White Heat

Reading White Heat, Dominic Sandbrooke's very vivid survey of the 60s.
The descriptions and stats on poverty, particularly among the old, in
Birmingham and the North are very very sobering indeed, but even then
a huge improvement on Orwell's day.
Which made me reflect on other stats in the book: that crime, drugs
and violence has risen as fast as poverty has receded. Real poverty
and real proles being hens teeth rare these days. And no, Martha, some
relative poverty gobbledygook link to Guardian Society will not refute
this.
The real truth of the book is that the 'swinging sixties' and golden
age of radicalism in the UK was almost completely an illusion worked
by group delusion and a nostalgia industry. Several thousand saw the
Stones in the park; millions preferred the Black and White Minstrel
Show. I worked this out a long, long time ago - and wish I'd been
clever and organised enough to write this book myself.

Sandbrooke's already had flak off Charles Shaar Murray (an old hero of
mine, who, like old heroes do, has slipped off my admiration list as
I've got older. Saw him in a pub a while back where his stroppy
behaviour didn't do much to rehabilitate him in my eyes) for taking a
sober view of the decade. Shaar Murray's Stalinesque rewriting of rock
and roll history was on view on - where else? - the BBC last year.
To touch on a pet subject, Sandbrooke correctly identifies the
Rolling Stones (bar B. Jones) of the Redlands bust days as
conservatives ('Richards, at 23, a bibliophile with a taste for old
British war films and the countryside'; Jagger, 'mixing with and
acting like the landed gentry'; Wyman and Watts as the straightest
rhythm section in rock and roll. And greatest, he might have added.)
He also blows apart the Stones' nonsense idea - held to this day -
that 'The Establishment' was out to get them. He demonstrates that it
was 'The Establishment' that got them off.

ROBBIE