originally published in The Daily Mirror on 23 October 1975 and presumably the following week also
I do love this genre of social observation / commentary that is thought through but not necessarily based in research or any kind of scholarly proof. I would love to get hold of old issues of New Society for instance (well, the contents of that were probably pretty rigorous, given the number of academics who wrote for it, but it's not written up as articles in a scholarly publication - more in the style of a newspaper column). I particularly like observations and predictions that have been overtaken by time.
But this one by Waterhouse seems pretty on the money - seems to point to what you might call the GLC / City Limits class, which then actually had a belated if unsuccessful shot at power with Corbyn. Perhaps what hobbled it was the very split that caused Time Out and City Limits to break into two, with Time Out going the path of yuppie / gentrification / the reaffirmation of the old class lines. Although that said, even that Time Out constituency votes Labour I'm sure - London now is a Labour city-state. Labour in the metropolitan form is a tribal identification based on progressive values and even aesthetics, as opposed to an identity based around the workplace, being in a union etc.
As suggested by Stylo in comments, another - more hostile - take on the Polyocracy came from Malcolm Bradbury with his novel - later TV series - The History Man.
It's refreshing to read this kind of pop sociology not being weaponised for some culture war nonsense. And Waterhouse's prediction that the Polyocracy will in time "become a major force in our national life" has been pretty well vindicated, as you say.
ReplyDeleteIf you copy-paste the link, this tweet includes an updated version for a rather more niche group, which had me laughing at some points and shifting uncomfortably at others:
Deletehttps://twitter.com/hhnnccnnll/status/799927439577280512?s=20
I think I saw that when it first circulated. It definitely nails something!
Delete1975 was also the year The History Man came out. Surely that's the standout contemporary dissection of the polyocracy?
ReplyDeleteYes that's a good point. Although it's a completely hostile take on the Polyocracy, whereas Waterhouse sees its good points. But yeah all the stuff in The History Man about the kitchen and the cooking fads and so forth very much is the Polyocratic aesthetic of that time.
DeleteI love that book, but the funny thing about it I find is that not only is Howard Kirk the most charismatic figure in it (not that surprising given that he's the protagonist, compellingly unscrupulous, Iago in a kipper tie and flares etc etc) but I also found that most of what he has to say in terms of ideas, ideology, etc is pretty persuasive. I didn't find myself disagreeing or thinking "how appalling!". It's helped of course by the fact that the opposition, the defenders of truth and beauty and moderation and humanism etc, are such a bunch of wet paper bags in comparison.
I never saw the TV version - hardly any traces of it can be found on the Internet, but there are some brief excerpts in this an interesting program about the making of the show on YouTube https://youtu.be/HcjqNaExUwo . It's about the challenges of adapting a novel for TV.
One thing striking about it is how rotten Malcolm Bradbury's teeth are....