The distinguishing feature of the late 1950s was the acceleration of cultural change after a decade or more of conserva-tism. How far it was a consequence of the transition from austerity to affluence, the shock waves of Hungary and Suez or sim-ply generational change is hard to judge. Doubtless all were in the mix, but it was a change that manifested itself through the rise of a meritocracy of 'new men'. In a virtuoso passage Kynaston runs through a long list of meritocrats, mostly middle class but mainly from grammar schools, who popped up suddenly from the ground like spring flowers after a hard winter. Most were active in the media or the arts, with one or two in science, industry or the City. There was also a sprinkling of new women, including Joan Bakewell, Glenda Jackson and, later, Janet Street-Porter. One of their great achievements, as Ky-naston puts it, was to 'move the working class into the centre of the cultural frame'. True, but it was comparatively easy to in-corporate workers in fiction and drama. Far more difficult was the challenge faced by socialists in persuading workers to support
them in the real world. The outlook of Old Labour was class conscious, hostile to commerce and consumerism, and strongly attached to the cause of public ownership. It was extremely hard for the party to come to terms with a capitalist system that was delivering full employment, a welfare state and rising standards of living for manual workers. The problem for party managers was how to broaden the appeal of a party whose image was fast becoming obsolete. Kynaston castigates Richard Hoggart and Michael Young, the gurus of the liberal Left, for sentimentalising the 'traditional' working class and failing to understand the legitimate aspirations of workers in a con-sumer society. Their ideas, he maintains, were disastrous for Labour in the long run. This seems to me a cavalier judgement, unfair to both Hoggart and Young. The Attlee governments of 1945–51 assumed that socialism and modernity were one and the same. By 1959, when the Conservatives won a third general election in a row, the tables had been turned and Macmillan could boast that socialism was a failed Victorian creed. Modernity Britain ends with a letter he wrote to the Queen following his victory: 'The most encourag-ing feature of the Election … from Your Majesty's point of view, is the strong im-pression I have formed that Your Majesty's subjects do not wish to allow themselves to be divided into warring classes or tribes filled with hereditary animosity against each other.' It was a moment that conjured up illu-sions of closure. The class war, it seemed, was over and socialism dead and buried. The housing problem was as good as solved, with low-income families moving to high-rise estates and affluent workers joining the 'property-owning democracy'. The grammar schools were safe, murder-ers would still hang and homosexual law reform was ruled out. Alas for Macmillan, the Tory version of modernity was about to unravel, leaving Labour to cast itself in the modernising role. One of the great virtues of Kynaston's approach is the juxtaposition of political rhetoric and social reality. The gulf between the two is sure to provide him with material in abundance for future volumes of Tales of a New Jerusalem. To order this book for £20, see the Literary Review bookshop on page 55
h i s t o r y
paul addison
Messy Old Life
Modernity Britain: Opening the Box, 1957–59 By David Kynaston (Bloomsbury 424pp £25)
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