the most of the population is living in incredibly crowded spaces, relatively speaking, and the permanent feelings of surveillance from CCTV etc makes us all tend to go home and draw the curtains, we mix with friends and family, but not with our communities, which further isolates us. With isolation comes suspicion and fear, further fuelling the tensions and stresses we are all living with.

These tensions if not diffused will continue to ferment, and have to have releases, the inevitable outcome will be civil disturbances of one kind or another, we have seen this manifest itself in football, culminating in the horrors of the Heysel Stadium and the pitched battles at many other grounds, the peaceful protests which suddenly turn explosive and violent and ultimately the mass riots of last summer, which were triggered by a shooting, but that was just the catalyst that sparked the reaction, it was not the underlying problem. Even now, months on, nothing has been done to relieve the tensions, the pressures and tension are still there, bubbling away, and will erupt again and again unless we do something useful.

We also have to consider this… I believe most bad in people is a result of upbringing, lack of the extended family, poor parenting, poor leadership and lack of role models either in the house or in society at large.

So called role models nowadays are pampered prima donnas playing football, talentless uninteresting people trying to sing, comedians who only get a laugh by using four letter words, celebrities who are celebrities only because they are celebrities. So, if badness in youngsters these days is often the blame of the parents, if they were bad parents, what made them so… their parents. For me, it is my generation, the hippy movement that have totally wrecked society. I believe we had a damn good try to make things better, but failed so badly that we destroyed everything we believed in, everything we wanted.

However, there are other options, I also believe that even the best, most loving, supportive parents can produce horrid children, whether they are made like that by external influence or by something in their make-up. I don’t know, but I don’t think every bad child/youth can be blamed on the parents.

The isolation and not knowing our neighbours has fostered a lack of understanding of our neighbours, which leads to distrust, ultimately dislike and fear, a situation heightend if those neighbours are in any way different to us, and the tensions continue to build as society continues to malfunction.

So, our naivety, I think that was it, has led to a succession of situations where successive governments have failed to understand the public, have encouraged a society where the definition of success is to trample over everyone and acquire as much as possible, like a giant game of Monopoly. This has inevitably created jealousies, tensions between rich and poor, between black and white, between different ethnic groups, between neighbours, between football clubs, between churches even.

So, the big question is how to solve it. I don’t think there is an easy way. Governments, laws, churches cannot resolve it, I think it has to come from the people themselves, ourselves, to understand what is happening, to decide that this is wrong and to unite someway to repair the damage. It does however need a catalyst to make that happen, as it took the catalyst of a shooting in Tottenham to make the volcano erupt and trigger the riots, there needs to be an event to stimulate the public to unite and take action.

Who knows what that event could be, logic says it will be a war, (think of the community spirit in the streets of England during the blitz) or maybe an act of terrorism, or maybe even a catastrophic lapse of judgement by a politician, a judge or top banker or the end of this Elizabethan era.

Remembering the adage “for evil to thrive it just takes a good man to be silent” I think we need another velvet revolution. We are all likely to talk amongst our friends, to tweet or even blog about how unjust something is.       We might build up a body of support, but it needs a huge body of support to achieve anything, but it can be done.

We need to tell not only our friends that things are wrong, but to tell the people involved, those who can make the differences, what is wrong. If we do that, as well as gathering support through the country, we will start to see things happen.

Any such movement must be fully inclusive, rich and poor, black and white, old and young, it must not exclude any sector of the society, that way society can start to unite, and challenge those who are perceived as causing the problems, whether it is the government, the church, the press, Simon Cowell or a terror cell.

I can’t see how it can happen yet, I can’t see what the outcome will be if it does, what I do know is that if we don’t start to take this on now, it will be taken out of our hands, the next catalyst could cause something that will make last summer’s riots look like a tea party. I hope to god not, but, none of us can read the future, but I know something has to change in society, and change quickly.

I don’t want to see another world war, I believe war will continue, on a more local basis, as we have seen in Vietnam, South Atlantic, Iraq, Afghanistan... as the major powers will not jeopardise their own countries by trigger all-out war. More terrorist atrocities are perhaps inevitable, but nothing on the scale of 9/11. Perhaps the most likely scenario will be the arrival of a virulent epidemic, like the bird flu that we have been threatened with for so long.

Whatever the cause, it is not a pleasant thought, I am optimistic that the innate goodness and sense of decent people will show us a way of uniting and rebuilding the community, including people of every race, creed, age and type, and allow us to build a better, brighter tomorrow, which is the dream we started with and got so badly wrong