Pucker accent

I suppose one has to be a political anorak to find interest in watching old re-runs of general elections but then growing up in a northern, socialist household with my dad having experienced the hardships of the 1920s, 1930s, indelibly marking him for life and demanding change in a country defined by class and birth right.
He was one of those people who was ideologically drawn to events in Russia (he went so far as learning Russian) where the proletariat  had overthrown the Establishment for communism and there was a new dawn in civilised relations where people would be equal or at least treated fairly.
Of course it was all high jacked by Stalin but the ideal lived on and the sanitised socialist party in Britain began to make progress.


The program I was watching was the 1966 election. Harold Wilson, my hero had been elected in the 1964 election on a small majority and he had called this election to give himself a more governable majority.
I had left the UK in 1961 and having spent a few months living in Holland and, via South Africa arrived in Australia my vision of life was very different to that of living in a grimy northern city.
Never the less I followed the journey of the Labour Party after the defeat of MacMillan with interest and watching the re-run of the election, the mention of all those household names from all three parties, not to mention the media people who were beginning to ingrain  themselves in our psyche.
The old black and white pictures. The rudimentary charts and graphs to display the voting patterns through the night. We felt that we were part of the event, people were taking the trouble to explain tomorrow's result and bit by bit the political jigsaw was coming together.
There was much more trust in the leadership those days even deference as we naively believed that they had our best interests at heart.
Cliff Michelmore, Robert McKenzie,  all pucker BBC types.  Jacket and tie, posh accents and impeccable manners. No wonder we grew up so well trained !!