Counter-Currents
The Kinks’ Arthur (Or the Decline & Fall of the British Empire)
Spencer J. Quinn
2,732 words
I knew an older British lady many years ago with whom I got along rather well. We bonded over our shared conservativism as well as our similar takes on various cultural touchstones in the English-speaking world. On one topic, however, we seemed to differ more than she let on. I shared with her my naïve opinion that Winston Churchill should be considered the man of the twentieth century. This disconcerted her, and while she didn’t go so far as to disagree, she seemed to harbor unkind thoughts about Britain’s most famous statesman. I couldn’t understand why. She was a Tory. She liked Margaret Thatcher and disliked Tony Blair. She was also reasonably red-pilled on demographics, Islam, and immigration. So why the low opinion of Churchill?
It is in this moment of British unpleasantness, which to the outsider appears — or should appear — pleasant where we find the chief appeal of Arthur, the great 1969 album by the Kinks. And it goes deep. The record’s complete title is Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) — and yes, it is worthy of such a grand, Spenglerian title.
Keep in mind that Arthur was originally conceived as the soundtrack for a musical teleplay which ultimately never got produced. Thus, it can be loosely viewed as accompanying a story about an ordinary man born in an empire that is still basking in the glory of its eponymous monarch and coming to an end sometime after the Second World War, perhaps in the 1950s. From a lyrical standpoint, songwriter and lead singer Ray Davies uses irony like a rapier in nearly every song to slice apart the unthinking optimism, soulless materialism, and self-effacing conformity of mid-twentieth century England. And in the few instances when Davies plays it straight, either the tragedy is unbearable or the insight cutting. In nearly all cases, however, appearances conflict with reality — sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely; sometimes with humor, sometimes not. Sometimes, as in the brilliant “Mr. Churchill Says,” the irony isn’t even in the text, but in the performance. Some of the deftest songwriting in the rock canon appears in the Kinks’ Arthur.
The album opens with “Victoria,” an upbeat pop number which at first blush seems to glorify British imperialism along with Queen Victoria herself. A closer look, however, does not exactly reveal the opposite. Victoria looms large and benevolent, but only to the extent that we brush aside the price in British lives the Empire had to pay to maintain itself. Interestingly, Davies focuses not on the impact the Empire had on its colonies, but instead on its own people. In an era when many pop stars were agonizing over colonialism and the Vietnam War, and when many young whites were beginning to identify less with their own race and more with non-whites, Davies certainly bucked the trend with “Victoria.” The song poses questions to authority, but not in the more shortsighted manner of the Who’s “My Generation” or the Beatles’ “Revolution #9.” In “Victoria,” Ray Davies reveals a scope much broader than current events of the 1960s. The irony may be subtle, but it cuts deep:
I was born, lucky me
In a land that I love
Though I am poor, I am free
When I grow I shall fight
For this land I shall die
Let her sun never set
“Yes Sir, No Sir” satirizes the mid-century British military and the absurd extent to which it — at least in Davies’ mind — instilled discipline in its fighting men. Fortunately, the song is no lampoon. Yes, lyrics such as the following get the obvious point across:
Yes Sir, no Sir
Permission to speak, Sir
Permission to breathe, Sir
What do I say? How do I behave?
But as the song changes in key, tempo, and rhythm and accrues instrumentation, its perspective shifts to that of the officers or their paymasters. They offer chilling nihilism that underscores an intractable power relationship. Thus, even if one transcends the “yes sir, no sir” life of a soldier, all freedom is illusory. At one point Davies sings rather jauntily:
So you think that you’ve got ambition
Stop your dreaming and your idle wishin’
You’re outside and their ain’t no admission
To our play
In another, Davies asserts in a drone-like voice that “authority must be maintained.” In the song’s most unsettling moment, he adopts the callous voices of officers who announce:
Let them feel that they are important to the cause
But let them know that they are fighting for their homes
Just be sure that they’re contributing their all
Give the scum a gun and make the bugger fight
And be sure to have deserters shot on sight
If he dies we’ll send a medal to his wife (Ha ha ha)
You can buy Spencer Quinn’s novel White Like You here.
In other words, war is a racket. It’s a psyop. It’s not what our leaders say it is. But which war are they describing? It’s certainly not any war fought in the 1960s, when these songs were written. The setting seems to be much earlier. In “Drivin’,” a merry motorist heads to the countryside for a picnic to escape a world on the brink of war. “Let all the Russians and the Chinese and the Spanish do their fighting,” he tells us. Could Davies be referring to the Great Terror, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, or the Spanish Civil War?
In “Shangri-La,” an homage to the falseness of trading one’s autonomy for material comfort, Davies reminisces about the days when lavatories were in people’s backyards. When was the last time most people in England did without indoor plumbing? The 1910s? It’s hard to say, but it is safe to conclude that our story takes place in the 1930s at the latest. Towards the end of the record we have “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina,” which references the actual Princess Marina, who was in her prime during the 1930s-‘50s and earned a spot on the International Best Dressed list of 1960. Anthony Eden, who was Prime Minister of England from 1955 to 1957, also gets a mention.
Removing all doubt that Arthur is set in and around the Second World War is, of course, “Mr. Churchill Says.” As with “Victoria,” this magnificent song is not what it seems. But where the irony is merely subtle in “Victoria,” (for instance, the sarcastic quip “lucky me”), it exists entirely between the lines of “Mr. Churchill Says.” On paper, the song is a rallying cry for the British people during the Second World War, the air raids in particular. Everything about it makes sense, and promotes exactly the kind of fighting spirit a nation’s elite would want during war:
Mr. Churchill says
We gotta hold up our chins
We gotta show some courage and some discipline
We gotta black up the windows and nail up the doors
And keep right on till the end of the war
But is the song really sanguine about the Second World War? The way the Kinks perform it on Arthur, it doesn’t seem so. First, we have the cynicism of the earlier tune “Yes Sir, No Sir” sticking in our heads when we get to “Mr. Churchill Says.” Could Churchill have been the one referring to his own fighting men as “scum” and “buggers?” Could Messrs. Beaverbrook, Montgomery, and Mountbatten — the other elite personages mentioned in the song — be the ones fooling the common people into thinking that the war is just? Secondly, Davies adopts an unmistakably pompous tone during the passage in which he quotes Churchill at length; for example: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed to so few.” It’s as if he’s mocking Churchill, and the nearly comic “oohs” from the backup vocals only strengthen that impression.
Finally, the repetitive way in which Davies delivers the song’s leitmotif (“Mr. So-and-so says . . .”) while never mentioning the speaker’s first name or title, aside from the impersonal “Mister,” implies something sinister. It’s as if Churchill and his cronies are telling the British people how to think — and the British people are content to let them — even though it’s debatable whether fighting a war against the Germans was indeed best for their nation and empire.
Of course, Ray Davies and the Kinks never go full-bore revisionist. They don’t make veiled references to Oswald Mosely or imply that the hawks at 10 Downing Street were war criminals. But in the record’s last four songs after “Mr. Churchill Says,” they evoke the poverty and bleakness of post-war England quite strikingly. The final song, the album’s title track, could be interpreted as the swansong of empire. So if the Second World War was our finest hour, as Mr. Churchill says, and if so much was owed to so few, then what did the sacrifice of this precious few get us? Before we answer, I should point out that we actually receive a horrific glimpse of such a sacrifice in the unspeakably tragic “Some Mother’s Son.” This somber song takes us through a soldier’s last moments on the battlefield, as well as the endless avenues of memory thereafter, framed and flanked by flower pots on his mother’s wall.
Are the record’s characters any better off at the end of the record than they were in the beginning? Not at all. Note the ironic understatement in the opening lines of “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina”:
She bought a hat like Princess Marina’s
To wear at all her social affairs
She wears it when she’s cleaning the windows
She wears it when she’s scrubbing the stairs
But you will never see her at Ascot
She can’t afford the time or the fare
But she’s bought a hat like Princess Marina’s
So she don’t care
Note also the growing rift between father and son in “Nothing to Say” as the father cannot adapt to changing times, and the son grows increasingly bitter about it:
You keep pretending that everything’s fine
So you make small talk to help pass the time
But all the words that you spit from your face
Add up to nothin’, you got nothin’ to say
“Arthur,” the record’s final song, is such an enigmatic singalong that one can listen to it over and over and never quite plumb its depths. Its theme is one of sympathetic, almost condescending, concern for Arthur, an ordinary man, presumably “Victoria”’s first-person narrator, who has suffered all the slights, betrayals, and disappointments described on the album and is now nearing the end of his life. The British Empire may have been grand and vast, but it couldn’t exist without loyal, patriotic, honorable, and pathetic men such as Arthur. The world has passed him by in the same way that it has passed the British Empire by, yet Davies muses that
Arthur, could be
That the world was wrong
Don’t ya know it? Don’t ya know it?
Arthur, could be
That you were right all along
Don’t ya know it? Don’t ya know it?
Thus, perhaps the empire was a good thing after all? Perhaps “Victoria” was not entirely ironic? Perhaps Victoria the monarch really was benevolent? And if so, then what went wrong? One can point to the all-too-human tendency to conform, to follow, and to turn one’s eyes away from what’s unpleasant. My reading of Arthur is that such weaknesses enabled predatory elites to lead the British people into folly. This is what ultimately caused the trauma of the Second World War and the eventual fall of the British Empire. I understand that this is a heck of a conclusion to draw from a pop record, but I believe it is supported by the text and the music. Indeed, a more poignant and farsighted record does not exist in the rock canon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1L4QzSPdY4
Musically, Arthur is as moving and dynamic as its lyrics. Unusually for a pop album, horns are everywhere, but they hardly distinguish themselves in solos as they do in later Kinks songs such as “Black Messiah” and “Come Dancing.” In Arthur, they seem to serve a narrative purpose. They provide the majestic atmosphere of “Victoria,” as if announcing a royal entrance or evoking a legendary battle. They help assert the question “What do I say?” in “Yes Sir, No Sir,” as well as contribute to the marching-band feel of the song. In “Brainwashed” they churn through the principal melody whenever Davies breaks from it and provide an extra oomph behind the other instruments to give the song an unsettling yet thematic sonic depth. They add to the surreal quality of “Australia” and to the dreamlike stasis of “Shangri-La.” They also make a hysterical appearance in “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina,” and are key to making that song a tragicomic masterpiece.
In keeping with its appearance-versus-reality dichotomy, many of the songs on the record share a chameleon-like quality as they constantly reinvent themselves. A single characteristic of any one song on Arthur is hard to pin down. As mentioned above, “Yes Sir, No Sir” changes its melody, key, and rhythm several times to accommodate different narrative perspectives. The hard-rocking “Brainwashed” simply stops in the middle and becomes a completely different song for nearly a minute. “Australia” starts almost like a jingle for a travel agency advert and ends with an extended psychedelic jam — admittedly a weakness in either the album or my grandiose interpretation of it. “Mr. Churchill Says” changes gears so often it was impossible for me to internalize without serious, concentrated listening over many plays. It begins gently, but soon lifts itself into oratory over cheeky harmonizing. An air raid siren then sets the tone for a creepy rock riff which underlies syncopated vocals. A jazzy guitar solo leads to the song’s conclusion in which the lyrics quoted above are furiously chanted rather than sung. It is a truly mesmerizing and protean song.
My favorite changes, however, occur in “She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina.” The stately, harpsicord-heavy opening at first seems almost too old-fashioned to be real. But there are just enough comic hints to keep one interested, such as the affected harmonizing by the band in the second verse and a brief horn honk. After four drumbeats, the song abruptly shifts to its second movement, a raucous take on Bing Crosby’s “Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?” in which noisemakers replace the harpsichord, and the band cuts loose with a contemporary — dare I say American? — barroom rocker. Drums introduce a third movement as well, this time a recapitulation of the original theme, but carried at an absurdly fast pace. The noisemakers go into overdrive, as do the horns, to turn this sad, ironic ballad into a boisterous farce. Within this final movement, drummer Mick Avory treats us to what may be the greatest — or at least the most hilarious — drum solo of all time. But despite these stark musical changes, the lyrics maintain their pathetic character throughout. The woman who scrubs stairs in her Princess Marina hat ends up with no food in the larder, yet she still grins like a millionaire. She has her hat, so she don’t care.
In order for a piece of music to transcend its age and attain greatness, it has to possess a power, a mastery, a uniqueness, or something that not only sets it apart from other works but also appeals to what’s eternal in the human character. Despite popularity, technical artistry, and critical acclaim, only time can reveal a work’s greatness. After more than 50 years, I believe it can be said that the Kinks’ Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) is one of the six or seven other pop records which will survive the current age. Within the parameters of pop music, Arthur rocks as brilliantly and as dynamically as anything in classic rock. Moreover, it evinces rare psychological insight, a broad command of history, an adroit control of irony and pathos, and a persistent sense of humor. Most importantly for today, it courageously challenges one of the most insidious taboos of the modern world: that the Second World War was a just and righteous war.
Despite what Mr. Churchill says, it wasn’t. Arthur’s life, as well as the decline and fall of the British Empire itself, tell us so.
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18 comments
Victoria! Victoria!
Hadn’t heard that one since it came out as a single half a century ago. It’s even better than I remember. High energy, cynical, progenitors of garage band punk rock.
In the last verse of “Victoria”, the Kinks seem to be more explicit about the end of empire. There’s a native uprising going on in the background at stereo left. . .
Many ordinary Brits wouldn’t have had indoor toilets until the 1950s-70s. I think many people are surprised at the levels of poverty in Britain among Whites.
After the war, the Victorian slums were cleared, and new housing was built. This is what so much of the granite block housing is, including the high rises. The thing is, despite the mod cons these houses had, they quickly fell into disrepair too.
As for Churchill, he was famously not very well liked among the working classes, being as he was a Tory toff at a time of intense class war. He was also associated with the Gallipoli campaign, which resulted in large loss of life. That’s not to even mention the Bengal famine, though I don’t think that would’ve entered the consciousness of anyone but a far left anti imperialist at that time.
Famously the Dock workers during his state funeral in 1965 had to be paid to “bow the cranes” as a sign of respect. (There is some debate about the veracity of this, but I believe it.)
That said I can’t think what an older right wing Tory would have against Churchill. Unless they were fully redpilled, which is quite rare, they would probably see him as a hero. He won the Greatest Briton poll, which was quite big, in about 2002 or so, and they recently took a woman off £5 notes and put Churchill on them. To take a woman off a note is a big deal in clownworld, and only the Greatest Ever Briton who saved the world during our Darkest Hour would be given such an honour. At least we’re not speaking German, eh, chaps? Jolly good show, what what.
I’ve said before I think Churchill should have stuck to writing. He is a good writer, I’ll give him that. But that’s all he is. I don’t even care about his supposed based attitudes: most of it is colonial supremacist crap that contributed to the mess we’re in today. It is unfortunate that Britain’s greatest hero is a drunk, fat toff, indebted to Jews and responsible for many deaths. But perhaps fitting.
“Many ordinary Brits wouldn’t have had indoor toilets until the 1950s-70s.”
My parents had friends in the north east who lived in a country cottage which only had an outside “loo”. It was bloody freezing.
Torn-up newspaper pages were used as toilet paper. During the first stages of the Covid lockdown – when toilet rolls vanished from the shelves – I thought that, if the worst came to the worst, I could revert to the same practice. Didn’t do me any harm when I was a kid.
My grandparents had an outside loo in South London (Streatham) well into the nineties. I used to worry about rats whilst using that thing, especially in the dark. This was standard fare, I reckon.
London authorities have been for a few years trying to rejuvenate the now partially demolished Thamesmead Estate, trumpeted in the late 1960’s as the town of the future within the Greater London area. The first residents moved into pristine buildings built on reclaimed marsh land during the autumn of 1968. By the the middle of the next decade the development had succumbed to the social ills normally associated with inner city life along with structural defects resultant from over optimistic architectural licence; truly a funereal monument to a Britain already in rapid decline and a swinging Sixties London unaware that the seemingly endless party was about to end.
The first people to move in to these new houses in the 50s/60s would have been thrilled to finally have many modern amenities. A secure entrance door (many old slum apartment blocks had no main entrance door), intercom system, back garden, front garden (sometimes), parking space (despite low car ownership), indoor toilet/bathroom, individual bedrooms (slums often had entire families to a single room), central heating (or a variation thereof), double glazing (sometimes, mostly not, but in any case, new windows), hot water, the list goes on.
However, there were huge problems inherent to the housing.
For a start, many of these new housing estates (projects in America, schemes in Scotland) were built with no regard for community. Entire areas of cities were cleared and levelled (many of which remain barren today, and are only now being gentrified, usually with [foreign] students, gay bars, and so on) and with them decades and centuries of shops, pubs, schools, and community.
Now, these areas were dirty, over populated, difficult, poor – but they had community, which is something ineffable that faceless Socialist Town planners have no concept of. So they built new houses with no shops around them. In many cases a ice cream van style truck would come as a mobile shop.
These cut off communities (car ownership among working class was very low) began to experience severe decline and quickly. By the late 70s they already had as bad reputations as the slums that came before them.
That’s to say nothing of the aesthetics of it. The new build towns in Britain are hideous. All grey blocks with no character. Ost Western architecture nosedived after world war 1, and after World War 2 the destruction of architectural beauty was fully realized. Street after street in a suffocating grid system, surrounded by countryside for miles, and all streets usually named after some theme (often a totally alien theme – for example, many schemes in England will have streets with Scottish or Welsh names, and vice versa for Scotland.) Probably an attempt to upkeep national (as in British, not English) pride, but failing completely, and only adding to the alien and inauthentic feel to the place. Consider the old slum areas will have had streets named ages ago with old names that refer to something specific about the area.
Crime shot up in these places (and they were 99% white – its a complete falsehood to believe that Whites are somehow immune from criminal behaviour) and prospects were bleak. Many buildings were destroyed before they’d even stood 50 years. In many housing estates/schemes the buildings were of low structural quality and had problems like damp and dry rot and leaks, in some cases within a few years of being built.
These houses were at one time a great idea, but horrendously implemented by buffoons who have no idea what they’re doing. They solved a problem, and ended up creating another problem, showing again that the people who run Britain’s answer to the problem of government is…. more government.
Several of these types of ‘New Town’ like Telford were involved in the Muslim immigrant sex grooming scandal. No doubt the groomers were aided by the relative isolation of the towns, the general malaise and lack of aspiration for the youth, and lack of amenities and sense of community.
We can’t be entirely outraged at the planners. The slums were inhospitable, some of them had been bombed, and after the war the country had to renew and modernise, the changing economy and world meant that better housing was required. For example, a 2 parent, 2 child family ought to be able to give each child their own room – this will aid their development and help them in life, be it for personal reasons or simply as a place to study and get a better grade on an exam that might mean entrance to uni or not, which might impact on career. A modern, developed economy that sees itself as forward thinking and benevolent to its citizens should be able to provide this. That wasn’t possible with a family to a single room. The conditions there encourage the kids to get out as soon as possible, and do low paid, low skilled work, as young as 14 or so.
So we have to be fair and say that the planners had the right intentions.
However, it’s an absolute F minus for implementation of the housing. The amount of problems these decisions led to is too long to list here. Drug use just one of them. As far as I’m aware, at the height of the inner city slum problems in Britain, an epidemic of drug abuse wasn’t one of them. By the 70s, 80s and 90s however drug abuse was endemic in these areas. That might go along with cultural attitudes changing and the ease of synthetic drug creation and distribution, but there’s no doubt the low aspiration mood and lack of things to do in these places lent itself perfectly to drug use.
That’s just one example. So we can and should be angry, not about the intention but the implementation, and we should continue to be angry, and continue to demand nothing like this happens again, from town planners. It is no coincidence that town planning is full of socialists, feminists, and other such trash, as most tentacles of big government are, and we absolutely need some of our guys to be involved in these decision making processes.
That end aim is a way off yet, but all we can do is keep pushing towards that goal.
I should add, the same mind who created these doomed new towns is now trying to implement the “15 minute city”, a Green leftist psyop to contain people, track them, restrict their movement, and check their thinking. The car – along with the gun – is a symbol of freedom and modernism. There’s a reason Americans love their cars and guns – the gun is the great leveller. No longer does a Knight have to train from the age of 6 to adulthood to swing a sword on horseback in full armour and shoot a longbow.
A child, a woman, or an invalid with a gun can kill a president or King with a simple pull of a trigger. The gun is democratic. The sword is hierarchical. Not everyone can physically use a sword. It’s hard to often get close enough to use a sword. The gun can fire from distance. The glory and honour of combat is somewhat lost with the gun, but not entirely. Is a quick draw shootout not also glorious in its own way? The gun is a leveller, but skill, not to mention the guts to pull the trigger, are not absent.
The car is also a game changer. The internal combustion engine is of the white man’s greatest inventions. (In this case we applaud Germany for this invention) the car means that one man can travel as, where and when he wishes, uninhibited except for road and fuel.
Public transport, while necessary, in its own way noble, and inarguably more efficient, is also restrictive. It is now especially with increased diversity becoming more and more hostile. In the USA in particular public transport just looks like a no go zone completely. This is also true of Paris and becoming so of London.
The greens want to destroy these great white levellers. The white man often bestows upon other men (both white and coloured) the assumption of competence. We reflexively assume that any given man is also intelligent, moral, responsible and deserving of liberties and rights, as we tend to think this of ourselves. Compared to Whites, other cultures are much more suspicious, hostile, and devoted to direct family rather than the racial group as a whole.
Thus, to the white man, the idea of individual men with freedoms, rights, cars and guns seems sensible – I wouldn’t want to be inhibited by a lack of access to these things, so I in turn don’t want to deny them to other men (white or otherwise, but given our bad experiences in this experiment, the White mind is – or, ought to be – increasingly realising that non Whites do not care or wish for these rights or freedoms, and would not reciprocate them- even to their own kinsmen. As is often seen in practice.)
To the leftist this is awful. Since they’re obsessed with control and power, They want a communist style country, and a lab rat existence for us, with no driving away in your individual motor car and no personal defence from your own firearm or weapon.
Previously they shunted the white working class far away from the city centre, into concrete block grim estates – now they beckon the white working class back to the city, but this time as a sort of open air prison, complete with limited yard time and overseeing guards. All in the guise of the so called 15 minute city, the first step to which is the ULEZ and schemes like it.
I said before we need to have people who have different ideas involved in these decision making processes- this is the current example. In the 50s it was new towns and now its LEZs and 15 minute cities. This is an insidious problem, probably part of “Agenda 2030”, and it’s also not something we can blame someone else for. Whites are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves, and the worst sort of liberal-left-green traits are among the worst White traits. Yes , external pressures can and do create and exacerbate these problems, but even if these pressures weren’t there we’d have massive problems with issues like town planning, abortion/birth rate, the way our economy is run, and so on.
So that’s my answer. In short, the town planning in Britain in the 50s onwards was disastrous, and continues to be so today because while the details of what they’re doing has changed, the same sick mindset is in control, the same sick leftist mindset, which desires control above all else, and betrays a great grievance with the world, a chip on the shoulder, a deep hatred of the divine, the beautiful, the innovative and the creative, and a desire to punish the intelligent for the false crime of somehow “stealing” their intelligence – as if IQ were a nebulous, limited resource that they stole out of the ether from the stupid. They see outcomes as a zero sum game, where those who are intelligent somehow usurp those who are stupid, and they hold such an irrepressible urge to punish those they see as immoral usurpers it bursts out of them at all times, in all directions, towards all ends – curriculum forming, TV programming, and yes, even town planning.
This is an issue we have that is separate from any external ethnic group, it is our own problem, as many of our problems are, and as badly as other groups can treat us, I’m beginning to strongly believe the issue is us ourselves, the worst enemy of Whites is nefarious Whites, and a realignment of white consciousness , within itself and toward itself, is needed as much if not more than a great awakening on the problems with inter racial dynamics.
Hello Cyclone Bee!
I’m responding to your two postings like this as we’ve run out of thread. May I compliment you on your erudite observations which would make an excellent essay for counter-currents.com in their own right.
“Crime shot up in these places (and they were 99% white – its a complete falsehood to believe that Whites are somehow immune from criminal behaviour) and prospects were bleak. Many buildings were destroyed before they’d even stood 50 years.”
Yes, you are right. Look at crime in 1880’s London. Its not so much that crime “shot up” – it was always there. Even when we were all supposed to be “pulling together” during the Second World War and immediately afterwards, there existed organised criminal networks most easily recognisable in the form of the gaudily-dressed black-marketeer.
Occasionally, I see mid-century urban housing developments both public and private that have somehow managed to meld with nature over the decades since their construction; once bright grey, indeed almost silver concrete has taken on a subdued and mellow moss- green hue; mature trees condescendingly embrace the once high-spirited, flat-roofed, minimalist-futuristic dwellings as would a mother her petulant toddler; sharp angles softened by a friendly colourful coat of autumnal leaves. The aspirant Space Age returns to Mother Earth.
Yes, the first occupants would have been rightly thrilled to move into these dwellings. Popular entertainment in the form of Music Hall (Vaudeville, stateside) had already been superseded by radio, which was in its turn by the second half of the 1950’s giving ground to television: “Double Your Money”; “What’s My Line”; “The King Brothers” with their song “Standing On The Corner Watching All The Girls Go By”; the following decade marked by oomphy action adventures, showing how only us Brits could do it best: “Danger Man”, “The Avengers”, “The Saint” and sitcoms like “Steptoe And Son”; “Dad’s Army”; “On The Buses”; etc. You yourself could even hit the big time and become the latest girl/boy next door pop-celebrity sensation via the talent show “Opportunity Knocks” presented by Hughie Green – indeed Hughie in the early ’70’s went on to present a TV game show called “The Sky’s The Limit”.
“Google” and watch the 1967 film “The London Nobody Knows”. Its 45 minutes long and presented by the English actor, James Mason who takes you on a tour of London’s crumbling buildings of the mid to late 19th Century, juxtaposed with the new building developments that were mushrooming across the capital at the time. London 1967: A place considered to be of style, sophistication, glamour, youthful innovation and aspiration, compared to the London of the 1880’s and ’90’s; the centre of an empire upon which the sun never set but a city with its own dark underbelly. Mason mentions that there were still Londoners around in 1967 that remembered the White Chapel murders of 1888. To us in 2023, the film was made almost as far back in time as the London of the 1890’s eulogised by it.
Your insights into Britain late mid-century are invaluable – you acknowledge the social dysfunction that exists in the indigenous population whilst at the same time rejecting the hapless “white-skinned negro” everlasting excuse as to why we are in the mess we find ourselves.
Yes thanks for the reply. These tv shows are well before my time but I am aware of them. Like Opportunity Knocks. I was actually thinking the other day about how people used to be famous for a reason, have some talent or other. Nowadays I see many people who are famous for no reason. For example, many midwit liberal commentators on Twitter. At least if you’re going to be famous for nothing other than your “intellect”, at least have something serious on offer. I feel the bar to being a public intellectual used to be higher than it is now.
I also think the quality of music, film and art has gone downhill. We live in a “post talent” age which AI might exacerbate.
This is the side of the democratising Internet nobody wants to admit: yes, everyone having their own soapbox is a good thing because it decentralises the discourse. However, the thing is, most people just aren’t worth hearing, and aren’t anywhere near as clever or talented as they think they are. The old system had its merits in this regard. The “bottleneck” of things like needing a record company to distribute your music, or needing a book publishing deal to be printed, actually served as a sieve, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. The end result was that what did get released or broadcast and became widely popular tended to be of an intrinsically higher quality than the free for all, wild west of the Internet.
We often think that our movement wouldn’t be possible offline, and perhaps that is true, but I posit that instead of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ from many different small places, the system would have been dealt one single terrifying blow, from one single focused source. Had public opinion gotten so bad, some kind of thought leader wouldve emerged, and he’d have been all the better and more resilient for having basically been through a ‘selection process’, albeit unconsciously. This single representative might have been, for example, a rogue billionaire, or a painter-turned-soldier. We just don’t know.
I did realize half way thru I probably shouldve made it an essay but it is what it is. The thing about writing a proper essay is you kind of have to double check everything you’re saying, and much of what I know and say I just *know*, so to speak, and might struggle to find a relevant source. For example, I learned x fact from a TV show broadcast 15 years ago that I can’t remember the name of and is no longer available online. That kind of thing.
Anyway thank you for coming to my TED talk
Such a great album! Muswell Hillbillies will forever be my favorite album. Ray Davies doesn’t get enough praise for his songwriting. All around great band!
Agree. Muswell Hillbillies is excellent. That and Arthur are my two favs, followed by Village Green and Face to Face. Misfits is also great. I have not listened to Lola in a long while, although I must say that in an age of gender transitioning among children, the very conceit of the song “Lola” has not aged well. Check out Chris Smither’s “Lola” instead. A completely different song and without all the baggage. He also rhymes Lola with Coca-Cola.
My fave is village green! Great article !
Re poverty in mid century Europe, I was reading a book by Handke, the austrian literary Nobel laureate, and he says in mid-century Austria he knew families that were so poor, that they had a single ceramic pot which they used for a chamber pot at night, and then to make the bread in during the day! I just hope they cleaned it out really good.🥺
The Kinks ought be held on an equal pedestal as The Beatles, but I think many find them too British. I’d also recommend Village Green Preservation Society, a more wistful and pastoral companion to Arthur. It is no less serious in its concern with vanishing traditions or questioning the ‘progress’ offered by progressivism. Their follow up to Arthur was Lola… I guess a cynic might look it as ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
At their very best, the Kinks transcended rock, and did so far more often than Beatles, IMO.
The only Kinks song I know is Lola, and I’m not a huge fan of that one. That being said, I think Americans have been fed such a steady diet of Churchill ball-fanning over the years that we may have a skewed view of how popular he was amongst the British. The truth is, he was actually beaten very soundly in the general election that took place barely two months after the German surrender. Of course, the Brits at the time didn’t have the “benefit” of several decades of historical whitewashing of Churchill’s record to help guide them in their selection.
ETA: I take that back. I also know You Really Got Me, but I definitely prefer the Van Halen version.
Winston Churchill did not narrowly lose the 1945 election; Churchill’s Conservatives and his Liberal coalition partners suffered a massive defeat in one of the biggest electoral swings of the twentieth century. The Labour Party won decisively, winning 393 seats, while the second-placed Conservatives only secured 197. It wasn’t so much a defeat, as a rout.
So how could this victorious leader, who so inspiringly led Britain in their hour of greatest peril have been so convincingly rejected by his own people?
I’ve spoken to many people who were involved in that election and it is clear that while most of the electorate respected and admired Churchill’s war leadership, they did not support his political opinions. The Conservatives had been in power since 1935, but by 1945 many things had changed; socially, politically, and economically. People did not want to return to the same old system of class deference and privilege, of hunger marches and a generation brought up in poverty. There was a feeling of ‘if we can beat the Germans, then we can take on all these social and economic problems and defeat them like we defeated Hitler’. People were ready for change.
During the war the three major parties, Labour, Liberal and Conservative all put party differences aside and worked together in a coalition government. However in 1945 with Hitler defeated, it was clear that the political truce was also at an end. Labour left the coalition and though Churchill tried to campaign under the old coalition title of the National Government, it was obvious to everyone that it was back to party politics of left versus the right.
Churchill who had been so in tune with the popular feelings during the dark days of 1940, was now out of touch. He badly misread the public mood and in a radio broadcast compared British socialists to the Gestapo. Even members of his own family thought he had gone too far. These comments were widely viewed as a huge insult to many Labour Party (socialist) supporters who had fought against the Nazis and died; even some Conservatives realized this.
The effect of the war on the home front had heralded some massive social changes. Angus Calder in his brilliant book “The People’s War” points out that the evacuation of children from inner-city areas exposed people from the more ‘affluent shires’ to the reality of the lives of the slum-dwelling urban poor. Surprisingly for the poor, war-time food rationing proved to be a blessing, as many had never had such regular and nutritious food. During the war the overall health of the British people actually improved, due to a diet that was nutritionally balanced, low in sugars and high in fiber and vegetables. Life expectancy of civilians actually improved during the war.
British troops stationed in Africa and India made it plain that they had not signed up to maintain Britain’s colonial Empire but to rid the world of “fascism”. After the defeat of the Japanese in Burma, British soldiers in Rangoon threw their officers overboard when they learnt the ship they had boarded was not taking them home. Instead it was taking them to India to help maintain British rule [“Democracy”]. In India and the Middle East there was a wave of strikes and mutinies. The Air Ministry reported ‘incidents that occurred at 22 RAF stations’, however later accounts put the figure at more than 60 units with more than 50,000 men involved. It was the biggest single act of mass defiance in the history of the British armed forces. It was clear that the conscript army that had been dogged in its opposition to the Germans, was not happy about fighting to preserve an exotic Empire overseas. This revolt of British soldiers in India is credited with inspiring the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946.
When the votes were cast, it became clear that Labour had won a landslide, winning almost twice as many seats as Churchill’s Conservatives who only held on to 197 seats. Interestingly the huge swing to Labour only became apparent when votes from soldiers serving overseas were counted. Churchill had completely failed to understand and comprehend the huge social changes that had taken place in Britain and politically paid the price.
– Jon Trew
Kinks were great, were not for the beatles and stones around they would have been #1 of their time. Saw Ray 10 years ago westbury, got a picture with Dave then too at a bar event.
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