Youthful author takes a swing at the Sixties

White Heat – A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (£22.50) is published by Little, Brown. order this book

Historians are supposed to deal in hard facts. Yet Dominic Sandbrook’s first book, telling the story of the Fifties, was called Never Had It So Good. Something, of course, that Harold Macmillan never said, yet died in the indecent shroud of headline hype.
White Heat was a phrase that Harold Wilson used in the Sixties, in a speech inspired by the birth of Concorde and his desire for technological progress, to lighten the Black Country burden in the likes of Huddersfield, where he was the MP.
Yet it never happened. It was a seismic dream. And so Sandbrook’s second saga is equally confusing because, having set up this Aunt Sally, in a book of more than 800 pages that took less than a year to produce, he, naturally, then knocks it all down.
He doesn’t believe the Swinging Sixties decade of drugs, sex and rock’n’roll achieved anything significant, apart from sensational headlines to capture the heady daze that engulfed – and deluded – a generation. As for Wilson, he labels him a Walter Mitty wizard, and pours scorn on his achievements, made as they were in defiance of dire economic circumstances and a forever fractious Labour Party he brilliantly managed to hold together.
There’s the real rub. Sandbrook was born in 1974, never met Wilson, Callaghan, Castle, Crossman, Crosland or the drunken George Brown, didn’t see The Beatles in their innovative prime, didn’t smoke cannabis at the Roundhouse or feel the hippy freedom of changing times, especially in the arts, that have left an indelible mark on today’s undisciplined attitudes.
He relies too much on the unreliable media to provide him with the accuracy an historian demands, and malign newspapers, with the best of goodwill, simply don’t provide that service. Though that is not to admire his admirable flair for anecdotal stories that flow with humour – and some style – through his book.
He records that sublime moment when Reginald Maudling left No 11 Downing Street, telling Callaghan, his replacement Chancellor: “God luck, old cock. Sorry to leave it in such a mess.” And he meant it – the dire need to devalue became the noose round Labour’s neck as it took over power from the tired Tories.
So, inevitably, Wilson became the victim, as with most politicians, of internecine party warfare fanned by a corrosive press that negates progress. He burned himself out in the process.
Like others, Sandbrook believes the Swinging Sixties epithet comes from the Time magazine cover of April, 1966, which labelled London the Swinging City. A little more research would have revealed the ‘Swinging Sixties’ born out of a William Hickey headline in the Daily Express on a picture of the Jay twins from Hampstead, Catherine and Helen, in all their blonde beauty, sexy boots and mini-skirts.
The story with it, about their university successes, came from me.
Indeed, Hampstead doesn’t get a mention in Sandbrook’s saga, despite the fact that Wilson and half his Cabinet lived on the fringes of the Heath, nor does Hampstead as the first target for ruthless developers ejecting the working class from their cottages, all now embalmed million pound plus asking prices.
Even the birth of the GLC is ignored, together with the creation of Camden and the London boroughs that gave a new edge of enlightenment and vision now lost in over-burdened town halls. Hampstead was certainly swinging in 1966 when Ben Whitaker became the first Labour MP ever to hold the seat, defeating the hated Henry Brooke to give Hampstead a stunning victory.
All that may sound parochial, but then Sandbrook insists that the majority of the country lived in awe of the London fantasy, essentially unchanged in those sizzling years of the Sputnik, holidays in sunny Spain, the lure and charms of James Bond, Twiggy, Carnaby Street, The Avengers, and the triumph of winning the World Cup.
Rhubarb.
To those of us who lived through the Sixties, they provided a sense of purpose for new generations escaping post-war austerity. Perhaps, inevitably, what was eventually born, and fed by the Thatcher greed and mobile technology, was a social decadence that now presents itself in poor parenting, welfare fraud, obesity, Big Brother and the incessant sneer of celebrity status.
And, of course, the Tories once again offering freedom from council house slavery for the poor, disillusioned and disinherited — while the rest of the country swelters in the sauna of wealth.