Waterloo Sunrise: London From the Sixties to Thatcher

John Davis

Princeton University Press 2022

For a few short years in the late 1960s, London challenged New York and Paris as the city to visit. “Swinging London,” as this vision of London was called, saw London become fashionable, sexually liberated, and centered on youth. Waterloo Sunrise by John Davis interrogates this vision of London, arguing that, while some Londoners experienced “Swinging London,” most Londonders barely, if ever, experienced anything like “Swinging London.” Instead, in the sixteen essays that make up Waterloo Sunrise, Davis explores what changes were taking place in London in the 1960s and 1970s.

Waterloo Sunrise begins with an exploration of “Swinging London.” The next three essays look at three developments in London’s retail and culinary landscapes. Essays five to ten focus on changes in housing, conservation, and the increasing opposition to urban planning. The next two essays explore race relations in the 1960s and 1970s. The final four essays explore community action, politics, tourism, and the deindustrialization of London.

Fashion, sex, and food played key roles in the changing London of the 1960s and 1970s. Davis pays close attention to the legalization of strip clubs, the rise and fall of boutiques (focusing on Biba), and a plethora of restaurants. The close attention paid to so many businesses is, at times, exhausting to keep so many individual businesses straight.

A large number of essays look at the changing housing market in London. Initially, most Londoners rented their homes. As the 1960s progressed more and more Londoners desired home ownership, either in gentrified neighborhoods or in the suburbs of Greater London, than the prospect of renting apartments in either council estates or ugly high rises (whose safety was questionable). The transition from renting to ownership also explores the changing culture of the working class. This is explored in the essays on the docks and cab drivers.

A concurrent theme in these essays is a sustained pushback against urban planning from centralized local authorities. In addition to opposition to high rise apartments, many Londoners also opposed tearing down Victorian buildings and removing green space to build office space, roads, and further housing.

A later essay further explores how Londoners became increasingly activist in their communities, often in opposition to local authority. In addition to gentrification and conservation, the new social activism tackled other social issues.

The two most affecting essays in Waterloo Sunrise are about race relations in London. The first, “Containing Racism? The London Experience, 1957-1968,” explores the Notting Hill riots of 1958 amid increasing immigration from the West Indies and official attempts to combat racism. The second essay, “Unquiet Grove: The 1976 Notting Hill Carnival Riot” explores how the attempts to combat racism in the aftermath of the earlier riots largely failed as the children of West Indian immigrants struggled to find success and suffered police harassment. Increasing anger at policing exploded into riot when the police presence at a local popular carnival became too heavy handed to bear.

As London deindustrialized, tourism became an increasingly important economic activity. To increase tourism, especially in the late 1960s, the image of “Swinging London” was employed. This saw Carnaby Street and other streets associated with London fashions and “Swinging London” become tourist destinations as important to tourists as Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London. Growing tourism brought its own problems as, in addition to a chronic shortage of housing, London experienced endemic shortages of hotels. Combined with the large number of young and budget tourists compared to wealthier tourists, tourism in London was controversial. This saw numerous attempts to curb undesirable tourism before tourism became widely accepted.

“Strains of Labour in the Inner City” is a fascinating essay exploring the fortunes of the Labour Party in London in the 1960s and 1970s. For decades, the Labour Party dominated the London political landscape. This dominance led to an increasingly aged and rightwing local leadership that increasingly clashed with community activists. With the Conservative victory in 1968, many of the Labour old guard were swept away, often to be replaced by progressive community activists when Labour surged at the next elections.

Waterloo Sunrise is at first a difficult reading experience. The first essays focus on the minutiae of strip clubs, boutiques, and restaurants. The essays on housing, urban planning, and neighborhoods are at times as focused on the minutiae of its subjects. It is with “Containing Racism” and especially “Unquiet Grove” that Waterloo Sunrise comes into its own. The final essays, and the work as a whole, ultimately becomes a very rewarding reading experience. London has always been a fascinating city, especially so in the 1960s and 1970s.

James Holder holds a BA in English Literature. He lives in Texas.