Looking back on the Trente Glorieuses, the allegedly glorious thirty post-war years until the beginning of the steel crisis in 1975, can of course not only be a review of the now unimaginable wealth of heavy industrial installations during this period.
It is also always a look back at a lost working class culture. And nowhere was this more pronounced than in the U.K..
One photographer who has documented this era in breathtaking pictures is Nick Hedges who was kind enough to allow me to show some of his pictures here.
There are many more on his website: Nick Hedges Photography.
And there was no other band in the late 70s and early 80s that more accurately described and interpreted the decline of this culture than The Jam:
Saturday’s Kids
Saturdays boys live life with insults,
Drink lots of beer and wait for half time results,
Afternoon tea in the light-a-bite, chat up the girls, they
Dig it!
Saturdays girls work in tescos and woolworths,
Wear cheap perfume cause its all they can afford,
Go to discos they drink baby cham talk to jan, in bingo
Accents.
Saturdays kids play one arm bandits,
They never win but that’s not the point is it,
Dip in silver paper when their pints go flat,
How about that, far out!
Drink lots of beer and wait for half time results,
Afternoon tea in the light-a-bite, chat up the girls, they
Dig it!
Saturdays girls work in tescos and woolworths,
Wear cheap perfume cause its all they can afford,
Go to discos they drink baby cham talk to jan, in bingo
Accents.
Saturdays kids play one arm bandits,
They never win but that’s not the point is it,
Dip in silver paper when their pints go flat,
How about that, far out!
Their mums and dads smoke capstan non filters,
Wallpaper lives cause they all die of cancer,
What goes on, what goes wrong.
Wallpaper lives cause they all die of cancer,
What goes on, what goes wrong.
Save up their money for a holiday,
To selsey bill or bracklesham bay,
Think about the future, when they’ll settle down,
Marry the girl next door, with one on the way.
To selsey bill or bracklesham bay,
Think about the future, when they’ll settle down,
Marry the girl next door, with one on the way.
These are the real creatures that time has forgot,
Not given a thought, its the system,
Hate the system, what’s the system?
Not given a thought, its the system,
Hate the system, what’s the system?
Saturdays kids live in council houses,
Wear v-necked shirts and baggy trousers,
Drive cortinas fur trimmed dash boards,
Stains on the seats – in the back of course!
Wear v-necked shirts and baggy trousers,
Drive cortinas fur trimmed dash boards,
Stains on the seats – in the back of course!