History Shapes Us
History shapes us all, but history is not solely the domain of Kings and Queens, lords and ladies, bishops and high clerics. History is for all of us, and on 8th September the nation marked a major turning point in British history, with the death of a monarch who had reigned for an unprecedented 70 years.
Our history during that 70 years has taken many twists and turns. History is too often defined by conflict, and conflicts are caused by disagreements, or the lack of will to compromise between a small number of politicians. Conflicts come and conflicts go while most of us live on, trying to live in peace.
1950s
In 1952 Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne, and that December an estimated 4,000 people died as a result of a thick smog in London, prompting the Clean Air Act of 1956. Also in 1952, Britain had become an atomic power.
Blackpool FC, my home town team, won the F.A. Cup in 1953, the year of the Coronation, that latter event being celebrated where I now live in Berwick with the opening of Coronation Park. 
There was continuing conflict in Malaya, Korea, and Kenya. There was the Suez Crisis in 1956. It used also to be known as ‘The Second Arab-Israeli War’, but the reference stopped in later decades when we simply lost count. In the same year British spies Burgess and Mclean emerged from the shadows in Moscow.
The first commercial TV broadcast was in 1955. Two years later Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb. I was born in June 1958 and six months later the UK’s first motorway was opened near Preston.
1960s
In the 1960s, British teenagers were freed from conscription, which in part fuelled the art, fashion, and music explosion of the ‘Swinging Sixties’. The contraceptive pill was legalised for all women in 1967, the Abortion Act came into force, and homosexuality was legalised. The following year the Women’s Liberty Movement staged a strike at Ford’s Dagenham plant to campaign for equal pay with the male colleagues.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was followed in 1963, by the disclosure that the British Secretary for War John Profumo was found to be having an affair with a woman who was also seeing a Russian military attaché. In 1965, the death penalty was abolished. In 1969, the ‘Troubles’ began in Northern Ireland.
England’s football team won the World Cup in 1966, a competition for which as hosts they did not need to qualify.
1970s
In 1970 the age of majority (and the voting age) was reduced from 21 to 18. The Equal Pay Act was passed, yet 50 years later women continue to struggle for equality in the workplace. In 1971, decimalisation came into being and two years later the UK joined the European Economic Community.
I went to the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 1976, and lived in Norfolk until 1981 when I moved to Bristol. I staged managed events at UEA for a few years from 1977. It was an incredibly exciting time to be involved in music. Punk Rock had exploded onto the scene in 1976, as youth rebelled against poverty and the lack of opportunity.
Bizarrely, three years later, that contributed to Thatcher’s rise to power in 1979 and she remained in post until 1990. Strikes paralysed the country in the 1978-79 ‘winter of discontent’. In 1979, there was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. There was a significant racist threat across the UK and Rock Against Racism staged events between 1976 and 1982 that helped to curb the threat. I was at the Victoria Park rally in London in 1978 among many other similar rallies.
1980s
The ‘80s opened with riots on the streets in 1981, notably in St. Pauls and Barton Hill in Bristol, Moss Side in Manchester, Toxteth in Liverpool, Handsworth in Birmingham, and Brixton in London. Portrayed in the media as race riots, these were riots about poor housing, hunger, lack of facilities, and the racist attitude of some of our police at that time. In 1981, the women of Greenham Common set up their camp in protest at the siting of US nuclear weapons at the base.
In 1982, I met my wife. Two months later, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and ten weeks after that were retrieved by a British task force. A year-long Miners’ Strike began in 1984, and its impact continues to affect mining communities today.
Live Aid was staged in 1985 in response to extreme famine in Ethiopia, and we brought our new born daughter home just as Status Quo played their first chords. In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down. A year later, having then moved to our house in Sale of 35 years, our son was born at Wythenshawe Hospital.
In 1989, we witnessed the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the apparent death throes of Communism in Europe, and the Internet was born. At that time there seemed to be an atmosphere of hope.
1990s
The ‘90s started with the Poll Tax Riots, which contributed to Thatcher’s downfall in November 1990. I was driving into a petrol station in Cirencester when the news broke of her resignation. I remember phoning my wife for a small gloat. Was ‘hope’ actually being realised? In 1993, the UK joined the European Union, something Thatcher actually wanted to do.
The first Iraq War began in 1991 with the liberation of Kuwait. The Channel Tunnel opened in 1992, the same year that the Bosnian Wars began, and I started my international travels in earnest. That took me to the US and Canada several times, to India in 1996, and across Europe and Scandinavia, and into Russia on two occasions. How life can change!
My Dad died in January 1997. In 1997, Britain handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese. That same year, Blair began the first of his three terms in office. The following year saw the death of Diana Princess of Wales, which temporarily exposed cracks in the Royal personage. I’m sad when a public figure dies but I don’t grieve. That is for people who knew them well. A momentous year continued with devolution for Scotland and Wales, with Northern Ireland following in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement.
2000s
Millennium bug fears having been dispelled for computer users, the new century began with the bursting of the dotcom bubble which caused company collapses across the world. Another type of bug, this time Foot & Mouth disease wreaked havoc across the country. Duncan and I were driving through Northumberland and into Scotland at the time roads were being closed off for the mass burnings of livestock in the fields of the Borders.
The Middle East was in turmoil. The Afghan War began in 2001. Then 9/11 happened, as Saudi Arabian terrorists flew two planes into the iconic Twin Towers in New York, with a further plane hitting the Pentagon in Washington and a fourth crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. I was driving back to my place of work from Sheffield at the time. Also in 2001, ‘Western’ attacks commenced on terrorist cells in Afghanistan. In 2003, Britain joined the USA in invading Iraq and Saddam Hussein was captured, eventually to meet his death by hanging at the hands of his compatriots.
I started my business in 2003. In 2004. The European Union admitted ten new countries. In the same year, Manchester hosted the Commonwealth Games, largely considered to be a catalyst for the growth in importance of the city and following up the rebuilding of the city centre following the IRA bomb in 1996, which we felt from our home six miles away.
2010s
Pro-democracy protests in countries across the Middle East began in 2010 and became known as the Arab Spring. While a number of countries stabilised, others notably, Libya, Syria, and Yemen destabilised and remain conflict zones today. People still suffer in those countries, and it is shameful.
London hosted the 2012 Olympic Games, and my brother Tom was the track official who led the first athletes – the shot putters – into the stadium. My Mum died in January 2013.
In 2014 I started to play the cittern. In 2015, I recorded my debut album ‘Moorscape’ and the rest is history.
Between 2016 and 2018, I travelled on business to Kosovo, Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Mongolia. There are still no-go areas in Kosovo following the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. During the time I was in Kyiv in 2017, a Russian dissident was shot dead on the steps of his hotel, just one block away from mine, and an arms dump in the east of the country exploded, resulted in a ten mile exclusion zone being put into place. Moldova and Georgia now wait to see what Putin’s further imperialist intentions may be. Apparently our deluded government thinks we can sell our chicken to Mongolia, where they have probably the purest meat on the planet.
We had the Brexit vote. I was training export consultants in Kosovo five days after the vote to leave the EU. They thought we were mad. So do I.
2020s
The coronavirus pandemic struck the world in 2020, the year our twin granddaughters were born. They were the brightest spark from a very gloomy year.
The country continues to be in a mess. Fuel bills have been hiked. Sewage is openly pumped into our rivers and the sea. There are more than 2,500 food banks in this, the 6th largest world economy, and they are running out of food. There were just 61 in 2008. The ugly spectres of fascism and racism are back with us, destablising, nasty forces that almost none of us want.
Dysfunctional and deluded career politicians run this once proud nation and scandalously, the new Conservative Prime Minister was elected by 013% of the UK population. Our NHS continues to be sucked into the hands of private industry, and lost tens of thousands of staff due to the insanity of Brexit. What next I wonder?
We moved to Berwick upon Tweed in January. I will retire from the day job in January 2023. Our daughter and her family moved to Hawick last month. Our son and his fiancée are to be married next month and are also in the throes of moving to these parts or somewhere hereabouts. The best of life goes on.
The King has replaced the Queen. The world is a different place from the start of her long reign, and the human race continues to shoot itself in the foot. I genuinely wish King Charles III luck in his new role, but don’t forget that we all have a role to play in making this country and this world a better place.
And I wish you all peace.
John
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