Swinging London in retrospect

It’s over forty years since the Americans discovered “Swinging London” and I got a nasty shock when I tried to discover what it was all about. I was living in London at the time, though in the decidedly unswinging suburb of Streatham. The shock, however, was what I discovered about American culture.

Here is what I wrote in my diary on 30 June 1966

I went out and bought two magazines. One Esquire, which had an article about “Swinging London”, which seems to have such a fascination for Americans, to see what they have to say about British pop culture. The other was Flying Review, which has a special edition on Africa, and a summary of civilian and military Aircraft in all African countries. But then, reading Esquire, I came across the most horrifying advertisement for a book I have ever seen — as follows:

It’s true! You can learn in just one hour the secret of how to command and dominate everyone you meet! Right in the palm of your hand you hold the power to get your way with others every time — by using the clever techniques of applied psychology in ‘The art and skill of getting along with people’ by Dr Sylvanus M. Duval. In just one hour you can pick up the knack of exerting an air of command so powerful that other people will not only see it but actually feel it! That’s right. In sixty brief seconds you can have the rare power to command obedience from others with just a casual word, a brief glance. You can dominate people just by the sheer force of your personality. You can make men and women do anything you want. In an amazing book called The art and skill of getting along with people noted psychologist Sylvanus M. Duval shows you how to see through the disguises most people wear, and reveals how you may rip off the masks that hide their innermost thoughts and feelings. Using his techniques you can overcome anyone in a clash of willpower. You can make a stingy boss give you a pay rise, warm up an unromantic mate, force a stubborn child to behave, overcome ‘sales resistance’ to your ideas, and turn enemies into close personal friends and boosters.

And it goes on: “here are just a few of these amazing techniques to make people do what you want… A simple action that gets a person to ‘open up’ and pour out his or her deepest and most private feelings. It lets you peer into the deep recesses of his mind and emotions and see what makes him tick. Then you know how to get what you want from him… How to listen between the lines of another person’s remarks to hear what he’s really saying as opposed to what he seems to be saying. This is a terrific way to win control over people. Never again will anyone be able to kid or mislead you.”

And so it went on. There was more, each bit more sickening than the last. If the book corresponds in any way to the advertisement it might better have been entitled, How to become the perfect pocket Hitler. The real horror is the psychopathic sick authoritarian minds the advertisement seems to appeal to. At least Britain is not as decadent as this. I could hardly believe it when I first read it and then felt completely revolted. It is disgusting — there is no other word for it. There is no suggestion anywhere of love in human relationships, but only how to control, dominate, force and manipulate other people to do your own selfish and egotistical will. “The art and skill of getting along with people” indeed! Getting on top of them more likely, certainly not getting along with them. It appeals only to a really degraded fascist mentality It seems designed to appeal to people who feel inadequate, and so have the urge to impress and control others, but most of the advertisements in Esquire seem to have such an appeal. Like “You can have a success-winning voice”, “Today let these amazing shoes add inches to your height”, “For people who are not ashamed of having brains” and so it goes on. Probably it is the creeps who read Esquire who also dig the Bunny girls in Playboy clubs. No wonder the British think they are superior. No wonder the Americans feel inferior, like in another advertisement: “Calvert Gin versus the British gin empire. We’re David, they’re Goliath. Until Calvert gin, the biggest reputation in gin belonged to the British. But remember, Goliath had a big reputation too, until David came along”.

Three cheers for the Viet Cong!

I was so blown away by American culture, as mediated by Esquire, that whatever it said about British culture made little impression on me. So the next day I decided to go and see for myself, and wrote in my diary for 1 July 1966

I went up to the garage to collect my pay, and only got £20. The remainder, for which I had worked overtime, had all gone to the Receiver of Revenue. One might just as well not do overtime at all — the more you do, the less you get… Then, having a couple of hours to spare before starting work, I decided to go to Carnaby Street, the centre of “Swinging London” — where all the kinky clothes shops are, so I could film the “British decadence” for John Aitchison & Co back home. So I took shots of the street name, and Shakespeare looking out of a window, and I was looking around for some kinky gear, when I saw this blonde in a short skirt coming, so I took a shot of her, and then, looking up, who should be beyond her but Brother Roger and Brother Zachary, presumably just back from their trip to Holland, and dressed in pretty kinky gear themselves. Brother Roger was wearing a black courduroy jacket and trousers, and Zach with a real loud sweater. I greeted them, and we hadn’t said two words when a bloke came up, and said he bet I wasn’t really a bus driver (I was in uniform), but was a foreign journalist come to film British decadence. Brother Roger assured him that I was a bus driver, and then this cat, who looked a little bit like Professor Rooks, launched into a long story about a bus driver who got lost and ended up in an asylum. Then he went. I thought he was a friend of Roger’s, but then Brother Roger said, “If he didn’t believe you were a bus driver, he’d never have believed us when we told him what we were.” We all went together to a record shop in Oxford Street, where he and Zach bought a record to send to someone in Holland, and then Roger was talking about our trip to Europe in September, and said we could go and stay in this Dutch monastery for nothing, and then go all over the place from there.

Michael Frayn wrote of a similar encounter in his column in The Observer, At bay in Gear Street:

It’s been hardly possible to get up and down Carnaby Street recently for the great crush of American journalists observing the swinging London scene. I was practically knockled down by a stampede of perspiring correspondents as I stepped out of Galt’s toyshop the other day holding a doll I’d bought for the children.

“Holy heaven, it’s actor Terry Stamp, 26, in mini-wig and P.V.C. spectacles!” screamed the reporter from Time magazine. “And he’s squiring diminutive dolly Cathy McGowan, 22, in an eight-inches-above-the-knee Campari-red skirtlet, spectre-pale make-up, and kinky wobble-as-you-walk celluloid eyelids! I love you, Terry!”

“Are you crazy?” shouted the representative of Status magazine. “That’s Jean Shrimpton in a trouser-suit, carrying Vidal Sassoon in newly-groovy Now-we-are-six gear! Swinging, Shrimp, swinging!”

“No, listen!” cried the Esquire man, reading the label round the dolly’s neck. “This is some new couple altogether called Non Toxic and Fully Washable! Hey, these are two totally unknown faces making the scene, boys.”

At this they all came crowding round, gazing at me and the doll as if they were going to eat us.

“Look at his trousers,” breathed the Chicago Tribune. “Two and a half inches above the shoe!”

Well, they all started shouting questions and trying to photograph me up the leg of my trousers. I gazed at them, stupefied.

“The guy can’t understand,” cried the Wall Street Journal, “Where the hell’s the interpreter? Where’s Jonathan Miller?”

“Leave it to me,” shouted Time magazine. “I know these people’s patois.”

“Greetings British Bird and British Beatle!” he said, very slowly, waving his hands about. “You with it, yes? You making scene, no?”

“I’m not making a scene,” I replied nervously. “I was just suddenly set on by you lot.”

Satire, of course, but I think he described the cross-cultural encounters rather well. A couple of days later, not being in uniform as it was my day off, I found myself in a march to the American Embassy, protesting against the war in Vietnam, with everyone chanting

Hey! Hey! LBJ
How many kids did you kill today?

The following year, however, American culture showed its better side, with the Summer of love in San Francisco. For all its faults and failures, the sentiment of “Make love, not war” was a huge improvement on learning how to control, dominate, force and manipulate other people to do your will.

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure and wear some flowers in your hair warbled Scott McKenzie. All you need is love, responded the British Beatles.

But perhaps The Kinks had the last word: Let’s all drink to the death of a clown.

Just the thoughts of Steve Hayes, 25, in tumble-dried but not ironed London Transport bog-standard issue grey uniform dust coat.