Yesterday's Men

"Yesterday's Men" is a single by British band Madness from their 1985 album Mad Not Mad. The song spent 7 weeks on the UK Singles Chart peaking at number 18. The song was edited for release as a single, the album version being some thirty seconds longer.

7" Track listing

12" Track listing

7" 'Picture Disc & Extra Disc' Track Listing

Chart performance

References

Yesterday's Men (documentary)

Yesterday's Men is a British documentary shown in the 24 Hours series (BBC 1) on 16 June 1971. The programme is remembered for provoking a major clash between the Labour Party and the BBC. According to Anthony Smith, the editor of 24 Hours at the time, the film led to "the biggest and most furious row that a television programme in the English language has ever provoked."

The documentary

The History of the BBC section of their website asserts on its page on the Yesterday's Men controversy: "Straight-dealing is one of the principles of BBC programme making, but it has not always been followed." The programme makers reversed the slogan the Labour Party had used in the 1970 general election against the Conservatives (who won) to apply to the members of the former Labour government now in opposition. The title of the programme was not disclosed to participants. Nor were they informed that it would feature a satirical song with this title commissioned from The Scaffold pop group along with similarly inclined cartoons by Gerald Scarfe. Wilson and his colleagues "were effectively tricked into taking part in a programme that would ridicule them" according to the BBC's own account. Normal procedure would have been to refer the matter of the song upwards in the management hierarchy, but this was not done.