by Alwyn Turner
Again the phenomenon was initially cultural, but it swiftly acquired a social and political dimension. For if Major’s talk of society, however classless, could be seen as a repudiation of Thatcherism, this public embrace of the 1960s was even more so. In one of her last speeches as prime minister, Thatcher had talked of ‘the waning fashions of the permissive 1960s’, but she spoke too soon. Even at the height of her popularity, she had been unable to convince the nation of her perspective; a Gallup poll conducted in 1986 found that 70 per cent of the population thought the 1960s were the best decade of the century, and much of the 1990s would see coming to fruition seeds that had been planted a quarter of a century earlier.
One issue in particular symbolised the change. The question of homosexuality had been chosen in the 1980s as the battleground on which the war against 1960s social liberalism was to be waged, but despite some temporary triumphs, that offensive proved unsuccessful. By the turn of the century, even the Conservative Party was ceding the ground, so that when, in 2001, the Labour MP Jane Griffiths introduced a Parliamentary Bill testing the waters for the concept of civil partnerships for lesbian and gay couples, only one MP spoke against the resolution: the Labour member Stuart Bell. Fifty Tories voted against, but none of them ventured to speak up in the debate and, more significantly, no member of the Conservative shadow cabinet entered the lobbies, a decision having been taken that it was too controversial a subject to address.
In this process of liberalising society, it was not always acknowledged that Britain was forging a distinct and unique identity as a nation. Despite much talk that British politics was following an American model, there was no replication of the culture wars that animated so much debate in the United States. The opposition to secular liberalism came not from politicians but from church leaders. In 1996 Cardinal Thomas Winning, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, attacked Tony Blair’s argument that abortion shouldn’t be a matter for the criminal law, and suggested that his professed Christianity was therefore ‘a sham’. Three years later, Winning again criticised Blair, this time over his position on the Act of Succession, leading the prime minister to denounce ‘fucking prelates getting involved in politics and pretending it was nothing to do with politics’. Blair was quite clear about his own faith, as were John Major and the Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown (‘I pray every night,’ noted the latter; ‘I believe in a Christian God’), but he tended to follow the advice of his press officer. ‘Never talk about God,’ commented Alastair Campbell, adding that both he and Gordon Brown, the son of a minister, had agreed that ‘God was a disaster area’. Without political expression, the voice of religion faded still further into the background noise of society.
Indeed, as the new millennium approached, it was abundantly clear that Christianity no longer had a serious role to play in the cultural and social life of the country, save as a suitable setting for sitcoms: The Vicar of Dibley and Father Ted were hugely popular. In 1992 Waddingtons announced that the character of Reverend Green was to be dropped from the game of Cluedo, on the grounds that having a clergyman involved was ‘no longer appropriate in the Nineties’; he was to be replaced by ‘a contemporary City entrepreneur’. Public pressure, according to the company, forced a rethink and the traditional characters survived, but then Cluedo had long been a deeply nostalgic game, rooted in the English detective novels of the 1930s and ’40s.
Much of popular culture, of course, continued to be informed by America, but even here there was an assertion of independence with the sounds of Britpop, trip-hop and jungle, and the discovery that British movies could be successful even when they weren’t costume dramas. While the structure of politics increasingly came to resemble that of America, with two parties converging on the centre ground, there could be no doubt that social and cultural attitudes were somewhat different.
Nor was Britain always in tune with its neighbours on the Continent. The relationship with Europe was to be the most divisive and significant political issue of the decade. Many would-be constitutional reformers looked across the Channel for inspiration on how to modernise what were said to be the anachronistic, crumbling institutions of British public life, but, taking an opposite position, it was not only Conservative Eurosceptics who wished to preserve differences. It was possible, for example, to celebrate Britain’s continuing, and thus far mostly successful, transition to a multiracial society without the serious political reaction evident in some European neighbours. In the 2001 general election, the leading far right group, the British National Party, received just 0.2 per cent on a historically low turnout, and was outpolled by three fringe organisations on the left: the Scottish Socialists, the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Labour Party. In the French presidential election the following year, by contrast, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front got a hundred times as many votes as the BNP had managed from a comparably sized electorate.
Nonetheless, Europe did exert some cultural influence, most apparent, perhaps, in food. On the one hand, there was the arrival of European supermarket chains – notably Lidl and Aldi – and on the other, a rise in the standard of British cuisine, and in the status of celebrity restaurants. Amongst the latter was Granita in Islington, North London, which in 1993 was named Best New Restaurant in the Time Out Eating and Drinking Awards.
Granita was a product of its time, a narrow, almost colourless space with concrete walls. Steel chairs gathered around square, uncovered tables made of unbleached pine set closely together. It was not necessarily a place to be seen but, on a good night, it was a place to observe some of the rich and famous customers, who might range from the Conservative cabinet minister Peter Lilley to the Monty Python star Terry Jones.
Minimalist to a fault, it was, said journalist John Walsh, ‘the most stripped-down eating-house I know’. The food was similarly typical of the day, a severely restricted selection of dishes that drew primarily on Italian cuisine, made a point of ingredients rather than of treatment, and fitted the newly health-conscious mood of fashionable London. ‘The menu offers a range of food ideal for keeping the healthy ideologue under nine stone,’ wrote Giles Coren in The Times, though his fellow restaurant critic, Jonathan Meades, was not overly impressed. ‘The cooking is pleasant,’ he noted, ‘but well this side of exciting.’ Nonetheless, booking was essential.
It was here, on the last day of May 1994, that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the two brightest young stars of the Labour Party, met for an early supper to finalise their response to the death of the party’s leader, John Smith. The most important element of the agreement had already been settled: that Brown, the older, more senior and more experienced man would stand aside from the contest to find Smith’s successor, and allow his friend and colleague to run as the candidate for their faction within the party. What else was agreed – whether a deal was done that would allow Brown to succeed to the leadership in due course, and would in the meantime give him not only the post of chancellor in a future Blair-led government, but also wide-ranging control over domestic policy – was to be the subject of dispute for years to come, provoking a protracted feud in Labour circles for that generation and the next. Probably the most famous dinner in modern British politics, it inspired books, articles and documentaries as well as, in Peter Morgan’s The Deal (2003), a television drama with Michael Sheen and David Morrissey in the lead roles.
Brown and Blair ate at the back of the restaurant and, at the time, their presence attracted little interest. Instead the media’s attention that evening was focused on a table at the front, where the paparazzi were flocking around the actress Susan Tully, formerly of Grange Hill and now starring as Michelle Fowler in EastEnders, in which role she had recently been shot and wounded by a psychotic veteran of the Falklands War. The overwrought storyline was characteristic of the increasingly melodramatic developments in modern soap operas, and was being used to introduce viewers to a regular third weekly episode of the show.
Like its predecessors – Crisis? What Crisis?
and Rejoice! Rejoice! – this book addresses what happened in the front and at the back of Granita, exploring both the high politics and the low culture of the era, in the belief that the latter not only reflects but often pre-empts the former. It is also concerned with the world beyond, with the very different realities that existed in the country, and that were even evident in the London Borough of Islington itself.
Because, despite its reputation as an enclave for the fashion-conscious left, Islington was a diverse place. Plenty of politicians lived there, and it was too a media haven, with residents including Charles Moore, Paul Dacre and Ian Jack, editors of the Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday respectively. But it was also riddled with inner-city poverty: 60 per cent of the borough’s inhabitants lived in council housing, half didn’t have a car, and a quarter were not working. When Tony Blair contributed his Granitaesque recipe to The Islington Cookbook in 1993 (fettuccine with sundried tomatoes and capers), he was culturally out of touch with many of his neighbours, let alone with the country at large. Which is perhaps why he claimed elsewhere that his favourite food was fish and chips – also said to be the staple diet of John Major.
About the author
Crisis? What Crisis?
ALWYN W. TURNER is an acclaimed writer on post-war Britain. He is the author of Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s and A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s, both of which are published by Aurum. His other books include The Biba Experience, Glam Rock: Dandies in the Underworld, Halfway to Paradise: The Birth of British Rock and Terry Nation: The Man Who Invented the Daleks.
www.alwynturner.com
PRAISE FOR ALWYN W. TURNER
Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s
‘Turner has certainly hit upon a rich and fascinating subject, and his intertwining of political and cultural history is brilliantly done . . . This is a masterful work of social history and cultural commentary, told with much wit. It almost makes you feel as if you were there’ Roger Lewis, Mail on Sunday
‘Turner appears to have spent much of the decade watching television, and his knowledge of old soap operas, sitcoms and TV dramas is deployed to great effect throughout this vivid, brilliantly researched chronicle. . . Turner may be an anorak, but he is an acutely intelligent anorak’
Francis Wheen, New Statesman
‘An ambitious, entertaining alternative history of the 1970s which judges the decade not just by its political turbulence but by the leg-up it gave popular culture’
Time Out
‘Entertaining and splendidly researched. . . He has delved into episodes of soap operas and half-forgotten novels to produce an account that displays wit, colour and detail’
Brian Groom, Financial Times
‘Turner combines a fan’s sense of populism (weaving in references to a rapidly expanding popular culture) with a keen grasp of the political landscape, which gives his survey of an often overlooked decade its cutting edge’
Metro
‘Fascinating . . . an affectionate but unflinching portrait of the era’ Nicholas Foulkes, Independent on Sunday
Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s
‘Put[s] into cold perspective what at the time we were too befuddled with emotion to understand. . . Turner has produced a masterly mix of shrewd analysis, historical detail and telling quotes. . . Indispensable’
James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday
‘One of the pleasures of Alwyn Turner’s breathless romp through the 1980s is that it overflows with unusual juxtapositions and surprising insights. . . The tone is that of a wildly enthusiastic guide leading us on a breakneck tour through politics, sport and culture’
Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times
‘This kaleidoscopic history . . . provides a vivid and enjoyable guide to these turbulent years. Ranging broadly across popular culture as well as high politics . . . Turner brings the period alive and offers insights into both sides of a polarised nation’
BBC History Magazine, Pick of the Month
‘Turner’s account of the 1980s is as wide-ranging as that fractured, multi-faceted decade demands . . . deft at picking out devilish details and damning quotes from history that is less recent than you think’ Victoria Segal, MOJO
‘Turner does an excellent job in synthesising the culture and art of the day into the wider political discourse. The result is resolutely entertaining’
Metro
Copyright
First published in Great Britain
2008 by Aurum Press Ltd
74–77 White Lion Street
London N1 9PF
www.aurumpress.co.uk
This revised and updated paperback edition first published in 2013 by Aurum Press Ltd
Copyright © 2008, 2013 Alwyn W. Turner
The moral right of Alwyn W Turner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Aurum Press Ltd.
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders of material quoted in this book. If application is made in writing to the publisher, any omissions will be included in future editions.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781845138516
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