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  Of the human aspect of what would be involved in ‘comprehensive development’, not a word. A few days later, Wilfred Pickles was in the East End to present a live edition of radio’s still very popular Have a Go!. One contestant was Sam Ward, a council park attendant living in Dagenham: ‘I’d sooner be back in old Poplar; you can’t beat the neighbours.’8 One can perhaps exaggerate the neighbourliness of those neighbours, but (as in the Gorbals and, in due course, many other rundown inner-city areas) they were about to be cast to the four winds, as their intimate, intensely human world disappeared for ever.

  Other issues, reported the New Statesman’s Norman MacKenzie from the ‘slightly dingy dormitory area’ of North Lewisham, were on voters’ minds ahead of the by-election there on Valentine’s Day:

  I liked that Gaitskell until he started running down our boys [i.e. British troops during the Suez crisis]. It isn’t right for Labour to do that. They should get on with doing something for the old people. That’s their business. (Housewife)

  I thought Macmillan would be different. But he’s giving in to the Yanks, too. He should go on and teach those Egyptians and Indians a lesson. (Shopkeeper)

  I don’t care about foreign policy. If anything I’ve always believed Eden. But I’m going to retire next year, and they tell me that this Rent Bill will put my rent bill up 15 shillings a week. I won’t be able to afford it on my pension. I know it sounds selfish but I’m going to vote for myself. (Teacher)

  The Blues have always come and fetched me, and I’ve put one in for them. But they can find someone else this time. The doctor told me it was Mr Butler who put that money on my medicine, and I don’t see why I should go out and catch my death for him. (Pensioner)

  I don’t like what Labour did over Suez. But that isn’t what the voting is about, is it? They’re against the Tories, and so am I. (Busman)

  Hugh Gaitskell’s Labour Party duly took the seat from the Tories, the latter’s ‘most positive set-back since the 1945 General Election’ according to the Sunday Times. The three most obvious reasons were the Suez debacle, inflation and the legislation under way to de-freeze private-sector rents, but for respectable ‘middle England’ people – natural Tory voters – something else was increasingly agitating them: excessive taxation and the unacceptably high cost of maintaining the welfare state. ‘We have worked hard and saved all our lives, and the worry of modern conditions may yet drive us into a mental institution,’ a couple in their sixties from West Bromwich wrote to the Birmingham Mail on the day of the by-election. ‘Can’t the Government, who do everything for the lazy and extravagant, do something for the thrifty and careful? They’ll take most of what we have left when we die, anyhow.’ So too in Barrow earlier in the week. ‘Mrs Atkinson was in a “militant” mood,’ recorded Nella Last. ‘She said “Welfare State” – time it got working smoother & not throwing money about.’ Mrs Atkinson then proceeded to tell Last about a woman ‘in a nearby road’ who was ‘never economising’, became widowed, and was now getting her rent and rates paid. ‘It’s a queer world,’ the diarist reflected later. ‘No wonder there’s unrest & discontent, no one seems to have the idea of standing on their own! I hear grumbles from OAPs & mothers drawing allowances, as if they feel there’s a bottomless purse for the Govt to draw on, & it’s their right to have an increasing share!’9

  Another matter of state was vexing Last that Monday the 11th. ‘I often say nowadays, though with ever lessening frequency, “nothing would surprise me nowadays”,’ she noted, but

  the guarded hints on the front page of the Express, of differences between the Queen & Duke of Edinburgh, was a bombshell . . . I felt sick with pity for the Royal Family, with ‘spies’ & ‘disloyalty’ in those near to them. I hope there’s no foundation in the rumour, but they don’t have a lot of shared interests on the whole. The Queen has horse racing, & he the sea. They don’t seem to ‘give and take’.

  With Philip in Gibraltar near the end of his four-month world tour, the couple not due to be reunited until the following Saturday (in Portugal at the start of a joint visit there), and stories in the American press leading to official denials of any ‘rift’, the Daily Mirror was especially strident. ‘FLY HOME, PHILIP!’ it demanded on Monday, followed on Tuesday by ‘DUKE – WHY NO ACTION?’. The Palace remained unmoved, and briefly the focus switched to the Queen’s younger sister. ‘When is Princess Margaret going to be her age (which is 26) and behave like a member of the Royal Family instead of a half-baked jazz mad Teddy Girl?’ another royal-watcher, Anthony Heap, asked himself on Friday. ‘For what should be reported in this morning’s papers but that last night she went to see the latest trashy “rock ’n’ roll” film [The Girl Can’t Help It] at the Carlton – she never goes to an intelligent play or film – and, taking off her shoes, put her feet up on the rail round the front of the circle and waved them in time with the “hot rhythm”.’ Next day the Queen duly flew out in a Viscount, the Duke (with hearts on his tie) went into the plane at Montijo airfield for some private minutes, and when they emerged together he had, the Sunday Express was able happily to report, ‘a tiny smear of lipstick on his face’.10

  The couple missed a notable few days on the small screen, not least the controversial end of the so-called ‘Toddlers’ Truce’. This was the government-enforced ban on television programmes between 6 and 7 in the evening, to make it easier for parents to get younger children to bed, a ban that the commercial television companies had found increasingly irksome. ‘Keep the Toddlers’ Truce!’ insisted the Sketch’s ‘Candidus’ in December 1956. ‘The most docile children who are taken away from a fascinating programme will be tearful and deprived, and will lie awake thinking of what they are missing.’ But the Postmaster General, Dr Charles Hill, was adamant that ‘it was the responsibility of parents, not the State, to put their children to bed at the right time’, and 16 February was set as the date for the start of hostilities. The BBC’s new Saturday programme to fill that slot would be, explained the Radio Times, ‘designed for the young in spirit who like to keep abreast of topical trends in the world about them’, with ‘plenty of music in the modern manner’.11

  On the 16th itself, following a news bulletin, the Six-Five Special came down the tracks right on time, with a catchy signature tune (‘over the points, over the points’) and two definitely non-teenage presenters, Pete Murray and Josephine Douglas, doing the honours:

  Pete: Hi there, welcome aboard the Six-Five Special. We’ve got almost a hundred cats jumping here, some real cool characters to give us a gas, so just get with it and have a ball.

  Jo: Well, I’m just a square it seems, but for all the other squares with us, roughly translated what Peter Murray just said was, we’ve got some lively musicians and personalities mingling with us here, so just relax and catch the mood from us.

  What followed over the next 55 minutes included rock ’n’ roll from the King Brothers, jazz from Kenny Baker and his Dozen, ballads from Michael Holliday, a group of youngsters from Whitechapel singing a couple of folk songs, an interview with the film actress Lisa Gastoni, an exercise demonstration by the former boxer Freddie Mills and two muscular Hungarian refugees, an extract from a Little Richard film – and, a gloriously Reithian touch, the concert pianist Leff Pouishnoff playing a movement from Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’ Sonata and then, ‘just to show that we, too, can play fast and loud’, Chopin’s Prelude in B flat minor.

  ‘There was plenty of evidence to show that the older the viewer the less he (or she) enjoyed this programme,’ was the predictable conclusion of BBC audience research, adding that though some older viewers were tolerant (‘Of course we must cater for youth,’ said one), others found it ‘utterly trashy’ and ‘quite intolerably noisy’. As for teenage viewers, there were two perhaps representative responses, the first by an apprentice panel beater: ‘I am what is known as a “square” so how could I enjoy this? And why do we have to have so much Rock ’n’ Roll lammed at us?’ ‘This is what many of us have wanted for
a long time and I just cannot say how much I enjoyed it. But my dad was grumbling all the time. He said it was “just a lot of noise”.’ The News Chronicle critic tended to agree with Dad – ‘a noisy, clanking special’ – while the Daily Telegraph’s L. Marsland Gander confirmed all the instinctive prejudices of his readers: ‘A hundred “cats” were let loose on unsuspecting viewers. Grim-faced, many of them oddly dressed in tight trousers, they jived and did their dervish dances to loud brassy noises.’ But it was arguably the shrewd, level-headed Peter Black, the Daily Mail’s TV critic, who called it right: Murray was ‘jaunty’, Douglas was ‘arch’, and ‘the whole thing smelled fragrantly of bread and butter’.12

  Next day, Sunday, BBC programmes were set out in the Radio Times with television coming before radio, for the first time, while Monday saw the arrival of lunchtime television in the shape of Lunch Box on ITV. ‘People now eat from trays,’ presenter Noele Gordon said in advance, ‘so they can watch the show and pick up our catch phrases.’ The show itself, focusing on viewers’ birthdays and wedding anniversaries as well as plenty of baby snapshots sent in by mothers, drew some predictable flak – ‘the most folksy, matey, cuddly programme yet’, reckoned Maurice Wiggin in the Sunday Times – but again Black was perceptive, describing Gordon as ‘absolutely first-class, an elegant chum who catches perfectly the desired blend of charm and class-war neutrality’. Yet it was not for Lunch Box that 18 February 1957 has gone down in television history, but for the launch of the BBC’s weekday evening programme to replace the Toddlers’ Truce. ‘Tonight’, promised the Radio Times, ‘will be kaleidoscopic but it will not be superficial; it will be entertaining but it will also be intelligent.’13

  The first edition of this current affairs magazine, presented by the avuncular, unflappable Cliff Michelmore, featured 12 items over 40 minutes. These included the FA Cup draw, a survey of the morning’s papers, a topical calypso by Cy Grant (‘Future sociologists may well speculate/On the impact of Tonight on the welfare state’), a nude statue of Aphrodite that was causing consternation in Richmond-upon-Thames, an interview with the Dame of Sark, a humorous sketch by a young Jonathan Miller about Charing Cross Road shops, an interview by Derek Hart with the veteran American broadcaster Ed Murrow on the subject of post-Suez Britain, footage of conductor Arturo Toscanini’s funeral in Milan earlier in the day, and Cy Grant again, this time singing ‘Kisses Sweeter than Wine’. The critics were qualifiedly positive: ‘kept on repeating itself’, but ‘I applaud the programme’s attempt to develop a free-and-easy topical programme’ (Raymond Bowers, Mirror); ‘had variety, some spice and reasonable pace but lacked compelling interest and gaiety’ (L. Marsland Gander); ‘a promising start’, though Miller’s sketch ‘invaded the territory that Johnny Morris has made his own and was duly slaughtered by the comparison’ (Peter Black). Viewers themselves gave largely favourable feedback about the first week’s editions as a whole, with Grant’s up-to-the-minute calypsos (sometimes written by the journalist Bernard Levin) ‘particularly enjoyed’ and ‘the “personality” interviews’ holding ‘pride of place in viewers’ estimation’. For Michelmore as anchorman, praise was almost unanimous: ‘Viewers on all sides commended him as “a good mixer”, friendly and informal in his approach to participants in the programme, and a clear and relaxed speaker, with the ability to cope quickly (and effectively) with any contretemps.’

  Tonight was a breakthrough moment. For almost a year and a half, since its launch in September 1955, commercial television had been trouncing BBC in the ratings and, more generally, exposing it as stuffy, unimaginative and deeply paternalistic. Tonight – the inspiration of a brilliant, difficult 33-year-old Welshman, Donald Baverstock – was different. ‘The aim would be to get on to a level of conversation with the viewers which means that the presentation and the manner of the people appearing in the programme would be very informal and relaxed,’ he had written in early January to a BBC superior (Grace Wyndham Goldie), and over the next few years that was what, working closing with Alasdair Milne (a future director-general), he drove through. The tone was deliberately light, even irreverent, news mixing seamlessly with entertainment. Pioneering use was made of vox pop material, and above all the programme consciously placed itself on the side of the citizen and the consumer rather than the minister or the official. ‘A kind of national explosion of relief’ was how Goldie herself would contextualise Tonight’s impact. ‘It was not always necessary to be respectful; experts were not invariably right; the opinions of those in high places did not have to be accepted.’14 None of this happened overnight, not least in the field of planning and architecture, but a broad, unstoppable process was under way, and Tonight – for all its preponderant middle-classness – was an indispensable outrider.

  For truly mass audiences, however, television’s future lay elsewhere, and Tuesday the 19th saw a final new programme in this rather breathless sequence. Originally entitled Calling Nurse Roberts and set in the fictitious hospital Oxbridge General, Emergency—Ward 10 was ITV’s first high-profile, twice-weekly soap opera. ‘Should run for ever,’ Maurice Wiggin confidently predicted, adding:

  It is bound to delight all who gulp in euphoric draughts of an atmosphere of iodoform and bedpans. It has just about everything: a flawless blonde probationer nurse, and a dedicated brunette one, and a rather sleazy doctor, and a martinet sister, and a crotchety ‘character’ patient with a heart of gold. All it needs is for Dan Archer to be wheeled in by Gran Grove and operated on by Dr Dale, and that’s the millennium, folks.15

  2

  A Lot of Mums

  ‘It was reading Hoggart forty years ago,’ recalled Alan Bennett in his preface to The History Boys (2004), ‘that made me feel that my life, dull though it was, might be made the stuff of literature.’ Or, as David Lodge characterised the impact of Richard Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy (published in February 1957, going into Pelican paperback in 1958 and reprinted four times in the next seven years), ‘In those days it was a kind of Bible for first-generation university students and teachers who had been promoted by education from working-class and lower-middle-class backgrounds into the professional middle class.’ From the start, the chorus of critics’ adjectives revealed this to be the right book for a particular cultural moment – ‘challenging’ (Daily Herald), ‘invigorating’ (Daily Telegraph), ‘urgent’ (Observer), ‘required reading’ (TLS) – while the Manchester Guardian devoted an editorial to Hoggart’s ‘moving and thoughtful’ work:

  The first part is an exquisitely drawn picture of the urban working-class life in which the author (now an extra-mural tutor at Hull University) grew up; hard, sometimes harsh, conventional, gregarious, mother-centred, with an outlook limited in range but realistic within its limits. The second part describes the erosion of some old landmarks by the irrupting new media of popular culture – the cheap magazine with its sex and ‘bittiness’, the cheap novel with its sex and violence, the juke-box, some radio, much television, all ‘full of a corrupt brightness, of improper appeals and moral evasions’, and all leading to a broad and shallow condition of mind, a hazy euphory, and an increasingly ready response to (a significant phrase) ‘sensation without commitment’.

  Hoggart himself (born in 1918) had grown up in the Hunslet district of Leeds, the locus classicus of the book’s wonderfully vivid, often very autobiographical opening half. The cultural historian Richard Johnson has offered perhaps the most acute assessment of why, over and above those who identified with the ‘scholarship boy’ theme, Uses had such appeal: ‘It was surely the fact that working-class culture was described intimately, from within, that made the book so powerful. For the middle-class reader, it was a solvent of assumed cultural superiorities or a lesson, at the very least, in cultural relativities.’1

  Two months later in 1957, another, more explicitly sociological, study (also in due course a best-selling Pelican) likewise hit the mark. ‘I suppose that, having in our various ways in our previous jobs been on the fringes of the Establishme
nt, we are in revolt against it,’ Michael Young had reflected the previous year about himself and his colleagues at the recently founded Institute of Community Studies. ‘We feel,’ he continued,

  that our former associates in the Cabinet’s Ministries and Parties were in a strange way out of touch with the ordinary people whom they so confidently administered, and we feel that we want to put them right. For this purpose a mere first-hand description of what people’s lives are like seems to us justified . . . We pin our faith on our powers of observation and our more or less literary skill in describing the results. Then too we are in protest against the contemptuous attitude which the intellectual department of the Establishment seems to have towards the working classes . . .

  In the event, Family and Kinship in East London, co-written by Young and Peter Willmott, had an even greater initial impact than Hoggart’s Uses. During the last eight days of April, the Star (one of London’s three evening papers) ran a five-part serialisation (‘Londoners under the microscope’); there were major stories on the book in the Herald, the Mirror, the News Chronicle (‘Strangers in a Council Paradise’) and the Telegraph (‘East Enders Dislike Spacious New Estates: Family Links Are Missed’). The Times had a long leader (‘The Ties that Matter’) endorsing the housing aspect of the central argument that most Bethnal Greeners preferred to stay in their familiar local community rather than move out to the less friendly new LCC estate in ‘Greenleigh’ (in fact Debden), while the Daily Mail ran a big feature story (‘The wife-beater doesn’t live here any more’) highlighting the claim that Bethnal Green husbands were becoming increasingly domesticated: