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Not everyone looks upon London's new swing as a blessing. For many who treasure an older, quieter London, the haystack hair, the suspiciously brilliant clothes, the chatter about sex and the cheery vulgarity strike an ugly contrast with the stately London that still persists in the quieter squares of Belgravia or in such peaceful suburbs as Richmond. They argue that credulity and immorality, together with a sophisticated taste for the primitive, are symptoms of decadence. The Daily Telegraph's Anthony Lejeune two weeks ago decried "aspects of the contemporary British scene which have not merely surprised the outside world but which increasingly provoke its contempt and derision. To call them symptoms of decadence may be facile as an explanation, but it has a disturbing ring of truth." Tradition-loving Londoners like to cite John Ruskin's eloquent description of 16th and 17th century Venice, another aging empire built on maritime power: "In the ingenuity of indulgence, in the varieties of vanity, Venice surpassed the cities of Christendom, as of old she had surpassed them in fortitude and devotion."
The comparison is fair, if not perfectly apt. Britain has lost an empire and lightened a pound. In the process, it has also recovered a lightness of heart lost during the weighty centuries of world leadership. Much of the world still thinks of Britain as the land of Victorianism, but Victorianism was only a temporary aberration in the British character, which is basically less inhibited than most. London today is in many ways like the cheerful, violent, lusty town of William Shakespeare, one of whose happiest songs is about "a lover and his lass, that o'er the green cornfield did pass." It is no coincidence that critics describe London's vibrant theater as being in the midst of a second Elizabethan era, that one number on the Rolling Stones' newest LP is a mock-Elizabethan ballad with a harpsichord and dulcimer for accompaniment, or that Italian Novelist Alberto Mo ravia describes the British cinema today as "undergoing a renaissance."
Bloodless Revolution. Today, Britain is in the midst of a bloodless revolution. This time, those who are giving way are the old Tory-Liberal Establishment that ruled the Empire from the clubs along Pall Mall and St. James's, the still-powerful financial City of London, the church and Oxbridge. In their stead is rising a new and surprising leadership community; economists, professors, actors, photographers, singers, admen, TV executives and writers—a swinging meritocracy. What they have in common is that they are mostly under 40 (Harold Wilson, at 50 the youngest P.M. of the century, is referred to as "good old 'arold") and come from the ranks of the British lower middle and working class, which never before could find room at the top. Says Sociologist Richard Hoggart, 47, himself a slum orphan from industrial Leeds: "A new group of people is emerging into society, creating a kind of classlessness and a verve which has not been seen before."