Sadly, protest music is alive and well

There is plenty of nostalgia around in this Jubilee Weekend. Any look back on 60 years brings temptation to think that the past was better than the present. This is what Woody Allen calls ‘golden age’ fallacy, which is defined (in his Midnight in Paris) as an age-old and ‘erroneous notion that a previous time period is better than the one one’s living in.’ This disorder was on show during BBC 2’s Review Show last night, where guests were bemoaning the death of protest music.

 
The panel (dominated by Kirsty Wark and music critic Paul Morley) were discussing BBC 4’s 3 part documentary, Punk Britannia. The first part of this series is available on i-Player and it is worth watching as a piece of cultural – and political – history. You get a sense of Britain in the 1970s: stagnant, culturally, politically and economically.
 
It’s the same story in Dominic Sandbrook’s exhaustive new history Seasons