Talk:London in the 1960s

"Carry On" films

Aside from a few exterior shots, none of the Carry On films were shot in London - they were all made at Pinewood. I'm not sure what they're doing here - they were about as far removed from the "Swinging London" culture as it's possible to be. 78.149.172.10 (talk) 15:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Removed material

I've removed a (very) large amount of material from this article, for various reasons. Rather than try to cram the explanation into an edit summary, I'm giving a breakdown here to make it easier for someone to restore it should they want to make the attempt. Much of what I've left should probably be deleted as well as inappropriate; I've only removed the fabrications and grossly irrelevant comments.

On a more general note, I strongly question the appropriateness of this article. The key turning points in the history of 20th century London (1933, 1945, 1965, 1986) all fall in the middle of decades, making breakdown-by-decade articles peculiarly pointless; 1961 London had very little in common with 1969 London.

• The '60s was the decade when the Labour Party came to power under Harold Wilson from 1964 to 1970, 20 years after Clement Attlee.

  True, the Labour Party won an election in the 1960s. It also won elections in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s. Making it sound like some kind of exceptional event is misleading, as is the implication that the 1960s were somehow a Labour decade; in reality Labour were in power for 51⁄2 years and the Conservatives for 41⁄2 years of the 1960s.

• Peggy Maffits' Greenwich fashion

  I have no idea what this is. Greenwich has no connection to fashion, and neither myself nor Google have ever heard of "Peggy Maffit". (There was a 60s model called Peggy Moffitt, but she lived and worked in the US and had no connection to London.) Needless to say, it's not mentioned in the (highly dubious) cited source.

• Vidal Sasoon's style also became iconic and the distinctive style of East London at the time.

  More uncited bullshit. The whole "Swinging 60s" thing was centred in two tiny enclaves around Oxford Circus and Sloane Square, and about as far from the "distinctive style of East London" (in this period, slicked back Brylcreem quiffs or military-style close crops) as its possible to be.

• Leslie Hornby became known for wearing miniskirts, and walked the streets of London like a "big-eyed cockney Dolly bird" exposing as much of her legs and other features as permitted.

  Leslie Hornby (Twiggy to the rest of the world) is famous for many things, but "walking the streets of London [...] exposing as much of her legs and other features as permitted" is not one of them. Twiggy was famous for Twiggy Dresses (the clue is in the name...) which are clingy and skintight, but not particularly revealing even by the standards of the time.

• Twiggy, the top fashion model was introduced to the fashion scene by David Bailey, a leading photographer in the late '60s

  Another outright fabrication. Twiggy was introduced and popularised by Deirdre McSharry and Justin de Villeneuve.

• It was the era when hippie culture, "Flower Power" and the slogan "Make Love not War" was fashionable.

  Yes it was—in San Francisco. While London had a (tiny) hippie scene, it could never have been described as "fashionable". There was a sizeable stoner/acid scene in the late 1960s (of which Pink Floyd were probably the best-known members), but they had no particular connection to the US hippie movement.

• As a result of baby boom in the 1950s, London became the city with a population of 40% under the young category by the mid-1960s, a situation which happened only after the Roman Empire.

  Uncited pure bullshit, and what do the Romans have to do with anything?

• 1960 was a year of much commotion in the city.

  Uncited and untrue.

• A group of anti-apartheid protesters also demonstrated at the Oval Cricket Ground.

  True, but irrelevant. It was a tiny protest of around a dozen people—to equate it to the Aldermaston March as you do here is ludicrous. The mass anti-apartheid protests at cricket matches were in 1968 during the Basil D'Oliveira controversy, not in 1960.

• Anti-Semitic protests also took place.

  Untrue and not in the source cited.

• After the London docks were closed in 1960, there was a dramatic change in the environmental conditions along the Thames River in London. The embankments underwent rehabilitation with the result walking along the Vauxhall Bridge to Butler's Wharf and further on was a pleasurable experience. Southern side of the river became a leisure spot and colorful boats carrying tourists started operating, and even the boat services to Canary island on the historic Thames became a reality.

  Fabrication from beginning to end:

  • The London Docks closed in 1969 not 1960, and in any event were only a tiny part of the Port of London which remains one of the busiest ports in Europe to this day
  • The docks were and are downstream of central London, so their closure would have had no significant impact on the environment within the city—what actually led to the clean-up of the Thames was the decline of heavy industry in the 1980s and a consequent decrease in industrial effluent
  • Vauxhall Bridge and Butler's Wharf are nowhere near each other and neither had or have any particular cultural significance. 1960s Vauxhall was a grimy slum immediately downwind of Battersea Power Station while Bermondsey (the area around Butler's Wharf) in the 1960s was the crime-ridden heartland of the British National Party and filled with heavy industries, whaling abbatoirs and steam-train marshalling yards, and walking through it would have been as far from "a pleasurable experience" as it's possible to be
  • That "the southern side of the river became a leisure spot" is an extremely dubious claim even today, and the only three things on the south side of the river which could conceivably be described as such are the Southbank Centre (opened 1951, expanded 1967), the cluster of tourist traps around Shakespeare's Globe (opened 1997) and the London Eye (opened 1999), none of which have any significance to the year 1960
  • The Canary Islands are off the coast of western Africa and decidedly not in the Thames. There's no island of any kind in the Thames within the 1960 boundaries of London and other than a couple of tiny specks like Eel Pie Island in the extreme west there are still no islands in even the post-1965 expanded boundaries. The only place with a remotely similar name on the Thames is Canary Wharf, but that didn't exist until the 1980s and is certainly not a tourist attraction. The whole section was "sourced" to a book on a completely unrelated topic (a primer for schoolkids starting Film Studies) which as far as I can see doesn't mention the Thames, let alone the redevelopment of London Docklands, which was in any case an initiative of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.)

• The titillating book, "Lady Chatterley’s Lover" by D.H.Lawrence, was in the news when the Penguin Publishers were taken to court for its publication as falling under the Obscene Publications Act. A jury of the Old Bailey Court, hearing the petition from 20 October to 2 November 1960, ruled that the book narrating the love affair between the Lady of the Manner and the Game Keeper and the use of four lettered words, was not obscene.

  What does this have to do with London? The Chatterley trial was brought by Peterborough police over the right of a Harmondsworth-based publisher to publish a book by a Nottingham writer. The only tenuous connection to London is that London is where the Central Criminal Court happens to be.

• In 1961, immigration peaked with over 100,000 West Indians living in London.

  Patent nonsense. To put that in perspective, 100,000 is roughly the monthly immigration rate at present. Uncited, needless to say.

• [Black immigration] ushered the creation of slums (due to shortage of accommodation on account of WWII bombed structures) and emergence of social problems.

  Racist bullshit. Needless to say, not in the source provided (which in fact says the opposite—that the 1960s was when the last of the slums were cleared).

• The first issue of the anarchist monthly magazine, Anarchy was published in London in March 1961; the magazine run until December 1970. The Carl Rosa Opera Company stopped performing after its Don Giovanni performance on 17 September 1960, due to lack of funds, only to reopen in 1997.

  Who cares ×2? There are many major institutions based in London, but neither of these are.

• The 1961 London Trophy was a motor race on 22 May 1961 at Crystal Palace Circuit, run to Formula One standards.

  Non-championship races are marginally notable at best, and certainly don't justify inclusion in the article on the city unless something exceptional took place.

• Andi Lothian, a former Scottish music promoter, claimed that he coined the term Beatlemania after the Caird Hall Beatles concert that took place as part of The Beatles' Mini-Tour of Scotland, on 7 October 1963.

  If I need to explain that the Beatles were not a London band, I'm not sure what more I can do. Needless to say, neither Liverpool nor Dundee are in London.

• and young fans resorted to rioting as a celebration when the Beatles got the MBE at the Buckingham Palace.

  Patent nonsense cited to a highly-dubious looking book. In any case, the Beatles didn't get their MBEs until 1965.

• John Profumo, the British Secretary of State for War was involved in a sex scandal with Christine Keeler who was a call girl. This affair took place in 1961–62. She was reported dallying with Profumo in the swimming pool at the Clivedon Estate of Lord Aston. The torrid affair involved Mandy Rice-Davies also, with Dr. David Ward as the organiser of the escapades at the estate where Russian spy Eugene Ivanov was also one of the many clients of the two call girls. In the furore, it was alleged that the country’s security was compromised. Profumo was forced to resign and the affair termed Profumo Affair damaged the reputation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's government.

  What does this have to do with London?

• The Gaelic football club, Tír Chonaill Gaels, based in Greenford, was formed in London in 1962, and is one of the most successful in the London Gaelic Scene.

  Gaelic Football has no presence at all in London, and I'll bet good money that this team draws a smaller crowd than the guy who juggles fish outside Covent Garden. It's ridiculous to cover this team, especially when you don't see fit to mention Arsenal, Spurs, Harlequins or the MCC.

• During 1964, London was the scene of a heady mix of Art Nouveau and rock and roll music. Victoria period clothing became popular with the boutique "Granie Takes a Trip", which relegated Woolworth's to oblivion. Music of the Beatles and other pop singers, TV and cult movies and admen made the rest of the world envy the booming culture of London with romance and love taking the front seat.

  Utter nonsense (perhaps you ought to phone Woolworths and tell them they were "relegated to oblivion" in the 1960s, as they don't appear to be aware), and the idea that the rest of the world looked at 1964 London in envy is just plain weird. (At the risk of repeating myself, Liverpool is not in London.) The entire paragraph is "cited" to a self-published novel(!!!).

• Following on the foot steps of the west Indian immigrants was the adoption of West Indian styles which got infused into the London culture scene during the 1960s. Musically, the rude boy style of ska changed in music so also the dress styles underwent change over to "sta-press trousers, the Crombie overcoat, and the pork-pie hat"; initially skinheads dressed in this fashion which was later followed by punks.

  What? Much as the idea of punks and West Indian rudeboys in Crombies appeals to me (Crombie is the most exclusive clothing brand in the world, and a Crombie coat costs about the same as a small car), I find this not entirely convincing.

• The Daily Herald newspaper, published in London during the period of 1912–1964, ceased publication when it transitioned to The Sun.

  It didn't "cease publishing and transition", it changed its name. This is completely non-noteworthy, newspapers change their name all the time.

• Twiggy was given the epithet "The Face of 1966". The Chelsea Set, a "hard-partying, socially eclectic mix of largely idle 'toffs' and talented working-class movers and shakers" became well-known; Mary Quant was uncrowned queen of the group.

  Verbatim copyvio

• The The Beatles, The Kinks, The Small Faces, The Who, The Byrds and The Rolling Stones ruled the music roost of not only London but also the rest of the world.

  Bullshit on two levels. Firstly, only three of these bands were London bands (the Byrds weren't even from the same country); secondly, it's patent nonsense to say the London scene dominated the world. (Elvis? The Beatles? The Beach Boys? Motown? Bob Dylan?)

• Anti-immigration euphoria was orchestrated by Enoch Powell, Member of Parliament, in 1968, when the term "Rivers of Blood" was used to highlight the context, and he also called Britain "the Sick Man of Europe." His racist perorations caused him dishonor of dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet when Ted Heath was the Prime Minister.

  Unclear what this has to do with London; Powell was MP for Wolverhampton and speaking in Birmingham about the West Midlands. Powell's "sick man of Europe" quote was from a different year and he was speaking about currency devaluation; it has nothing to do with the Rivers of Blood speech, immigration nor London. Plus, Ted Heath was never Prime Minister in the 1960s (he was elected in 1970).

• A new gallery for notable temporary exhibitions became an "event of significance in the unfolding relations between the public and modern art."

  I can tell from the reference that this is a reference to the Hayward Gallery, but nowhere do you explain it. I find it hard to ascribe any particular significance to it, as the Hayward is easily the least important of London's public art museums.

• Other popular models of the era included Veruschka, Peggy Moffitt

  One was German and one was American, and neither had any connection to London.

• The Mini-Cooper car (launched in 1959) was used by a fleet of mini-cab taxis highlighted by advertising that covered their paintwork.

  1959 was not in the 1960s.

• The British film industry, under the new wave young film makers, got a boost when the Hollywood big names of Warner Brothers and MGM offloaded some of their film making to their units in London, and co-productions were filmed. But this only lasted till end of the '60s as there was a financial crunch when the American film makers withdrew from the London scene of joint productions.

  "London" is not a synonym for "England". The MGM studios were in Denham and the Warner studios at Elstree; neither were in London.

I've only removed the most egregious examples of fabrications, misrepresentations and irrelevancies, and what remains still needs a lot of cleanup. Once the unreliable sources like this are removed, along with the cut-and-paste job from Wikipedia's existing Swinging London article, there will be virtually nothing left; if the authors of this do think the topic is salvageable, I'd strongly suggest they wipe it out and start again from a clean slate. I personally question whether it would be worth it; the 1960s weren't a particularly important period in London's history (the 1930s, 1940s and 1980s were when the radical changes took place) and I don't feel it's a topic of any priority.

As a general aside, the author(s) of this article seem way too fixated with the whole "swinging 60s" thing. You need to keep in mind that only a tiny, tiny clique of west end trendies ever took part in this and it was of no relevance to the overwhelming majority of the population; treating Cathy McGowan as representative of 1960s London is like treating Fall Out Boy as representative of modern Chicago. – iridescent 13:31, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

References

Cleansing

Thanks to Iridescent for auditing the relevance of the text to the requirements of this kind of article, and for relieving us of a considerable amount of trivial information. Tony (talk) 13:57, 28 October 2013 (UTC)