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Ghost towns 1981-2021
With the 40th anniversary re-release of the classic commentary on a Britain broken by callous neoliberalism, KEITH FLETT asks if anything really changed
Ghost towns
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JUNE 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the Specials single Ghost Town. It went on to spend three weeks at Number One in the charts in the summer of 1981.
Recorded in Leamington Spa and produced in Tottenham, the single is now part of social history capturing the disaffection and impact of the first years of the 1979 Thatcher government.
It has been re-released to mark the anniversary but its significance goes far wider than the music charts. It speaks to an experience of particularly younger people under a Tory government that is not so different in 2020 despite the passage of four decades.
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From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
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