Rita, Sue And Bob Too (1987)

 

Johnny Jarvis (1983)

 

Play for Today: Hard Feelings (1984)

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

 

Rita, Sue And Bob Too (1987)

Scully by Alan Bleasdale (Arrow Books 1984)

 

'Yes Mam, alright Mam. I'll go an' tell her now,' he said and got his jacket on and went out.

As soon as he’d gone, I whipped over and had a look at his letter to nobody that he thought he’d hidden in last week's TV Times. It was another in his series of ace letters to Tranmere Rovers. He’s written at least two more to them that I know of.

Dear Sir,

 I was on the King Blessed Vergeins Playing feelds Eastbank last Sunday watching the Football Match Between Astley United And Garston Bakereries in Div. 9 of the Liverpool F.A. Sunday leeges and my Atension was atracted by the centre forward for Astley United. Sir. I tell no lie when I say that in all my many years Watching and referring football off all clases, I have not often enough seen Talint like what this PlaYEr has got. He his scilful, too footed and a gooD header off the ball. He is strong in the takle a gooD dribler and not a CowErd. I found out that is name is Antony James Patrick Scully and that he his twenty years old next birthday and that he lives in 47 Sankey Road, Eastbank, It wooD be a crying shamE if some BIG CLub did not spot him BEFOUR IT HIS TO LATE.

p.s. I am noT Related to this BOy at ALL.

Yours truly.

An Old Age Pensionor.

You might find it funny but after you’ve read as many as I have, it gets a bit boring. I got me felt tip pen out and wrote, IVOR BOLLOCKOFF above where he’d put ‘Old Age Pensionor', and folded the letter up and stuck it back in the envelope.

Scully (1984)

 

Shelley (1982)

 

Blogger's Note:

The still is from the "A Drop of the Pink Stuff" (25 February 1982), which was the second episode of the fourth season. Easily the funniest episode of Shelley that I've ever seen. You could just tell that they were all enjoying themselves. James Grout was especially wonderful.

Shelley (1980)

 

Shelley (1979/80)

 

Jazzhats take stock by Ian Walker (New Society, 18th October 1979)

It's been awhile but I just stumbled across some old Ian Walker articles from the old sociological journal, the New Society, which have previously not appeared on the blog. If you're interested in Walker's articles from the late 70s/early 80s, click on the following link for a fascinating insight into Britain in the early days of Thatcherism.

Jazzhats take stock

A swarm of dark suits in a hexagonal, hall. Some dark suits are motionless, some write in notebooks, some move around speaking into walkie-talkies, some are on the telephone, some are moving at high speed and some are clustered before a black screen containing green printouts. This is science fiction in period costume. “There are three species of life down there,” says Luke Glass, the Stock Exchange’s PR man. “You can tell by the various colours of the badges.”

Blue badges are unauthorised clerks, “bluebuttons” in Exchange argot, who assist the dealers. Yellow badges are the dealers (brokers and jobbers). Members of the Stock Exchange have silver badges. They are the highest form of life in this building which was opened in 1972, has 26 storeys, 321 feet high, and does £700 million worth of business a day.

Above the 16 hexagonal “pitches” where the brokers and jobbers are making their deals, an electronic clock stretches the width of the hall. It is 11.55 in London, 3.55 in San Francisco, 6.55 in Toronto, 11.55 in Zurich, 12.55 in Johannesburg, 19.55 in Hong Kong and 20.55 in Tokyo. The men speaking into walkie-talkies are conversing with their clients. “Could be Hongkong, could be Cheapside,” says Luke Glass.

A bell rings, and there is a rush towards the black screens. Green lettering displays “Beechams results.” There is a sudden and large accumulation of blue and grey suits by one of the hexagons. “Dealing in Beechams,” says Luke Glass, “I’d be prepared to bet.”

Men in black uniforms with red lapels guard the four entrances to the main floor. They are still known as waiters, from the time, in the 18th century, when stockbrokers operated from Jonathan’s coffee house in the City. “They’ve given up serving coffee, but they still take messages. They are part of the security system, too. But they are wonderful sources of information, like any good waiter anywhere, even down to knowing what people’ll be in.” Luke Glass shows me the Stock Exchange Council rulebook. Its cover has a crest bearing the motto, Dictum Meum Pactum. My word is my bond. “When a broker does business, quite literally, it’s down to his cufflinks,” Luke Glass’s cufflinks are inscribed with the St George’s cross. “He has total unlimited liability. They’ll do a £5 million bargain in a couple of seconds, a system based entirely on mutual trust.” All deals are known as bargains, whether or not they are good value.

A TV screen in this office is tuned to one of its 22 channels. It shows the prices per ton of zinc, tin and rubber, the price per ounce of gold. The price per pint of Bass in the Throgmorton Bar is 43p, which Duncan Steven, aged 26, finds excessive. “In East Grinstead I get Shepherd Neame for 37p a pint, from the wood too.” On his yellow badge it says “Shaw & Co. 670,” the name of his stockbroking firm, and his number for the £115 million computer system. Duncan earns £4,400 a year, not counting bonuses, though he’s not getting many of those at the moment. “Times are hard, the market’s quiet.”

Many blue, yellow and silver badge wearers come to this bar, known also as Sloshy Nells, at lunchtime. Most yellow and silver badge wearers have a piece of grey technology stuffed inside their breast pocket, bleepers. An aerial on the Throgmorton Bar’s roof connects it to the Exchange’s telephone system. Duncan’s bleeper starts bleeping, and he has to go pick up a telephone in the bar downstairs.

A tattooed barman tells his customers he never puts water in his Scotch, and two silver badges are telling each other what wonderful weather we’re having for the time of year. “Just done some deal and they were panicking,” says Duncan, when he reappears five minutes later.

Like everyone else in this bar, Duncan wears a tie, though not one from his old school. He went to a secondary modern. “Jazzhats” is his term for those within the Exchange who flaunt class connections. “You know, those blokes who play cricket, who’ve got all the gear, coloured cap [jazzhat], MCC tie, the whole bit?” Blokes like that are also known as “waah-waahs,” he says. “Ask them something and they say, ‘Yaah’ or ‘Waah.’ You can’t understand a bloody word they’re saying half the time . . . But on the other hand there are some really whizz-kid East End kind of blokes in the Stock Market.”

Those who are well connected do not necessarily need to be whizz-kids. They sit in the right clubs and restaurants all day, supplying the business (according to Duncan), who also says it is an open secret that a jobber will always offer a lower price to a broker who is an old school chum. “Undoubtedly. No question about it.” But some heads, Duncan tells me, will soon roll. A new computer system, called the Talisman, is being brought into the Exchange, and already “it has laid off a lot of staff.”

Is the Stock Exchange enjoying the Thatcher reign? “It’s a well-known fact,” he says, “that under Labour the market is bullish.” This is good: bulls buy stock in the hope of selling it at a higher price; bears sell stock, hoping to buy it back at a lower price. “In the run-up to the election, the market was very bullish. But it just went down when Thatcher got in. Since then it’s been firm.”

One of Duncan’s friends, Colin, is a jobber. Although he sounds very posh, he says his background is “ordinary, lower middle class.” He votes Tory and I wonder if that isn’t against his own interests, if a Labour government is really better for the market than a Conservative one?

“I always look at it like this,” he says. “If you get fluctuations, like you do when there’s a lot of strikes, you get a lot of activity on the market. As a jobber this is what you want; it’s a consideration that isn’t always acknowledged. The more action, the more money there is to be made.”

William, another yellow badge wearer, lives in Tonbridge and is keen to explode myths: “We’re the hardest-drinking set going. Just because we wear shiny shoes arid stiff collars . . . When the action’s on in there, it’s every man for himself.” So this etiquette I’ve heard so much about . . . “Yes, well, you can elbow an older bloke out of the way once, but not twice, you won’t get away with it again.”

This dark oak bar with its nicotine-stained ceiling and long mirrors is now almost empty of dark suits. All William’s friends have gone back to work. “We try to provide a service for our clients. And if we get it wrong, we get a bloody bollocking too, I can tell you.” William quaffs the remainder of his pint and walks out wiping his mouth.

Pamela Allen, who is 23, is one of the official Stock Exchange guides, stationed in the visitors’ gallery. She speaks French and German, went to Folkestone Girls’ Grammar School, and dropped out of university to become an air hostess with British Airways. Does she enjoy this job? Of course she does, “Very much indeed. It’s a very exciting place.”

She is answering questions being posed by three Yugoslav engineers, from Zagreb. “Gilt-edged stock are government bonds. It’s a generic term. Originally, government bonds were issued on little white cards with gilt edges.” Pamela has all the replies by heart. The questioning over, she resumes reading the Daily Mail. “Union curbs—no time for delay,” it says on the editorial page.

At 3.15 the men in red lapels politely clear everyone out of the visitors’ gallery. We go down the stairs and out into the street through glass revolving doors. “It’s new and strange,” says one of the Yugoslav engineers. “Just like looking at the movies.” 

The Last Days of Disco by David F. Ross (Orenda Books 2014)

2ND FEBRUARY 1982: 2:26PM

Fat Franny Duncan loved the Godfather movies, but he did not belong to this new band of theorists who reckoned II was better than I. For Fat Franny, original was most certainly best, although, given the success of the films and the timelessness of the story, he was staggered that there hadn’t been a III, like there had been with Rocky. He also couldn’t comprehend why there had been no book spin-off, although, even if there had, he would certainly not be wasting his time reading it. He knew the dialogue from both films pretty much by heart, and used their most famous quotes as a design for life. Particularly the lines of Don Corleone, who Fat Franny felt certain he would resemble later in his life. He was, after all, fat. There was no denying this. Bulk for Brando’s most famous character helped afford him gravitas and – as a consequence – respect; a level of respect that Fat Franny felt was within his grasp. Michael was a skinny Tally bastard and, although he undoubtedly commanded reverence, it was driven by fear.

Scully by Alan Bleasdale (Arrow Books 1984)

'I wrote SCULLY on the bus shelter as we walked back past the prefabs. I put SCULLY where I can. It's everywhere on our estate. It's me name, see? Coppers see us writing on the walls sometimes. And usually they don't bother. They're just like us, you know - they don't care neither. Most times they just shout at us, or get in their car and pretend to phone for reinforcements or the Marines or something.'

The people's PR by Ian Walker (New Society 14 May 1981)

Today's Ian Walker article dates from May '81 and is a report from the TUC's People March for Jobs, which was a march from Liverpool to London in protest against then rising unemployment in Britain. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I guess. I was hoping a google search would reveal some good links that would provide more info and history on the march and its background, but to no avail. However, I did find some marvelous pictures of the march instead. Check them out here, here and here. The first link leads you to a selection of Martin Jenkinson pictures, who was the official photographer of the march. Sadly, my internet search reveals that he just passed away this past month. More info on this interesting man is provided at the following link.

The people's PR

It is a protest march 1981-style, a PR procession with the thematic logo on the green banner up front repeated on the green anoraks of the marchers behind.

We are waiting for the late-risers, still shifting their rucksacks from the gym of Salford technical college to the two trucks loading up outside. We move off towards Manchester at just gone eleven, after the march leader, who looks like a scoutmaster in his army surplus jumper, has offered up three cheers for the overnight hosts.

Four hundred symbols of the two and a half million unemployed walk out, on day five of the march, past squares of rubble and medium-rise council blocks and a building labelled Co-op Funeral Services.

"What's that?" says one of the marchers.

"Don't know. Socialist burials I suppose."

Two old women standing by a zebra crossing put down their shopping to clap the marchers, who return the compliment. A punk behind me in the march says he hopes there's a riot or something, sometime, to liven things up.

The sun is out. Paul has tied his anorak round his waist. He is 16, from Halewood, and was in town with his mother when he saw the march come through on May Day. His mother said how nice it would have been if Paul could have been on it. When he got home, he started packing. "She nearly died," Paul says. But she couldn't stop him.

He arrived without credentials, without sponsorship from a union, but somehow managed to join up - got given the papers and the T-shirt and the anorak. Paul only left school six weeks ago. "My feet are killing me. New boots. Apart from that, it's been great."

A small crowd has gathered on the edge of Salford. Showing above the well-wishers is a red banner which says that 6,553 are unemployed in the borough. More ritual chants of "Maggie, Maggie, Maggie (out, out, out)" as the march stops for a quickie speech from Stan Orme, the MP for Salford West. Paul is telling me that the marchers are given ten or 20 fags a day.

" . . . And a return to full employment. Thank you very much." Stan Orme has finished. The march crosses the border into Manchester. Phil, who finally got sponsored by NALGO, is one of the Socialist Workers' Party contingent here. He says that a short time before the march was due to start, the TUC had still had only 70 applications. And so they came to the SWP, veterans of the Right to Work marches, for help. The march has, it seems, depended on the local contacts of the SWP, the Workers' Revolutionary Party and the Labour Party Young Socialists.

Phil studied philosophy for three years at the North London poly, then dropped out before taking his finals. He thinks Nietzsche is under-rated.

Because the march is ahead of time, it stops at a T-junction, over the road from a pub called the Jollies, for 20 minutes. A couple of marchers fall asleep on the pavement. A Scouser, an electrician who works in the Barbican during the week and goes home at weekends, says his union sent him up because they thought the employed should be solid with the unemployed. He stays at the Barbican YMCA.

"You can only get digs in the Barbican YMCA if you work in the City," he says. "And you can only work in the City if you're in the upper classes. So I said I was a dentist. My mate said he was an electrician. He didn't get in."

First reception in Manchester is in a pedestrian precinct. A delegation of old age pensioners hold up a DIGNITY IN RETIREMENT banner. The marchers, as always, return the applause and recite a few more Maggie chants. Local worthies queue up to speak into a megaphone which isn't powerful enough to reach more than 50 or so marchers clustered round the front of the steps in this square, which is planted with young trees.

"Some of you may well belong to churches," begins the Bishop of Manchester, hopefully.

Walking to Manchester town hall, I talk to a young woman who also did a stint (two years) at a polytechnic before jacking it in. She thinks the stewards, many of them Communist Party members, are sexist and authoritarian. She has thrown away her green anorak in disgust. There are only 30 women officially on this march, and they aren't allowed to walk at the front. The final straw for her was this morning when she was told that she could only wear her black PVC armband, in honour of Bobby Sands, underneath her anorak.

The right to lurk

Up the street named after John Dalton, the man who defined colour blindness, past Rational House, the march shuffles up the steps of Manchester town hall.

"We're marching for the right to lurk," says a punk in dirty red jeans, dog collar round his neck. "Brilliant place to lurk," he adds, taking in his gothic surrounds: the high arches and the stained-glass windows, the tableaux celebrating famous Mancunians.

More speeches and more statistics: there is 14.5 per cent unemployment in Manchester, and 40 per cent of the workless are under 25. A rep for the Bishop (who had to go catch a train) says, to loud applause, that he was on the Jarrow march. He then spoils it a bit by saying he wasn't on it for that long, and he didn't walk that far.

I sit on a table watching the marchers eating their pork pies and baps. A man who used to work at Dunlop in Speke, before it closed down, sits down beside me. He's been on the dole two years, hasn't been able to take his wife and two children away on holiday for three years.

At 3 pm, the march moves off to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where everyone is being put up in the building named after Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb. I talk to a pensioner, who went to live in Llangollen after he retired. He used to be a building worker. Why did he come on the march?

"Because I recollect the thirties and those terrible things," he says.

There is a vigil for Bobby Sands in the town at 4.30, and a delegation is going down. About 30 of us troop out, checked at the revolving doors by a steward who makes sure no one is wearing their People's March anorak.

I walk down to Piccadilly Gardens with a man in a brown donkey jacket. From Liverpool, he says he's self-educated working class. "Least I was working class. Now I'm one of the outs. If you know what I mean."

Standing in the rain outside Chelsea Girl, the black PVC armband protesters chant, "Bobby Sands was murdered. Political status now,"and hand out yellow roneo'd leaflets to the people rushing for buses. Some passers-by look angry. Most just look confused. The rain gets harder and, after an hour, the protesters file back to UMIST.

Over at the New Century Hall in the CWS building, there is a People's March entertainment organised by War on Want. The Houghton Weavers do a medley of protest numbers, including We shall overcome and Blowing in the wind, followed by a song written specially for the march, entitled, We want work. Gerald Kaufman, MP for Manchester Ardwick, joins in the conga round a huge dance-floor.

"All the way from Moss Side," says the compere, with just a soupcon of racism, introducing the steel band, Tropical Heatwave. When they've finished their set the bass guitarist, Ken, walks to the back of the hall to talk to a girlfriend. She says that he wasn't up there for long.

"Yeah. Get it over nice and quick," says Ken. "Then you don't have so much work to do. Who wants work?  . . .  Well, this lot do."

Next morning at nine, some people are still fast asleep in their bags at Barnes Wallis. Plates of beans and fried-eggs lie around half-eaten.

Today is a rest day. Most are taking it easy. But the politicos are splitting up into delegations, taking their message to the factory gates. I join a group of twelve going out to an occupation at Holman Michell lead works in St Helens.

Men stand above the barbed wire they have stretched across the blue gates of Holman Michell. The marchers, all wearing their anoraks on this expedition, are let through the door and invited into the canteen for a cup of tea.

Ron Dickson, pouring out the tea, says they occupied the factory on 22 April, after management announced they were making 15 redundancies. And now all 28 of the occupation force have been sacked. Ron says they've got nothing to lose. He adds that he has had 18 weeks off sick in the last nine months because of high lead levels in his blood.

Ray Harper, a fitter, says he thinks it's good that the marchers have come along this morning. "Great. It gives you a lift. Been a fortnight now. You tend to flag a bit." The men here do 16 hours a day, on average, at the occupation. A bell rings. Ray looks at his watch. It's 11.45. "That's for dinner-time."

One of Ray's son is leaving school at Whitsun. "There's nothing for him," he says. "He's applied for at least 15 jobs that I know of. He's studying now for his exams and that. I tell him they're important. But he says to me, "What's the point, when there's nothing when I leave?'"

An unemployed boilermaker on the march, Dave Huyton, joins in our conversation. He says that the idea of the march is to stir people from their television sets. Ray says he is a Tony Benn supporter. Dave is in the middle of the usual spiel about the People's March being above politics, when we're all summoned outside for the pictures.

The four photographers want the workers and marchers lined up by the blue gates, underneath the barbed wire. "Can we get a couple of placards?" one of the photographers asks. The placards are fetched. One says: "Fighting to save jobs. Fighting to save St Helens." Another" "Enter here and walk back in time/" They get propped up. A few fists point skywards.

The pictures done, the marchers file out the gates towards their orange Transit. One more routine Maggie-out chant, and it is on to the picket line at nearby United Glass. Everyone says goodbye with clenched fists.

14 May 1981

30 Day Song Challenge - day 08

day 08 - a song that you know all the words to

I guess on a good day I know the words to tons of songs (though not always the singer of the song) but this was one that immediately popped into my head. I guess I'm going through a Matt Johnson phase at the moment:

Still think that 51st State line is cheesy, though.

Starter For Ten By David Nicholls (Hodder & Stoughton 2003)

Walking back along the High Street after the tutorial, I see Rebecca whats-her-name and a couple of the fuckingangryactuallys that she's always hanging around with. They're thrusting leaflets into the hands of indifferent shoppers and for a moment I contemplate crossing the road. I'm a bit wary of her to be honest, especially after our last conversatron, but I've made a promise to myself to make as many new friends as possible at university, even if they glve every indication of not actually liking me very much.

'Hiya,' I say

'It's the Dancing Queen! How you doing?' she says, and hands me a leaflet, urging me to boycott Barclays.

Actually my grant money's with one of the other caring humanitarian multinational banking organisations!' I say, with an incisive wry, satirical glint in my eye, but she's not really looking and has gone back to handing out leaflets and shouting 'Fight apartheid! Support the boycott. Don't buy South African goods! Say no to apartheid! . . .' I start to feel a bit boycotted too, so start to walk away when she says, in a marginally softer voice, 'So, how ya' settling in, then?'

'Oh, alright. I'm sharing my house with a rlght pair of bloody Ruperts. But apart from that it's not too bad . . . ' I had thrown in the hint of class war for her benefit really but I don't think she gets lt, because she looks at me confused.

'They're both called Rupert?'

'No, they're called Marcus and Josh.'

'So who are the Ruperts?'

'They are, they're, you know - Ruperts', but the remark is starting to lose some of its cutting edge and I wonder if I should offer to hand out leaflets instead. After all, it is a cause I'm passionate about, and I have a strict policy of not eating South Afrrcan fruit that's almost as strict as my policy of not eating fruit. But now Rebecca's folding up the remaining leaflets and handing them to her colleagues.

'Right, that's me done for today. See you later, Toby, see you Rupert . . . ' and suddenly I find myself walking down the street side by side with her, without quite knowing whose idea it was. 'So, where're we off to now, then?' she asks, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of her black vinyl coat.

The Other Britain edited by Paul Barker (Routledge & Kegan Paul 1982)

'Evening, William,' shouts a young man with a beard and an army surplus greatcoat. 'Here comes the Marble Arch contingent,' says Bill. The young man is followed in by three others - a skinny middle-aged man with long, greasy hair, a small elf-like figure in a donkey jacket, and a white-haired man in a white coat with Daily Express printed on the chest. They fill up a window table with tea cups and ashtrays.

Pete, the young bearded one, has been an all-night news-vendor for three years. 'Before that,' he says, 'I did everything. Picked grapes in France; worked in a hostel for young offenders; in a factory; was in the Coldstream Guards for five years; in the Royal Corps of Transport for seven. I heard about this job from a bloke in the dole queue.' He speaks with a soft, middle-class accent which contrasts oddly with his street-wise appearance. He wears thick grimy boots and hiking socks, and has a couple of teeth missing.

He says he is self-educated. He reads a lot of books. He has a theory about people who work at night. 'They're returning to the womb,' he explains, rolling a cigarette in a tin on his lap. 'I believe a lot of day people, who hate their jobs, are frustrated night people. There ought to be a test to determine whether you're nocturnal or diurnal.' He starts to fill in The Times crossword.

(From The night people' by Helen Chappell.)

Looks and Smiles (1981)

Surviving The Blues: Growing Up In the Thatcher Decade edited by Joan Scanlon (Virago Press 1990)

At the end of the three years, all of the few friends I had made in York moved to London. I traipsed after them, clueless as to what my next step should be. They were going into publishing, and taking secretarial or journalist courses, or going on to drama school. I did the rounds, dossing on everybody's floor (they all seemed to have a house in London) for months. There was a particularly curious stage during the Falklands War, when I camped at No. 11 Downing Street for a week. Geoffrey Howe's son was a friend of mine at York University. At this point I was a punk, with spiky, viciously backcombed blonde hair and a tendency to sport a particular pair of very attractive blue trousers, which unfortunately I had singed at the crotch with an iron: a large triangular singe in the exact formation of pubic hair. The security police, who stood constantly on guard, never failed to inspect my person whenever I returned to No. 11. The Falklands War was hotting up, and Mr Haig, the US Secretary of State for Defence was in negotiations with Margaret Thatcher. I sauntered down Downing Street in my short-sighted haphazard way, only to be met by a pack of reporters, awaiting news about war developments from No. 10. There was a most embarrassing scene when I had to knock at No. 10 and wait for an age to be allowed in, so that I could gain access to No. 11. The cameras stopped rolling after they spotted the trousers.

(Louise Donald from the chapter, 'A Deafening Silence'.)

Breaking Glass (1980)