Engel's England

by Matthew Engel

  In 1979 Margaret Thatcher became prime minister on a swing that was especially high in all the south-eastern new towns. In Basildon an improbably camp right-winger called Harvey Proctor overturned a five-figure Labour majority. Four years later the seat was split up because of population growth. Proctor took the more Tory portion, Billericay. His successor in Basildon was a more appropriate Essex boy called David Amess, but he had what seemed an intractable Labour constituency. ‘I had no HQ, I had no money, I had an inexperienced cousin running my campaign,’ he recalled. ‘There was a sea of red posters. I got all my supporters together when the polls closed, said we had come a good second and they were not to show their disappointment.’

  He won, for one overwhelming reason: by 1983 Mrs Thatcher had introduced her policy of liberating/bribing (delete to taste) council tenants by letting them buy their houses at ridiculously low prices. ‘What I had sensed on the doorstep was that people were thrilled to own their own houses. She tapped into the idea of giving people a leg up.’ Amess would hold the seat for fourteen years, most famously in 1992, when his result – among the first to be declared – was the first indicator that Thatcher’s heir, John Major, had retained power. His grinning mush across the nation’s TV screen was a stab to the heart of the Labour Party.

  Amess identifies the Fryerns estate (pronounced ‘Free-uns’), one of the first to be built, as a crucial element in his victories. It is now largely owner-occupied with three-bedroom 1950s-built terraced houses selling for around £165,000. Bill Archibald, who left the pits in Sunderland in 1961 to take a job in the oil industry, is one of the councillors from the Fryerns Ward. A Labour councillor. I asked him what the major issue in the Fryerns was now.

  ‘Council housing,’ he replied. ‘People come to me and say, “What about my son and daughter? They can’t get on the housing list.” So I say, “You bought your council house, didn’t you? That’s why. We’ve hardly got any.” And I think “That’s another vote lost.”’

  But Basildon did well in the 1980s, not just from the Thatcher subsidy. There was plenty of work, in London if not locally. The character created by Harry Enfield, Loadsamoney, epitomised the flashy wide boy with a wallet full of tenners, gleaned perhaps from the City or the motor trade or the fringes of crime. He sounded very Essex, though the phenomenon of Essex Man was not taxonomised until a Sunday Telegraph profile in 1990 (anonymous but written by the Essex man Simon Heffer):

  Ownership, independence, a regard for strength and a contempt for weakness underpin his inarticulate faith in markets. Above all, he believes in getting things done … For spiritual purposes Essex Man is to be found all over the newly affluent parts of the outer London suburbs. But he is discovered in his aboriginal state and in the greatest abundance in the triangle between Brentwood, Southend and Dagenham Marshes.

  Later the Guardian columnist David McKie proposed that Essex should be split into two counties: the northern, largely rural portion, which represented a different kind of Essex; and the southern portion, identified by Heffer, which McKie proposed calling Gormandy, after Teresa Gorman, an even louder right-wing Tory who had succeeded Proctor as MP for Billericay (after his sad habit of spanking under-age rent boys had found its way into one of the more disagreeable Sunday papers). Cartoon Essex Man was not necessarily averse to giving someone a spanking, but it was more likely to take place non-consensually in dark alleys after closing time. The typical Essex Man was an Adam in need of his Eve and, happily, she was on hand and – famously – available.

  Like Essex Man, Essex Girl was a phenomenon of the 1980s who was not widely identified until the 1990s, by which time she was probably safe-ish behind a pushchair. By then everyone knew what she looked like: ‘big blonde hair with tasteful black roots, their layers of make-up, tottering along in micro-mini and white stilettos for a Malibu at the wine bar, en route to the night club’, as the Mail on Sunday put it. However, the social historian Pam Cox of the University of Essex (where else?) places her in a wider context, allied to the Valley Girls of California and also in a long line of historical equivalents: ‘the Lancashire mill girls of the 1840s, the so-called “girl of the period” in the 1860s, munitions girls in the First World War, the “Docklands degenerates” of the 1930s and the “good-time girls” of the 1950s. All were attacked for their immorality, for their vulgarity, for their sexual laxity, and for their frivolous spending.’

  There was a third element in the rise of Essex, and it pre-dated the formal identification of both Man and Girl.

  Good evening I’m from Essex

  In case you couldn’t tell

  My given name is Dickie, I come from Billericay

  And I’m doing very well.

  The great music revolution that had started in Liverpool in the early 1960s found its way to Essex a decade later. Dr Feelgood from Canvey Island, a pub band playing what is sometimes called Essex Delta music, had a cult following but limited commercial success. They are now seen as precursors of punk – in particular because they sang in what was recognisably their own voices. And punk, in the words of Billy Bragg, who was at the serious end of the same movement, represented ‘a rejection of the rock aristocracy that lived its life on Lear jets and tour buses in the USA. Punk was the tearing down of that edifice and replacing it with the urban everyday experience.’

  And along came Ian Dury, inventor of both Billericay Dickie and what might be the most beautifully constructed stanza in the whole of English poesy:

  Home improvement expert Harold Hill of Harold Hill

  Of do-it-yourself dexterity and double-glazing skill

  Came home to find another gentleman’s kippers in the grill

  So he sanded off his winkle with his Black and Decker drill.

  Dury, stricken with polio and an uncompromising self-awareness, was not actually an Essex boy: he was born in Barnet and his first band was called Kilburn and the High Roads. But, perhaps more than anyone, he gave Essex its voice. Pop music had always thrived on place names – Tulsa, Wichita, LA, Frisco Bay, Memphis – but not Billericay. Meanwhile, the writer Giles Smith was growing up round Colchester, the genteel end of Essex, wanting to be a rock star but believing that a scion of the Colchester bourgeoisie was ineligible for such a career – at least until the emergence of Damon Albarn of Blur (‘whose parents were neighbours of a friend of mine’) and Nik Kershaw, so posh he came from Suffolk. In the meantime Smith looked longingly westwards to the Duryish end of the county: ‘I think we perceived Romford as slightly naff but also exciting.’

  Since then the epicentre of Essex naffness has definitely moved somewhat nearer Colchester …

  Brentwood is a medium-sized town with middle-class people who aspire to send their children to the local middling public school. As McKie said, it was a frontier town between Gormandy to the south and west, and technically-we’re-in-Essex-but-we’re-practically-in-Suffolk-really to the north. One of the few half-attractive buildings on the High Street is or was an old coaching inn called the White Hart, though it has lately been rebranded as the Sugar Hut. ‘What’s this place?’ I asked the barman. ‘This is basically where we do the TV show,’ he replied. ‘Twice a week.’

  The show is The Only Way Is Essex, a twenty-first-century manifestation of so-called reality TV, featuring the county’s next generation, now sort of grown up, perhaps the great-grandchildren of the plotlanders and children of the Essex Girls. It has had ten series on ITV2 since 2010. Though its audience has hardly ever exceeded two million, its influence has been immense: as a beacon to impressionable teenagers nationwide and as a hammer blow to the residents of practically-Suffolk-really, who keep hoping they might wake up and find themselves living somewhere normal.

  Reality TV in Britain is usually dated back to 1974 when a producer called Paul Watson persuaded the mildly dysfunctional Wilkins family from Reading to let him film almost every aspect of their daily lives. Such programmes soon became ubiquitous and the term reality TV was later used to describe souped-up talent co
ntests, a form of cheap telly first shown in the black-and-white era. Reality documentaries soon evolved into a tacit conspiracy between the programme makers and the audience. Honey-voiced researchers would talk their way into the homes and workplaces of humdrum people whose ambition in life was to get on telly; the resulting footage would then, more often than not, be cut to make the participants look as entertainingly idiotic as possible.

  TOWIE, as the Essex programme became known to aficionados, was a variation on this theme. It is described as ‘structured reality’, in which the plotlines are agreed in advance, although the conversation is not actually scripted. That is not how reality works. What we have here is a different kind of conspiracy: the film-makers and the sort of actors ganging up on the poor old audience to milk the programme’s inevitably limited lifespan for all it’s worth. Nine of Brentwood’s businesses, including the Sugar Hut, are now said to be owned by TOWIE regulars. This, says Pam Cox, is very different from the Essex Girl phenomenon: ‘The first time the joke was on Essex. The second time Essex is in on the joke, and acting up to it.’

  I did not attempt to see the Sugar Hut in full cry, because I had no wish to spend Friday or Saturday night in Brentwood, and because I would never have complied with the dress code: ‘funky, fashionable and glamorous’ (this does not apply to the dancers, the Sugar Hut Honeys, for whom the dress code is ‘almost nothing’). I did go in before lunchtime for tea and a currant bun. Even then, the TOWIE effect was obvious. Outside, girls were having their photos taken in front of the sign. Two of them came in giggling and asked if they could use the Ladies. ‘Of course,’ said the barman affably. The room was decorated in what might be called tart’s boudoir-style, but the boudoir of an upmarket tart, with representations of Hindu gods looking over the leather and plush. The tea and bun were surprisingly good.

  But the TOWIE look has spread far beyond Brentwood. It involves designer brands, hair extensions, spray tans, sculpted brows, big hair, false eyelashes and – for intimate moments – vajazzling (‘adorning the pubic area (of a woman) with crystals, glitter, or other decoration’ – OED). This definition may already be out of date, since male vajazzles (or pejazzles) have apparently arrived. And the month before my tea and bun the Guardian reported that an Irishwoman charged with drug trafficking in Peru was ‘wearing a hair doughnut from Lauren Goodger’s product range’. Lauren Goodger was in the first six series of TOWIE. I don’t know what a hair doughnut might be, but maybe you can lick the sugar off.

  If this version of Essexness has spread to darkest Peru, it has certainly spread all over the county. Brentwood is not a frontier any more. I was having a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich in a teashop in Thaxted, a candidate for capital of practically-Suffolk, surrounded by people whose accents were not those associated with cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches. ‘She’s awright, innit?’ said a woman at the next table.

  Perhaps these distinctions are long out of date. In 1990 David Thurlow noted a peculiarly high incidence of murder in the area between Colchester, Great Dunmow and Tolleshunt d’Arcy and wrote a book called The Essex Triangle. Perchance the practically-Suffolks are being wiped out.

  I wandered down to Romford, once the HQ of all the edginess that so fascinated young Giles Smith. There are still two large nightclubs facing each other just by the station: Fiction and Voodoo. Romford is only just down the road from Brentwood but was part of the territory lost to London in the 1965 upheaval and is officially part of the London Borough of Havering. There were two ladies behind the desk of the information centre. I asked them whether they thought they were in Essex or London.

  ‘Oh, Essex, definitely,’ said the senior of the two. ‘We all think that.’

  ‘The older people do,’ said her colleague. ‘As far as I’m concerned I live in Havering. I don’t want to be associated with those idiots. I think it’s insulting.’

  But there is a different Essex. This is the county reputed to have more islands than any other: about thirty of them – some substantial (Canvey, Foulness, Mersea), some not – but enough for imagination to expire to the extent that at least two are named after the lapwing: there is both Pewit and Pewet Island. Most are in groups, tucked away in the estuaries or guarding them, like the Walton Backwaters or, around Foulness, the Essex Archipelago (maybe also the Essex Delta; not to be confused with the Murder Triangle).

  Most of these islands do not yield their secrets easily. Northey Island is pretty much in the suburbs of Maldon, down a side road on the edge of town. The turning is unmarked, and it has one of those nerve-wracking tidal causeways. Just over a thousand years ago Northey was the most strategic point in England.

  It seems that the Vikings – after raiding other east coast ports – camped on the island with a view to attacking Maldon and demanding protection money to go elsewhere. The Saxon leader Brithnoth assembled his forces at the end of the causeway, blocking the exit. The next bit can only be described as Pythonesque: more Spamalot than Camelot. Despite being outnumbered, Brithnoth allowed the enemy off the island so the chaps could have a proper battle: the Battle of Maldon (991). Brithnoth was beheaded; his army was routed; and King Ethelred had to pay the Vikings to go away (‘the Danegeld’), which they did before returning for further instalments. Visitors are supposed to obtain a permit in advance from the National Trust, but getting no reply, I wandered on anyway, gambling correctly that the warden and the geese would be less heavily armed than the Vikings. Northey is a calm and evocative place, while being, as the Vikings spotted, very handy for town. The warden could be at Marks & Spencer inside ten minutes (provided shopping hours and the tide table coincide).

  It is this sense of edgeland that gives Essex wildness a special appeal, like the Rainham Marshes, firing range turned bird sanctuary. Dick Durham, Essex man and news editor of Yachting Monthly, loves to sail up Yokefleet Creek at the back of the Foulness shooting gallery: ‘You’ve got lugworms popping up as the tide goes out and then a curlew strolls by. There’ll be a boom as a gun goes off on one side, and you get a glimpse of Southend on the other.’

  The coast at the arse end of Southend, from Shoeburyness northwards, is very much devoted to expending as much ammunition as the Ministry of Defence can still afford. This was, in the 1970s, supposed to become the site of London’s third airport. The original choice of Stansted being unpopular with the residents, the government considered at least 100 alternatives, including practically every patch of land in the southeastern quadrant of England (and even beyond) where there was a chance no one important would complain. Foulness was chosen until the birding lobby got agitated about the Brent geese that winter there, and the Treasury grew nervous about the cost. So in the end, a quiet decision was taken to expand the existing small airport at Stansted after all, without ever quite spelling out the implications.

  So Foulness was left to the soldiers and the shelduck and a couple of hundred residents leading a strange life over a bridge and behind a military barrier. Security has been outsourced to a firm called Qinetiq, who must have the big advantage of being cheap to counter the minor drawback of being useless. I rang up and was assured the barrier would be open and access allowed to the public on Saturday morning. Complete rubbish, said the staff on the gate: ‘It’s not the first Sunday of the month, is it?’

  Except for the first-Sunday open house, there are two back doors on to Foulness, both via Wakering Stairs, the steps on to Maplin Sands that are open unless there is actual live firing. One involves taking the footpath along the sea wall to the bridge, though opinion among the dog walkers was that I would get picked off by the guards in no time that way. The other is by the ancient six-mile track across Maplin Sands known as the Broomway. This also had disadvantages. It is notoriously dangerous, even for the well prepared and well shod. Contrary to the general health-and-safety trend, it has evidently become more dangerous: the causeway has been allowed to crumble and many of the broom-like poles used as markers have disappeared. Sudden mist can be a killer in this Mor
ecambe Bay of the South. The dog walkers reckon the degradation is deliberate Ministry of Defence policy to discourage visitors. And even to start the journey, the tide has to be ebbing, which it was not when I arrived. Plus, in the unlikely event of unauthorised landfall on Foulness, security may hurl you back into the sea. Otherwise no problem.

  Anyway, they said, there’s bugger all on Foulness. There was a pub, the George and Dragon, until 2007. But outsiders had to ring in advance to arrange a permit, which was one deterrent to trade. After a pint or six, customers often came to grief on the narrow access roads. And it was a notoriously unwelcoming pub anyway. ‘More Dragon than George,’ said one source. It takes a lot to deter an intrepid adventurer like me. That was a lot.

  It is not necessary to leave the mainland to discover strangely beautiful places in Essex. Some find them in the most incongruous settings. Billy Bragg, growing up in Barking in the 1960s, used to sneak off with his mates down to the Beckton Marshes, by then more wasteland than marsh. He recalled, ‘It was a place of burnt-out cars, nudie books, tramps, flytipping, feral kids and the acrid air of the gasworks. It was a scrape-kneed I’d-kill-for-a-bottle-of-Tizer kind of place. And you felt if you went far enough towards the river, you’d come across the nineteenth century. It was like going through the back of the wardrobe.’ A magical world, just by the Northern Outfall Sewer.

  More obviously magical is St Peter-ad-Murum, the chapel built on the wall of a former Roman fort fourteen centuries ago by St Cedd, who sailed down from Lindisfarne to try to convert the Saxons. What’s left is the original nave, with stone walls – purloined from the Roman ruins or imported from Kent – thirty inches thick. ‘The interior has a great but homely solemnity,’ says the official guide.

  It is next to the other wall: the one that tries to keep Essex separate from the sea. The chapel is at the end of the Dengie Peninsula, between the Rivers Blackwater and Crouch. It is a very Essex mishmash: to the west, the Bradwell nuclear power station; to the south, windswept fields of winter wheat; to the north, a distant view of Mersea Island and the coast stretching round to Clacton and beyond; to the east the North Sea.