Rewatching the 1997 General Election (bbc iplayer) and memories of it
- Thread starter Elpenor
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Dogsauce
I’ve got Skol but I’m not a Scholar
I wonder if all that initially tongue-in-cheek laddishness and misogyny led us to where we are now with Andrew Tate etc. It felt regressive at the time, even if dressed in irony.
Puddy_Tat
santa paws, do you ever come to the ghetto?
1992 i was in a flat share in south london. can't remember how late i stayed up, but think i had the feeling fairly early on that it wasn't quite going to happen. can't remember if i'd booked the day after off or not. would probably have been fairly gloomy at work. the council i then worked for had got in to a financial mess due to government cuts and was hoping that an incoming labour government would solve the problem. i can't remember how much of that we knew at the time.
1997 i was in lincoln, i volunteered to be poll clerk, then went for a pint after we packed up, then went home to find message on the answer phone to say mum-tat had been taken in to hospital, so had to get ready to head south in the morning, so don't think i watched much of it.
1997 i was in lincoln, i volunteered to be poll clerk, then went for a pint after we packed up, then went home to find message on the answer phone to say mum-tat had been taken in to hospital, so had to get ready to head south in the morning, so don't think i watched much of it.
Monkeygrinder's Organ
Dodgy geezer swilling vapid lager
I think you can trace a line back to all that Loaded/FHM type stuff definitely. Although there are obviously other factors and I suppose that didn't exactly spring from nowhere.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
1992, I was in.....hornsey? Crouchend? Anyway, a comrades house (Suzie's, an American journal iirr), where we were all sure the tories were dead. We had beer. We had whisky. We had fizzy wine! That got depressing quickly. We still drank everything though.1992 , I was living in a flat share in Temple Fortune (near Golders Green) . We had an Election Special, had loads of people around to watch Kinnock romp to victory. That was a shit party
My abiding memory is of Suzie's [?] 8ish [???] year old daughter wandering quickly in and out of the front room where we had collapsed around 4am, saying "mommy, it smells so bad in there." Which was a pretty accurate summation of the next five years.
oryx
Sitting on the bok of the day
One of my abiding memories of 1997 is driving round the Hammersmith gyratory and seeing this. I laughed so hard I nearly crashed the car.
This one was even better:
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
The school I went to didn't have mock elections, or anything much else really, but there were a few NF types. I lost track of most of them, along with most other fellow pupils, but I do know that one indeed remained a cunt. Not necessarily political, but a real mean-minded bastard.
Another, however, who put up the NF posters that came through the door in '79 in his bedroom window, became, according to his Facebook, an enthusiastic Corbynite. His dad, the kind of right-wing Tory that was rare in the neighbourhood, actually ripped the posters down, maybe because afraid of getting the windows put through. The lad had been a mate of mine since junior school, and came to the pub and gigs etc after we all left secondary school the very year of the '79 election, and we all continued to take the piss out of his views. Not having seen him since about 1982, fuck knows why he changed so radically. Life experience I suppose.
RD2003
Got a really fucking shitty attitude
As for 1997, I couldn't believe how many people thought it represented radical change, especially when 'new' Labour had gone out of their way to tell everybody that they weren't going to roll back 'Thatcherism.' Or maybe I could: sheer desperation arising from misplaced optimism.
scalyboy
They’re taking the piss now
I think people were just happy to get rid of the Tories cos it felt like they’d been in power for ever.
I don’t remember ‘New’ Labour explicitly saying they wouldn’t reverse Thatcherism - you may be right tho, I wasn’t paying close attention at the time and of course that is what happened, no annulling anti trade union legislation, PFIs etc.
My memory is of gradual disillusionment for the first 3-4 years cemented by support for US wars.
A lot of new hospitals were built tho
At least no-one who remembers that disillusionment can have any optimism about a Starmer victory. Start off with zero expectations is the best way, as a general strategy for life not just GEs
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
His political diaries are good.
isvicthere?
a.k.a. floppybollocks
Today I have watched - so you don’t have to
the first 6 hours, currently on bbc iplayer. Hat tip to PR1Berske who mentioned this a while ago on another thread
I was a little too young to watch this at the time as I had school the next day but do recall listening on the radio.
What strikes me, watching with 27 years of hindsight, what has changed and what has stayed the same or come round again. The below are a few random observations, having not paid full attention as I was sort of workingat the same time
Sunderland's speedy counting for their quick counting, I suppose it gets them a bit of publicity around the world so why not.
Torbay’s count is described by Dimbleby as looking like a scene from South Pacific (there are a few palm trees etc)
Peter Mandelson uses the phrase “for the many, not the few” which made me chuckle given how Corbyn later used the line
A comment by Neil Kinnock to Mandelson about “I wish you still had your moustache” was priceless
Blair is more than once called a Tory (by a defeated Tory MP) and Labour are accused of being just like the tories
The Tories not agreeing over Europe well that hasn’t changed.
Paddy Pantsdown is still excited about the chance of electoral reform, devolution, and forging progressive politics.
Tories losing seats in London like Croydon North, Brent etc. Presumably those seats gone forever now?
The Tory wipeout in Wales and Scotland is fun, they’re called a “minority English party” by someone
Portillo is interviewed in the studio early on, talked up as a potential new leader, and they look at a dicey dozen of tory ministers who may lose their seats. He isn’t on that list and we all know what happened next. The first glimmer that he may be in trouble is around 2 hours in.
Dimpleby used the words “openly homosexual” to describe Ben Bradshaw who becomes MP for Exeter defeating an openly homophobic Tory candidate. I suppose those words by Dimpleby are very
much of their time.
Not many regional accents at the beeb or on the interviews except for a few plummy Scottish ones who sound like Malcom Rifkind.
Can only recall a few non white reporters including a fresh from Newsround K G-M. Zero diversity in the studio it’s middle aged white men in suits.
They do briefly cover from Glasgow the man who becomes the first Muslim MP, with a brief shot of his speech, but can’t recall anyone else of colour being interviewed.
Definitely a lot more tories in the studio as talking heads but that may be a product of the individual party machines and who was available.
In a somewhat bizarre moment, though not nearly as surreal as Bruce Forsyth at a Thames boat party in the 2015 election, Frank Skinner features a few times as a roving reporter in a helicopter.
Might watch part 2 (8 hours) tomorrow if it’s a quiet day, suspect most of the fun is in the first half though.
I couldn’t find a dedicated thread for 1997 election so perhaps add your own memories and reflections…
Yes, this was the election that produced the book titled, "Were you still up for Portillo?" As for the term "openly homosexual", I´m amazed it was still current as late as 1997. Just shows how one´s memories and impressions of an era can get skewed by time.
I´m going to try to stay up for the coming tory destructo-fest in July.
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