Friday, May 03, 2019

"The 'Last Rock and Roll Record'"

"Now we can begin to understand why London Calling is such a fiercely political record. It's not because Joe Strummer wanted to re-fight the Spanish Civil War. It's because a generation of affluence had split the English working classes along just the lines laid down by Lennon and McCartney. Affable, pliable, ingratiating working boys had been invited in huge numbers to join the white-collar middle class, which had exploded throughout the postwar years. Moody, fatalistic, reticent working-class boys were increasingly being left behind. By the late '70s, the situation had become dire. Between 1972 and 1982, the working class of England 'polarized,' according to the most comprehensive study of the issue, Goldthorpe's Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain. One cohort still headed up into the service class; but another cohort headed downward into chronic unemployment. The postwar expansion had been accompanied by an idea of relative social mobility—that expanded educational opportunity meant talent would be identified and rewarded, regardless of one's social position. The reality was, however, that England was still, in relative terms, class stagnant. And when its economy stopped expanding at the generous postwar pace, the meritocratic ideal came under enormous pressure. Jobs in the professional elite were now increasingly being filled by the children of the professional elite, a pattern that continued into the '80s and, some data suggests, intensified in the '90s. Put more bluntly, education was no longer a fig leaf; it was a weapon by which service professionals could protect and defend the class status of their own children. Here, in other words, the Lennons and the McCartneys parted ways for good."

In a 2005 Slate article, Stephen Metcalf discusses the Clash.

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