A minor controversy over a major event arose at the start of Morrissey's career, and a similar experience may soon plague him in the present. Common to both are children, murder and Manchester. What has changed throughout the intervening years is the nature of controversy. What has changed is the nature of those taking offence. It was once the reactionary and the conservative, now it's the radical and the progressive. It was once the old, now it's the young. 'Manchester, so much to answer for,' he sang in 1984, recalling the bodies on Saddleworth Moor from the 1960s of his childhood. The tragedy continued to resonate. That's how the nation grieved back then. It allowed itself to mourn; it allowed itself to be angry. While some events were too sacred to be sung about. 'Suffer Little Children' became a tabloid story, hyped up into a minor controversy; the lyric provided a list of the lost. We will be right by your side, until the day you die.

13 mins 35 secs read

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‘‘It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation,” suggested Kenneth Clark at the conclusion of his 13-part television series, Civilisation, in 1969, “We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.” Events at the time led him to suggest that, as unlikely as it seemed, European civilisation could fall to the barbarians as it had after the fall of Rome when “we got through by the skin of our teeth”. He quoted W.B. Yeats for back-up. It wasn’t that the centre could not hold, it was that there was no longer a centre. Being a self-proclaimed “stick-in-the-mud”, Clark was an odd choice to front the BBC’s ambitious (shot in 130 locations across 11 countries) and expensive (£130,000) project in a season of radicalism and youthful insurrection. Filming proceeded in 1967, the year the Vietnam War was at its deadliest, and global student protest at its peak. The civil rights movement was making headway; the women’s movement was making headlines. In Britain, homosexuality and abortion were legalised.

14 mins 51 secs read

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