0:00:22 > 0:00:27MUSIC ON RADIO
0:00:29 > 0:00:31- RADIO JINGLE:- "24 hours a day!"
0:00:31 > 0:00:36- RADIO PRESENTER:- 'And here's another one. Wivenhoe vet, Telford Pluck, is
0:00:36 > 0:00:40'offering Gloatpack - Botox for dogs.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43'Whatever next. You'll remember that last year Dr Pluck launched a range
0:00:43 > 0:00:48'of aniseed-scented canine mascaras and poochy fragrances
0:00:48 > 0:00:53'that resulted in him being investigated by the RSPCA and OFCOM.
0:00:53 > 0:00:58'Now he's facing allegations that he's cosmeticised Karlita,
0:00:58 > 0:01:01an award-winning Bedlington terrier hailing from Thorpe-le-Soken,
0:01:01 > 0:01:04with Botox that had been pre-loved...
0:01:04 > 0:01:06Ooh! Ha-ha!
0:01:06 > 0:01:10- RADIO ADVERTISEMENT:- 'Pleasure yourself with a visual brilliance facial, plus
0:01:10 > 0:01:14a life-style size oriental scalp grift with pink hair
0:01:14 > 0:01:17at Bert Heather Plaza,
0:01:17 > 0:01:20Felsted's unmissable one-stop wellness and serenity hub.'
0:01:27 > 0:01:31All places, all counties are various.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35All counties, all places are, equally, defined by a shorthand
0:01:35 > 0:01:39that denies that variety and reduces them to cliche.
0:01:39 > 0:01:43The golden age of the flat hat and whippet is long gone...
0:01:43 > 0:01:45CHORAL SINGING
0:01:48 > 0:01:53..yet in some incurious recess of the collective imagination,
0:01:53 > 0:01:57Lancashire still swarms with these items, just as Merseyside
0:01:57 > 0:02:01is exclusively populated by cheeky traders in hubcaps,
0:02:01 > 0:02:04and the Forest of Dean by incestuous illiterates.
0:02:04 > 0:02:05Norfolk too.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09And we know for a fact that Bristol's population is entirely
0:02:09 > 0:02:14composed of piratical slavers searching for sinus drainage.
0:02:14 > 0:02:16And so it goes droolingly on.
0:02:16 > 0:02:17Oh, and I forgot the Welsh.
0:02:17 > 0:02:21FOG HORN BLASTS
0:02:24 > 0:02:28In the recent past, nowhere in Britain has suffered these - what,
0:02:28 > 0:02:33institutional lies, blood libels, tribal slanders,
0:02:33 > 0:02:37these expressions of placism or even of racism -
0:02:37 > 0:02:38to the extent that Essex has.
0:02:45 > 0:02:47Look around.
0:02:47 > 0:02:52Look - all you can see is piles of bling as big as slag heaps.
0:02:52 > 0:02:58Look around. All you can see is platoons of reality TV cretins
0:02:58 > 0:03:02who are barely capable of reading their own newspaper column.
0:03:02 > 0:03:06Look! Wall-to-wall fuchsia pink stretch-limos,
0:03:06 > 0:03:09villas with fibreglass columns
0:03:09 > 0:03:13and books by the yard, cherished numberplates,
0:03:13 > 0:03:15the victims of vertical tanning.
0:03:21 > 0:03:27Totally respected businessmen with interests in the import/export,
0:03:27 > 0:03:28gusset therapy,
0:03:28 > 0:03:31leisure and glamour sectors.
0:03:36 > 0:03:39Look! Surgically-enhanced slappers.
0:03:39 > 0:03:42Look! The friends of Richard Desmond.
0:03:42 > 0:03:44Look! Footballers' cast-offs.
0:03:52 > 0:03:53Look!
0:03:53 > 0:03:58Exclusive nightclubs, well-exclusive clubs, diamond geezers,
0:03:58 > 0:04:00diamond geezerettes,
0:04:00 > 0:04:02molls' blokes' shooters,
0:04:02 > 0:04:054x4s with tinted windows,
0:04:05 > 0:04:07and bullbars, natch.
0:04:13 > 0:04:15Look! Honest-to-goodness, salt-of-the-earth,
0:04:15 > 0:04:18straight-as-the-day-is-long cab drivers who are personally
0:04:18 > 0:04:23willing to personally deliver natural justice, in person,
0:04:23 > 0:04:26by personally chewing the lungs out of teenage joyriders.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28MUSIC FROM RADIO
0:04:31 > 0:04:35- RADIO PRESENTER:- 'Have you heard that Braintree oldster Tallis Snutch,
0:04:35 > 0:04:3979, it says here in the paper, got a nasty shock
0:04:39 > 0:04:42when he bit into an egg mayonnaise sandwich?
0:04:42 > 0:04:44He found a two pound coin.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48Quipped Tallis, "You could say it's my lucky day,
0:04:48 > 0:04:51"but I've only got the one good tooth left
0:04:51 > 0:04:53"and I've come close to breaking him.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56"So I've got trauma-related issues!
0:04:56 > 0:04:59"Oh, I've got trauma-related issues, haven't I?"
0:05:01 > 0:05:04Look! Security apes' corrugated necks.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07Hair extension executives.
0:05:07 > 0:05:08Epping. Nick Buckles.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10Theydon boys, Dagenham girls,
0:05:10 > 0:05:14Amy Childs, Blingford, Chigwell -
0:05:14 > 0:05:19possibly the only town in the world named after a ventrical hairpiece.
0:05:19 > 0:05:21This Essex certainly exists.
0:05:26 > 0:05:30It's a sort of colony of London, a dependency.
0:05:30 > 0:05:32The East End gone a-roving.
0:05:32 > 0:05:37There's nothing very new about this wearisomely familiar Essex.
0:05:37 > 0:05:39It's as old as the hills, or the marshes.
0:05:43 > 0:05:45It belongs to the long tradition of Essex being
0:05:45 > 0:05:50shaped by its closeness to London - specifically by its closeness
0:05:50 > 0:05:52to what were the poorest parts of London.
0:05:53 > 0:05:56The London that bore the brunt of the malodorous stench
0:05:56 > 0:05:59carried on the prevailing westerly.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02Essex provided refuge for generations
0:06:02 > 0:06:04of what used to be called Cockneys.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07That refuge has taken many forms.
0:06:07 > 0:06:11Among the most dominant were essays in bucolic philanthropy.
0:06:12 > 0:06:16These piles are all that remain of a social experiment.
0:06:16 > 0:06:21They once supported a jetty, rather grandiosely named Hadleigh Quay.
0:06:24 > 0:06:28It belonged to the Salvation Army Land and Industrial Colony,
0:06:28 > 0:06:31which William Booth, founder of the Army
0:06:31 > 0:06:35and a figure from the Old Testament, established here in 1891.
0:06:39 > 0:06:41The purpose of these 3,000 acres was,
0:06:41 > 0:06:45according to Booth's supporter Rider Haggard,
0:06:45 > 0:06:48the author of She and King Solomon's Mines,
0:06:48 > 0:06:53"To supply a place where broken men of bad habits might be reformed
0:06:53 > 0:06:56"and ultimately sent out to situations
0:06:56 > 0:06:58"or as emigrants to Canada."
0:07:06 > 0:07:10The means by which such souls, destitute, drunk, delinquent,
0:07:10 > 0:07:15might achieve salvation was, as usual, manual labour and fresh air.
0:07:17 > 0:07:21The colony claimed a 91% success rate.
0:07:21 > 0:07:25What that meant and how that figure was arrived at are unclear.
0:07:26 > 0:07:29At any time, 300 or so men
0:07:29 > 0:07:32would have been living in corrugated iron barracks.
0:07:32 > 0:07:36They worked in a brickworks, a pottery and a toy factory.
0:07:36 > 0:07:38There was a dairy.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45Middle white pigs, cattle, and horses were bred.
0:07:45 > 0:07:48It was among the first farms in Britain to introduce
0:07:48 > 0:07:51Wyandotte chicken from North America.
0:07:51 > 0:07:55There were greenhouses, orchards, potato fields.
0:07:58 > 0:08:01At this quay, the colony's produce
0:08:01 > 0:08:04was loaded onto barges for London markets.
0:08:04 > 0:08:08Bricks, vegetables, fruit, hay for the thousands of horses
0:08:08 > 0:08:11who caused London's perpetual traffic jam
0:08:11 > 0:08:15and who provided something to put on your rhubarb instead of custard.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22Returning barges carried metal scrap to be turned into toys
0:08:22 > 0:08:26and slaughterhouse blubber to oil machinery.
0:08:26 > 0:08:29There were many such piers and quays in Essex.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35The riverine traffic was immense and profitable.
0:08:35 > 0:08:37So profitable that landowners dug
0:08:37 > 0:08:40private canals to gain access to this great highway.
0:08:56 > 0:09:00William Booth's critics mocked him as the modern Moses
0:09:00 > 0:09:04and claimed that the colony offered slavery rather than salvation,
0:09:04 > 0:09:07and that men packed off to the far posts of the Empire
0:09:07 > 0:09:10were actually subjected to transportation.
0:09:13 > 0:09:17The Hadleigh Colony was exceptional in its extent,
0:09:17 > 0:09:21and in having at its centre a medieval castle,
0:09:21 > 0:09:25which John Constable had painted in 1829 with his usual licence.
0:09:38 > 0:09:42It was, however, otherwise entirely typical of its age.
0:09:42 > 0:09:47Agrarian endeavour and communality were commonplace panaceas
0:09:47 > 0:09:51in that era of anti-urbanism, whose major architectural expression
0:09:51 > 0:09:54was the First Garden City of Letchworth.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04They were particularly commonplace in Essex.
0:10:04 > 0:10:06In a showy act of expiation,
0:10:06 > 0:10:10Frederick Charrington, heir to the brewery fortune,
0:10:10 > 0:10:14renounced beer and founded a teetotal community
0:10:14 > 0:10:17on Osea Island in the Blackwater estuary,
0:10:17 > 0:10:21a community from which the chances of escape were lessened by the fact
0:10:21 > 0:10:24that the only access was across a causeway.
0:10:30 > 0:10:34A few miles away, the soap magnate Joseph Fels financed
0:10:34 > 0:10:37a farm for the unemployed on the Dengie peninsula.
0:10:37 > 0:10:43Fabian Beatrice Webb dismissed Fels as a "decidedly vulgar little Jew."
0:10:43 > 0:10:47She was merely manifesting the knee-jerk anti-Semitism
0:10:47 > 0:10:51which a chapter of the English Left displays to this day
0:10:51 > 0:10:54in its enthusiasm for Palestine and Islam.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56There's more of this to come.
0:11:01 > 0:11:04Fels employed the young Charles Holden,
0:11:04 > 0:11:06a devotee of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman.
0:11:06 > 0:11:09who would become one of the greatest of English architects,
0:11:09 > 0:11:12the designer of the Belgrave Hospital in Kennington,
0:11:12 > 0:11:14London University's Senate House
0:11:14 > 0:11:18and many distinguished stations on the Piccadilly Line,
0:11:18 > 0:11:20to build a group of farm cottages.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27Holden belonged to a school of one - the school of Holden.
0:11:27 > 0:11:29It was a good school.
0:11:32 > 0:11:36CAR RADIO: '61 Fahrenheit, just a light or moderate west or north...'
0:11:36 > 0:11:37MEADES CHANGES CHANNEL
0:11:37 > 0:11:42'On the run shoplifters Kimella Wince and Jason-Justin Sleath,
0:11:42 > 0:11:46'once described as the Bonnie and Clyde of South Woodham Ferrers,
0:11:46 > 0:11:48'have turned themselves in. Hooray!
0:11:48 > 0:11:52'According to Southend Police spokesperson Donnalynn Cattle,
0:11:52 > 0:11:56'they had been lying low in a bungalow beside the A13!
0:11:56 > 0:11:58'Who would have known?
0:11:58 > 0:12:03'But were increasingly worried by the lion in the next door garden!
0:12:03 > 0:12:05'Where was that, then?!'
0:12:07 > 0:12:11There were further communes at Ashingdon, Forest Gate, Althorne,
0:12:11 > 0:12:15and most notably at Purleigh, outside the town of Maldon.
0:12:17 > 0:12:21Christian nonconformity was powerful round 1900.
0:12:21 > 0:12:23The incipient Labour party,
0:12:23 > 0:12:27its founder Keir Hardie was MP for West Ham, which was then in Essex,
0:12:27 > 0:12:32owed little to Marx and much to chapel, evangelism,
0:12:32 > 0:12:36and a distaste for international finance, i.e. Jewry.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40It was also indebted to what Ramsay MacDonald called,
0:12:40 > 0:12:44"Man's creative, utopia-building faculty."
0:12:45 > 0:12:48The Tolstoyan settlement which was situated at Purleigh,
0:12:48 > 0:12:51a few miles from Maldon, was Christian,
0:12:51 > 0:12:54though not attached to any particular denomination.
0:12:54 > 0:12:57It was set up in 1895 and was described,
0:12:57 > 0:13:02not altogether amiably, as "a Suez Canal to the Kingdom of Heaven."
0:13:13 > 0:13:16This colony was an offshoot of the Brotherhood Church,
0:13:16 > 0:13:19which had met at a Salvation Army tabernacle.
0:13:20 > 0:13:22The communards led the simple life,
0:13:22 > 0:13:25that's to say the highly uncomfortable life.
0:13:25 > 0:13:32Ascetic, pacifist, socialist, vegetarian, fruitarian, optimistic.
0:13:32 > 0:13:35Such escapists were ill-equipped for survival.
0:13:35 > 0:13:38The colony's founder, John Kenworthy,
0:13:38 > 0:13:42was a typical veteran of intertwined utopian cults.
0:13:42 > 0:13:45The same names invariably crop up.
0:13:45 > 0:13:48There were as many cults as there were cultists.
0:13:48 > 0:13:51New Harmony, the Self-Supporting Village Society,
0:13:51 > 0:13:57the Redemption Society, the Ham Common Group, Fourierism, Chartism
0:13:57 > 0:14:01and its offshoots, the Cokelers, Owenism...
0:14:04 > 0:14:08One year you belong to Ruskin's Guild of St George,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11the next year your master is Edward Bellamy,
0:14:11 > 0:14:14then on to Henry George and land reform, then the teachings
0:14:14 > 0:14:18of Tolstoy, a great novelist transformed almost unwittingly
0:14:18 > 0:14:23into a naive shaman whose most celebrated disciple was Gandhi,
0:14:23 > 0:14:28of whom Winston Churchill wrote, "Mr Gandhi is a seditious,
0:14:28 > 0:14:30"Middle Temple lawyer posing as a fakir."
0:14:32 > 0:14:36The Purleigh colony offered shelter to, among others,
0:14:36 > 0:14:42many Doukhobors, proselytising Georgian fundamentalist vegetarians
0:14:42 > 0:14:46who rejected the Bible, save for the gospels, and who scorned icons.
0:14:47 > 0:14:50Tolstoy championed their cause.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53They fled tsarist persecution.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57Many of them ended up in British Columbia.
0:14:57 > 0:15:01Neither they nor the community which welcomed them has left
0:15:01 > 0:15:06any trace on this earth, which was, apparently, insufficiently heavenly.
0:15:08 > 0:15:10That is the perennial problem of utopia.
0:15:12 > 0:15:16Because it tends to reject the poison called materialism,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19it is physically frail.
0:15:19 > 0:15:23Literally. Its makeshift buildings hardly outlive the departing,
0:15:23 > 0:15:26factionally-riven, embittered communards.
0:15:26 > 0:15:32Tolstoy's friend, biographer and translator Aylmer Maude noted that,
0:15:32 > 0:15:35"Every movement attracts some ill-balanced people.
0:15:35 > 0:15:37"There was much insanity at Purleigh.
0:15:40 > 0:15:41"A queer colony."
0:15:45 > 0:15:49Such places are also intellectually frail because their adherents
0:15:49 > 0:15:53vainly presume human perfection, human goodness.
0:15:53 > 0:15:59They are victims of angelism. They are eternal Miss World contestants.
0:15:59 > 0:16:02They turn the other cheek. Mistake.
0:16:02 > 0:16:06They subscribe to the most vapid of ideologies, pacifism,
0:16:06 > 0:16:10and to the most delusory, conscientious objection,
0:16:10 > 0:16:13a head-in-sand form of cowardice.
0:16:16 > 0:16:20Another decade, another communal experiment.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23There are no material remains of the Q Camp,
0:16:23 > 0:16:28established at Hawkspur Green near Braintree in 1936.
0:16:28 > 0:16:32Its legacy, rather, is in its ideas and practices.
0:16:32 > 0:16:36Regarded then as eccentric, even as dangerous,
0:16:36 > 0:16:39they would become mainstream 40 or so years later.
0:16:43 > 0:16:45The tough love and self-governance
0:16:45 > 0:16:47pioneered at this therapeutic community
0:16:47 > 0:16:50were to become widely employed in the treatment
0:16:50 > 0:16:54of addictions in adults and antisocial behaviour in children.
0:16:54 > 0:16:58The men behind the Q Camp movement were David Wills,
0:16:58 > 0:16:59a former borstal housemaster,
0:16:59 > 0:17:04who had become sceptical about the methods used in such institutions,
0:17:04 > 0:17:07and the psychiatrist Norman Glaister,
0:17:07 > 0:17:10a member of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry,
0:17:10 > 0:17:16a non-militaristic version of the Boy Scouts, all tents and logging.
0:17:16 > 0:17:20Glaister had founded the Grith Fyrd movement of camps for the unemployed
0:17:20 > 0:17:24and was involved in the Suffolk progressive school Priory Gate
0:17:24 > 0:17:27which championed nudity and self-expression
0:17:27 > 0:17:30over discipline and academic enterprise.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34It was run by a former military vet, self-taught psychologist
0:17:34 > 0:17:37and inventor of something called a Frigidity Machine
0:17:37 > 0:17:41"to unblock primal libidinal energy."
0:17:41 > 0:17:45This was Theodore Faithfull, the great diva's grandfather.
0:17:45 > 0:17:52# I walk along the street of sorrow
0:17:52 > 0:17:57# The boulevard of broken dreams... #
0:18:00 > 0:18:03Three quarters of a century on from the Q Camp at Hawkspur,
0:18:03 > 0:18:07the same unsentimental philanthropic rehabilitation
0:18:07 > 0:18:09of the drug-dependent and the homeless
0:18:09 > 0:18:13is undertaken at the Welcome Centre in Ilford.
0:18:13 > 0:18:17The architect is the admirable Peter Barber, whose neo-modernism
0:18:17 > 0:18:21echoes not merely the forms of first-generation modernism,
0:18:21 > 0:18:24but also its social purpose.
0:18:26 > 0:18:29This is what early therapeutic communities would have built
0:18:29 > 0:18:31had they enjoyed the means,
0:18:31 > 0:18:34as the Peckham eugenicists did in south London.
0:18:34 > 0:18:37The intention of this architecture,
0:18:37 > 0:18:39derived ultimately from the Enlightenment,
0:18:39 > 0:18:43was to condition its users, to bring them health and happiness,
0:18:43 > 0:18:48Aertex and athleticism. Moral improvement might be affected
0:18:48 > 0:18:51by medicine balls and sunlight and whiteness.
0:18:51 > 0:18:56White signified purity, cleanliness. Its importance was symbolic.
0:18:56 > 0:19:01It is as far as you can get from the blackness of the 19th century,
0:19:01 > 0:19:05the blackness of ash, soot, tar, smut, smoke,
0:19:05 > 0:19:07and stinging particulates.
0:19:13 > 0:19:17Rectilinear rigour, white render, copious glass.
0:19:17 > 0:19:20These were the trinity of architectural progress,
0:19:20 > 0:19:24and supposedly of moral progress, in the earlier 20th century.
0:19:25 > 0:19:29The proposition that our surroundings can improve us
0:19:29 > 0:19:34is, of course, unprovable. It's a matter of faith, no more or less.
0:19:34 > 0:19:38However, better surely to try than not to try.
0:19:38 > 0:19:41Even if humankind, more responsive to the stick,
0:19:41 > 0:19:44shows itself to be eternally ungrateful
0:19:44 > 0:19:47to carrot-wielding architects full of good intentions.
0:19:49 > 0:19:53And even if buildings have no beneficial behavioural effects,
0:19:53 > 0:19:54it is surely preferable
0:19:54 > 0:19:58that they are made with passionate intelligence, craft,
0:19:58 > 0:20:02and an eye for beauty, rather than with clumsy illiteracy
0:20:02 > 0:20:04and a fawning accessibility.
0:20:04 > 0:20:09Accessibility means nothing more than being comprehensible to morons.
0:20:09 > 0:20:14# I heard the streets were paved with gold... #
0:20:16 > 0:20:20CAR RADIO: 'And finally, animals at an animal sanctuary near Harwich
0:20:20 > 0:20:21'are behaving like real animals,
0:20:21 > 0:20:26'according to Harwich's lead bestiality monitor, Doug Loadshedder.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29'Doug, apparently, has proposed a controversial scheme
0:20:29 > 0:20:34'to chemically castrate repeat offender sanctuary animals.
0:20:34 > 0:20:38'They're alleged to have performed amorous animal antics.
0:20:38 > 0:20:42'In Doug's opinion, it's the llamas who are the worst.
0:20:42 > 0:20:46'As he says, "Llamas are nothing but wolves in sheep's clothing."
0:20:46 > 0:20:49DJ LAUGHS 'Here's Queen.'
0:20:53 > 0:20:56Britain's pre-war resistance to modernism has been
0:20:56 > 0:21:01greatly exaggerated by both its supporters and its detractors.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04The supporters find, in its supposed rarity,
0:21:04 > 0:21:09a reason to castigate the country for its architectural backwardness,
0:21:09 > 0:21:13social conservatism and cultural timidity.
0:21:17 > 0:21:21The detractors dissemble what is essentially an aesthetic antipathy.
0:21:21 > 0:21:25They don't like the look of it, so they huff and they puff,
0:21:25 > 0:21:29and they clamber up to what they consider to be the moral high ground
0:21:29 > 0:21:33in order to claim that it was socially disastrous,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37that it was imposed on unwilling council tenants, which it wasn't.
0:21:37 > 0:21:42That it was foreign, which, as we shall see, is moot.
0:21:42 > 0:21:46That it was totalitarian, which, in a way, it was.
0:21:49 > 0:21:55Modernism is, anyway, merely a convenient, if lazy, shorthand.
0:21:55 > 0:21:59There were numerous strains of modernism. Modern isms.
0:21:59 > 0:22:02That plurality is abundantly evident in Essex.
0:22:13 > 0:22:18Tomas Bata was the scion of a family of Moravian cobblers.
0:22:18 > 0:22:21He brought American industrial methods to shoe manufacture.
0:22:22 > 0:22:27He believed that humankind should be well-shod, cheaply.
0:22:27 > 0:22:32He believed that his workers should be well-housed, cheaply.
0:22:32 > 0:22:37The company he founded at Zlin, in what is now the Czech Republic,
0:22:37 > 0:22:39expanded internationally.
0:22:39 > 0:22:43He was a utopian, a paternalistic utopian
0:22:43 > 0:22:46who believed that in order to make the world a better place
0:22:46 > 0:22:48you must first make money.
0:22:48 > 0:22:53No point in setting up as a secular saint unless you're stinking rich.
0:22:54 > 0:22:59If utopia is to be sustainable, it must be founded in capital.
0:22:59 > 0:23:03Otherwise it descends into the slavery called Communism.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07Bata globalised the 19th-century industrial village,
0:23:07 > 0:23:11dressing it in the modernist garb of the 1920s and '30s.
0:23:11 > 0:23:14What was called international modernism
0:23:14 > 0:23:19wasn't truly international... it differed according to nation.
0:23:19 > 0:23:22International in this context was code,
0:23:22 > 0:23:25a pejorative synonym for Jewish.
0:23:26 > 0:23:31The Bata factory, the Bata hotel, the Bata hostel,
0:23:31 > 0:23:37the Bata cinema, the Bata clinic, the Bata community centre,
0:23:37 > 0:23:42the Bata workers' houses, which were indeed designed by Czech architects,
0:23:42 > 0:23:46Frantisek Gahura and Vladimir Karfik.
0:23:46 > 0:23:49Nothing looked remotely English.
0:23:50 > 0:23:55The buildings' proportions, the axial planning, the rows of poplars,
0:23:55 > 0:24:01the cherry trees, they add up to a site that is almost exotic.
0:24:01 > 0:24:04Further, there was something cultish about Bata.
0:24:04 > 0:24:07It was isolated, autonomous.
0:24:09 > 0:24:11Workers were sent on pilgrimages to Zlin,
0:24:11 > 0:24:18as though it were Mecca or Santiago de Compostela or Benares.
0:24:18 > 0:24:20At home were expected to join in.
0:24:20 > 0:24:26Sports competitions, gardening competitions, Moravian folk dancing,
0:24:26 > 0:24:27Moravian folk singing.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31One man's heaven on earth is another's collective hell.
0:24:37 > 0:24:43In the 1980s, the Bata company elected to cease manufacture here
0:24:43 > 0:24:47in favour of Asian countries where labour costs were minimal.
0:24:47 > 0:24:49Not so paternalistic after all.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54It was a miniature single industry town
0:24:54 > 0:24:57and a single industry is a precarious foundation.
0:25:02 > 0:25:05At Mistley, a succession of single industries failed.
0:25:05 > 0:25:08Port, spa, brickfield, maltings.
0:25:09 > 0:25:13They bequeathed to what is little more than a village
0:25:13 > 0:25:16a pile-up of houses, oasts, quays, inns,
0:25:16 > 0:25:19and the beguiling remnants of a church.
0:25:20 > 0:25:22- CAR RADIO:- 'You're in for a treat,
0:25:22 > 0:25:24'but lots of other treats, of course...'
0:25:25 > 0:25:27'Five years ago,
0:25:27 > 0:25:30'human outsourcing engineer Digby Goodswine from Kelvedon,
0:25:30 > 0:25:33'good old Kelvedon, lost his sense of smell
0:25:33 > 0:25:36'in a tragic leaving party incident. Aww.
0:25:36 > 0:25:41'Well, now Digby, 39, a keen amateur surgeon, has operated on himself,
0:25:41 > 0:25:43'to install a device in his nose
0:25:43 > 0:25:46'which has restored his sense of smell.
0:25:47 > 0:25:50'So successful is it that he has applied for a patent
0:25:50 > 0:25:55'and intends to go into production with Third Nostril, as he calls it.
0:25:55 > 0:25:57'Would you Adam-and-Eve it?
0:25:57 > 0:26:00'And what's his favourite smell, now that the old olfactory gear
0:26:00 > 0:26:02'is no longer on the blink?
0:26:02 > 0:26:06'He says he'd like to pretend it was the nape of partner Perietta's neck.
0:26:06 > 0:26:09'Aww! But if he's telling the whole truth and nothing but,
0:26:09 > 0:26:13'it's got to be a sizzling full Spanish with extra hot chorizo!
0:26:13 > 0:26:14'Hey, arriba!'
0:26:18 > 0:26:23At Alresford, there's a wooden house built by the firm of WH Colt.
0:26:24 > 0:26:26William Colt was a German immigrant
0:26:26 > 0:26:29who changed his name to that of a gun.
0:26:29 > 0:26:34He began prefabricating wooden, kit-form poultry sheds in 1919.
0:26:34 > 0:26:38Soldiers returning from World War One were entitled to grants
0:26:38 > 0:26:40to establish smallholdings.
0:26:40 > 0:26:44They used Colt's poultry sheds as their homes.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47- Bugger the chickens. - SHRILL SQUAWK
0:26:47 > 0:26:51This encouraged Colt to prefabricate first bungalows
0:26:51 > 0:26:54and then houses which demanded professional construction.
0:27:00 > 0:27:02In the alphabet of inter-wars building,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04Colt is succeeded by Crittall.
0:27:05 > 0:27:08FH Crittall was a Braintree ironmonger who,
0:27:08 > 0:27:14if he didn't invent the metal window frame, certainly popularised it.
0:27:14 > 0:27:16The first houses that the Crittall company
0:27:16 > 0:27:20built for its workers in 1918, have some claim to be
0:27:20 > 0:27:23the earliest modern movement buildings in Britain.
0:27:23 > 0:27:25Maybe.
0:27:25 > 0:27:28Crittall windows would become emblematic
0:27:28 > 0:27:30of modernism in its British guise.
0:27:31 > 0:27:35As the windows conquered the land, Crittalls moved to a new factory
0:27:35 > 0:27:38on what would today be called a greenfield site,
0:27:38 > 0:27:42and around it they built the metal window kingdom of happiness,
0:27:42 > 0:27:44a flat-roofed heaven on earth
0:27:44 > 0:27:49for their ever-expanding workforce, whose members were called pioneers.
0:27:51 > 0:27:54They might equally have been known as willing guinea pigs.
0:27:54 > 0:27:57Here was yet another social laboratory.
0:27:57 > 0:28:02This time with a department store, a farm, an abattoir,
0:28:02 > 0:28:07a bakery and England's largest village hall.
0:28:07 > 0:28:11The promise of a house with electric light and inside toilets attracted
0:28:11 > 0:28:15workers from East End slums and from Scottish and Welsh mining towns.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19Further, the village was of course
0:28:19 > 0:28:21an advertisement for the company's products.
0:28:24 > 0:28:28At the heart of it was Manors, the house occupied
0:28:28 > 0:28:31by the philanthropic and paternalistic Crittalls,
0:28:31 > 0:28:35whose workers were their extended family, their children.
0:28:37 > 0:28:39Needless to say, joining in was compulsory.
0:28:39 > 0:28:44Play was work. Obligatory activities abounded.
0:28:44 > 0:28:48The full horror of team spirit was enjoyed by all.
0:28:54 > 0:28:58'Look, it says here, Moist Groin guitarist Stafford Prance
0:28:58 > 0:29:00'is facing an industrial tribunal.
0:29:00 > 0:29:03'Former employee Benita Halfhead, 23,
0:29:03 > 0:29:07'a junior commis chef at the guitar hero's Great Dunmow mansion,
0:29:07 > 0:29:13'alleges that she was wrongfully dismissed. Don't they all?
0:29:13 > 0:29:17'Benita suffers from Spackman Brock syndrome. Don't know that one.
0:29:17 > 0:29:19'It makes her dribble uncontrollably.
0:29:19 > 0:29:24'The rock legend was said to be concerned about environmental damage
0:29:24 > 0:29:26'and that food contamination could lead to the cancellation
0:29:26 > 0:29:30'of Groin's forthcoming tour of Iceland. Get your tickets now.'
0:29:30 > 0:29:32DJ LAUGHS
0:29:36 > 0:29:39Although the name Crittall became well-known,
0:29:39 > 0:29:41the horizontally emphatic model
0:29:41 > 0:29:44which was the firm's most identifiable product
0:29:44 > 0:29:46was nicknamed the Daily Mail Window
0:29:46 > 0:29:48because it was popularised by means
0:29:48 > 0:29:50of that paper's Ideal Home Exhibition.
0:29:53 > 0:29:57But while the Daily Mail goes from strength to strength,
0:29:57 > 0:29:59bravely providing exclusive coverage
0:29:59 > 0:30:01of the bimbocracy flaunting its curves,
0:30:01 > 0:30:05and holding to account the most powerful in the land,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08Middle England's favourite window maker got defenestrated.
0:30:10 > 0:30:12Eventually, it refenestrated -
0:30:12 > 0:30:17same name, different company, and once again thriving.
0:30:24 > 0:30:29In 1934, an exhibition of prototype houses was staged near Romford.
0:30:29 > 0:30:32Utopia is invariably rendered malodorous
0:30:32 > 0:30:34by the stench of compliance.
0:30:34 > 0:30:37The Gidea Park Modern Homes Exhibition
0:30:37 > 0:30:41was described by Noel Carrington, the book designer
0:30:41 > 0:30:46and brother of Dora, as "deplorable - as shocking a jumble of styles
0:30:46 > 0:30:50"and roof levels as ever were seen together."
0:30:55 > 0:30:59The regimented uniformity that Carrington looked for in vain
0:30:59 > 0:31:03was the characteristic most prized by those who hoped to improve
0:31:03 > 0:31:06the world through design and planning.
0:31:06 > 0:31:11The free-booting individualism of the 19th century was lambasted.
0:31:11 > 0:31:15Architectural dirigisme was the order of the day.
0:31:15 > 0:31:19And so was the socialist autocracy and despotism which the biologist
0:31:19 > 0:31:24TH Huxley had discerned in the Salvation Army's land colonies.
0:31:26 > 0:31:30A more dilute authoritarianism - regulation by whimsy
0:31:30 > 0:31:35and preciousness - is to be found in the aggressively genteel
0:31:35 > 0:31:39yet strangely delightful Edwardian resort of Frinton-on-Sea,
0:31:39 > 0:31:43a place which didn't have a public house till 12 years ago.
0:31:43 > 0:31:46A place where a lawn is called a greensward.
0:31:46 > 0:31:50A place where a streaker, when asked why she had done it,
0:31:50 > 0:31:53said, "I was SO bored."
0:31:53 > 0:31:55# Matelot, matelot
0:31:55 > 0:31:58# Where you go, my heart goes with you
0:31:58 > 0:32:00# Matelot, matelot
0:32:00 > 0:32:03# When you go down to the sea. #
0:32:03 > 0:32:06And where the grateful people of Essex erected -
0:32:06 > 0:32:08there can be no other word -
0:32:08 > 0:32:13a monument to the United Kingdom's foremost spermophage Tom Driberg,
0:32:13 > 0:32:18post-war MP for Maldon and subsequently Lord Bradwell
0:32:18 > 0:32:20of Bradwell juxta Mare.
0:32:20 > 0:32:24This keenly-attended recreation facility is popularly known
0:32:24 > 0:32:27today as Uncle Tom's Cottage.
0:32:34 > 0:32:38Frinton is where modernism came up against the market
0:32:38 > 0:32:39and the market won.
0:32:39 > 0:32:43Oliver Hill, a versatile architect and a keen naturist,
0:32:43 > 0:32:48was hired in 1934 as master planner of a speculative venture
0:32:48 > 0:32:50to the north of Edwardian Frinton.
0:32:52 > 0:32:57Frinton Park was to have comprised more than 1,000 houses,
0:32:57 > 0:33:00churches, hotels, schools and so on.
0:33:03 > 0:33:06It would have been the largest concentration
0:33:06 > 0:33:08of modernist buildings in Britain.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13As it happened, only a very little of it was built before the developer
0:33:13 > 0:33:18went bust - the prospective buyers proved to be shy of modernism.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22The sort of people who wanted to live in Frinton - old people -
0:33:22 > 0:33:25did not want to live in houses which they considered, reasonably
0:33:25 > 0:33:30enough, looked like workers' houses at Bata or Silver End.
0:33:30 > 0:33:32Hill quit.
0:33:32 > 0:33:36Nonetheless, the tiny fragment of Frinton Park that was built
0:33:36 > 0:33:38is a delight.
0:33:38 > 0:33:41Hill was not ideologically committed to modernism.
0:33:41 > 0:33:45He was less interested in its presumed capacity for conditioning
0:33:45 > 0:33:51and its alleged social benefits than in its aesthetic possibilities.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57He often imitated the architecture of the Regency,
0:33:57 > 0:34:00and he saw that sleek, white modernism
0:34:00 > 0:34:04shared Regency architecture's appropriateness to the seaside.
0:34:10 > 0:34:14If any further proof of that appropriateness is required,
0:34:14 > 0:34:17here's the Royal Corinthian Yacht Club at Burnham-on-Crouch.
0:34:17 > 0:34:22Crittall windows, spray, the clank of hawser on mast...
0:34:22 > 0:34:26and the illusion that it might one night slip its moorings
0:34:26 > 0:34:28and just drift away down the estuary.
0:34:43 > 0:34:49Its beauty is of course functional. It was also predictive.
0:34:49 > 0:34:53When the building was completed in 1931, it announced,
0:34:53 > 0:34:55"This is what the future is going to look like,
0:34:55 > 0:34:57"this is what the future will be."
0:34:58 > 0:35:02It invites comparison with the footballer Martin Peters,
0:35:02 > 0:35:07of whom Sir Alf Ramsey said, "He's ten years ahead of his time."
0:35:07 > 0:35:12In which case, the goal Peters scored in the 1966 World Cup Final
0:35:12 > 0:35:15had actually been scored in 1956.
0:35:31 > 0:35:34RADIO DJ: And here's one from the back pages.
0:35:34 > 0:35:37Former international Walton-on-the-Naze
0:35:37 > 0:35:38central defender Mel Crudge
0:35:38 > 0:35:41- ooh, Crusher Crudge - did the honours cutting
0:35:41 > 0:35:43the ribbon at the Holland-on-Sea's new 24/7 minimart.
0:35:43 > 0:35:49You know it - it's marvellous. It's open 9-6 every day apart from Sunday.
0:35:49 > 0:35:51Little advert for you there.
0:35:51 > 0:35:52The Nazals legend,
0:35:52 > 0:35:56whose four own goals in the derby against Olympic Harwich in 1991
0:35:56 > 0:35:57remains a club record,
0:35:57 > 0:36:01was full of praise for the mini mart's range of cleaning products.
0:36:01 > 0:36:05"Swarfega's been like a brother to me," he admitted.
0:36:08 > 0:36:12Being ahead of one's time is an obligatory condition
0:36:12 > 0:36:17of avant-garde legitimacy - along with novelty, progress,
0:36:17 > 0:36:22absence of precedent, clear breaks, clean slates, daring to be
0:36:22 > 0:36:27different, scaling the unknown's heights and so on, ad vomitum.
0:36:27 > 0:36:31And, before we forget, there's also the assumption that
0:36:31 > 0:36:35collective currents somehow carry the forces of inevitability,
0:36:35 > 0:36:37that things are destined to be.
0:36:37 > 0:36:40Here's a way of looking at the world.
0:36:40 > 0:36:44A retrospective way, which quite ignores serendipity,
0:36:44 > 0:36:48which doesn't accept that it might all have turned out differently
0:36:48 > 0:36:51had it not been for this circumstance or that chance,
0:36:51 > 0:36:56which fails to recognise that there are no patterns save
0:36:56 > 0:37:00those that we self-fulfillingly impose after the event.
0:37:00 > 0:37:03When applied to art, this way of looking at the world
0:37:03 > 0:37:08necessarily places undue value on alleged mould breakers,
0:37:08 > 0:37:12on works which supposedly lead onwards, works
0:37:12 > 0:37:16which are deemed to have pointed the way forward, which have come first
0:37:16 > 0:37:22in the great competition that art is routinely deemed to be, but isn't.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26Art isn't sport. It isn't the wretched Olympics.
0:37:26 > 0:37:31The reduction of art to awards and prizes and gongs is risibly dumb.
0:37:31 > 0:37:35RADIO DJ: '61 Fahrenheit, just a light or moderate western...'
0:37:35 > 0:37:36RADIO DJ: 'Oh, here's one.
0:37:36 > 0:37:40'Kiddies at Goldhanger's Hassan-i-Sabbah Primary School -
0:37:40 > 0:37:42'this is... The world's gone mad! -
0:37:42 > 0:37:46'have been forbidden from using pencil sharpeners, ladies
0:37:46 > 0:37:49'and gentlemen. Pencil sharpeners!
0:37:49 > 0:37:52'In a statement, head teacher Gwenny Size stated that,
0:37:52 > 0:37:54'"the act of sharpening a pencil
0:37:54 > 0:37:57'"into a sharpener simulates rotational activities
0:37:57 > 0:38:02'"which are likely to incentivise unhealthy euphemism asterix."
0:38:02 > 0:38:06'Well, she's got a point. Even if her pencils haven't!'
0:38:06 > 0:38:08DJ CHUCKLES
0:38:16 > 0:38:21Arthur Mackmurdo was a beardie oddball with several claims to fame.
0:38:21 > 0:38:25Utopian economist, architect, craftsman, designer.
0:38:26 > 0:38:32The claims have long been staked, but perhaps not fully acknowledged.
0:38:32 > 0:38:33Do they have any substance?
0:38:35 > 0:38:37He lived over half his life in Essex.
0:38:37 > 0:38:39The bulk of his work is here.
0:38:39 > 0:38:41And what very singular work it is.
0:38:44 > 0:38:46This house, however, is not quite in Essex.
0:38:46 > 0:38:49It's on the western side of the River Lea,
0:38:49 > 0:38:52at Enfield, in what was Middlesex.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55On the face of it, it's an oddity of the 1930s,
0:38:55 > 0:38:57a strangely proportioned oddity,
0:38:57 > 0:39:02mistakenly balanced, a series of apparent afterthoughts
0:39:02 > 0:39:06so maladroitly composed that it might be the work of an amateur.
0:39:06 > 0:39:13In fact the young Mackmurdo designed it 50 years earlier, in the 1880s.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16Therein lies its interest - its only interest.
0:39:16 > 0:39:20It can be said to anticipate the architecture of an era
0:39:20 > 0:39:22far in the future.
0:39:22 > 0:39:26Does that happenstance make it important?
0:39:26 > 0:39:30Were it actually of the 1930s, it would today go unremarked.
0:39:37 > 0:39:41Mackmurdo made something of a speciality of predictive design.
0:39:41 > 0:39:44Or, to put it another way, of inventing motifs that were
0:39:44 > 0:39:47supposedly copied, plagiarised, influential.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52Rather, of inventing one motif -
0:39:52 > 0:39:56the title page of his book on Wren's City of London churches
0:39:56 > 0:40:01is a variation on this chair - the same diagrammatic botanical forms.
0:40:02 > 0:40:05This is said to be the first utterance of what would,
0:40:05 > 0:40:0910 or 15 years later, in Brussels, Paris, Nancy
0:40:09 > 0:40:11and Prague, become art nouveau.
0:40:12 > 0:40:14It's a ridiculous claim.
0:40:14 > 0:40:18Did art nouveau really derive from this one source?
0:40:18 > 0:40:21Or is this simply a case of artistic jingoism?
0:40:24 > 0:40:27Mackmurdo quite lacked the genius of such contemporaries
0:40:27 > 0:40:31as Gino Coppede in Genoa and Lars Sonck in Helsinki.
0:40:32 > 0:40:37But that didn't inhibit his uncanny gift for designing what
0:40:37 > 0:40:40looked like the most banal buildings of the day after tomorrow.
0:40:42 > 0:40:45This former post office and telephone exchange is one of several
0:40:45 > 0:40:50buildings that this most effortfully eccentric man designed around the
0:40:50 > 0:40:55then-undeveloped villages of Great Totham and Wickham Bishops...
0:40:55 > 0:40:58more or less conjoined villages, which he hoped
0:40:58 > 0:41:04to turn into an arty fiefdom, a colony of very sensitive bookbinders
0:41:04 > 0:41:08and committed printers who would make the world a better place
0:41:08 > 0:41:11through handicraft and deeply-felt smocking.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15Not only did Mackmurdo come from a wealthy background,
0:41:15 > 0:41:20he also, in Lord Soames's immortal phrase, "got his cock in the till".
0:41:21 > 0:41:23He married an even richer woman,
0:41:23 > 0:41:26a distant cousin, Eliza D'Oyly Carte, of the family
0:41:26 > 0:41:30which promoted and profited from Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas
0:41:30 > 0:41:35and which owned the Savoy Hotel - part of which Mackmurdo designed.
0:41:35 > 0:41:37Nonetheless, the money ran out.
0:41:37 > 0:41:40He had decided to build a country house.
0:41:40 > 0:41:42A very grand country house.
0:41:44 > 0:41:47The ungainly extravagance of Great Ruffins brought them
0:41:47 > 0:41:49close to bankruptcy.
0:41:49 > 0:41:53They sold it and lived in what was to have been a gardener's cottage.
0:41:54 > 0:41:59This, then, is the centre of an arts and crafts utopia that never was.
0:41:59 > 0:42:02It is an appropriately dotty building.
0:42:02 > 0:42:04Mackmurdo's most grandiose.
0:42:06 > 0:42:10As ever, it's clumsy, as though one hand doesn't know what the other is
0:42:10 > 0:42:13up to, as though it's the work of someone who was entirely untutored,
0:42:13 > 0:42:16which was far from the case.
0:42:17 > 0:42:20The only remotely comparable contemporary architecture
0:42:20 > 0:42:23in England was that of a man who was indeed untutored,
0:42:23 > 0:42:26but who had looked at Coppede's work in Genoa.
0:42:28 > 0:42:32Richard Harding Watt changed the face of Knutsford in Cheshire,
0:42:32 > 0:42:35another county besmirched by footballers.
0:42:35 > 0:42:39But...Watt's work is charming.
0:42:39 > 0:42:43Mackmurdo's is merely weird and desperate to be different -
0:42:43 > 0:42:45and, for all its busyness, bereft of energy.
0:42:47 > 0:42:51The same qualities are evident in his prose.
0:42:51 > 0:42:56He described the Century Guild which he co-founded as: "A mighty upheaval
0:42:56 > 0:43:01"of man's spiritual nature in her attempt to throw off the depressing
0:43:01 > 0:43:05"materialism which shrouded her limbs when industry and commerce
0:43:05 > 0:43:10"tore away her garment of beauty, and cast it upon the scrapheap."
0:43:14 > 0:43:19Mackmurdo's writing was in the tradition of utopian Essex -
0:43:19 > 0:43:23a failure. He claimed to have been driven by what he called
0:43:23 > 0:43:27"an overmastering discontent with things as they were."
0:43:27 > 0:43:31An early work, entitled, The Immorality Of Lending
0:43:31 > 0:43:35For Payment Of Interest, Or For Any Usurious Gain,
0:43:35 > 0:43:38all too evidently fell on deaf ears.
0:43:38 > 0:43:42A late work, The Human Hive: Its Life And Law
0:43:42 > 0:43:48proposes that mankind should follow the cooperative example of bees.
0:43:48 > 0:43:51This was pretty much in keeping with a wider vogue
0:43:51 > 0:43:55in the early 20th century for idealistic, xenophobic,
0:43:55 > 0:43:57anti-semitic, third-way schemes
0:43:57 > 0:44:01such as Social Credit and Guild Socialism.
0:44:05 > 0:44:08RADIO DJ: 'We're back with Digby.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12'Look, Kelvedon inventor Digby Goodswine is fighting for his life
0:44:12 > 0:44:16'in a Dutch prison hospital. Poor old Digby.
0:44:16 > 0:44:20'What it says here is that, according to partner Perryetta Scratchsore,
0:44:20 > 0:44:24'an early evening drink at Rotterdam's Sugar Baby Love Bar
0:44:24 > 0:44:28'turned into a waking nightmare that she has still not awoken from.
0:44:28 > 0:44:31'Oh, wake up! The keen amateur surgeon, 39,
0:44:31 > 0:44:36'entered the bar wearing his soon to be patented Third Nostril device.
0:44:36 > 0:44:37'Well, we all want one of them.
0:44:37 > 0:44:41'According to early reports, a police officer mistook him
0:44:41 > 0:44:45'for an off-duty terrorist and shot him from less than three metres!
0:44:45 > 0:44:49'Although the bullet struck one of the steel plates that he had inserted
0:44:49 > 0:44:52'in his head and did not enter his brain - there we go.
0:44:52 > 0:44:54'It says, er...
0:44:54 > 0:44:57'Oh. Digby is in a deep coma.
0:44:57 > 0:44:59'Well, we're all thinking of you, Digby.
0:44:59 > 0:45:02'We're all thinking of you, mate.'
0:45:07 > 0:45:10Anti-semitism took many forms.
0:45:10 > 0:45:12Conrad Noel, for instance,
0:45:12 > 0:45:16saw Jesus as a Jew who had abjured his Judaism -
0:45:16 > 0:45:19an apostate, or a kind of heretic.
0:45:21 > 0:45:23This fascinating and infuriatingly wrong-headed man -
0:45:23 > 0:45:27one of the best-known clerics of the early 20th century -
0:45:27 > 0:45:31was for many years incumbent of St John the Baptist, Thaxted.
0:45:31 > 0:45:36A living which was in the gift of the Champagne socialist
0:45:36 > 0:45:39and horizontal socialite Daisy, Countess of Warwick.
0:45:41 > 0:45:44Noel was both an Anglo-Catholic ritualist
0:45:44 > 0:45:47and a Christian Socialist activist -
0:45:47 > 0:45:49that's having your cake and eating it.
0:45:49 > 0:45:53It wasn't enough, though. Noel wanted the entire bakery.
0:45:53 > 0:45:55So he was also a fellow traveller
0:45:55 > 0:46:00of Fenianism and Stalinism - which will be why his tomb proclaims
0:46:00 > 0:46:02that he loved justice and hated oppression(!)
0:46:11 > 0:46:14Then again, he was a hey-nonny-no folkie who wrote that,
0:46:14 > 0:46:18"Heaven was not to be sought beyond the skies,
0:46:18 > 0:46:20"but to be established upon Earth.
0:46:20 > 0:46:24"I began to see what a hell men had made of this earth."
0:46:28 > 0:46:33Replacing hell on earth with heaven on earth meant folk music,
0:46:33 > 0:46:37folk song, folk dance, folk craft,
0:46:37 > 0:46:40folk weaving, folk building, folk bunting, folk banners,
0:46:40 > 0:46:42folk folking.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49Well, someone has to invent ancient customs and forgotten mores
0:46:49 > 0:46:52and ancestral practices of the pre-industrial past,
0:46:52 > 0:46:56and in Thaxted, that someone was Noel, who was surely familiar with
0:46:56 > 0:47:00the time traveller in William Morris's A Dream of John Ball,
0:47:00 > 0:47:04who states, "I come not from heaven, but from Essex."
0:47:37 > 0:47:41'Oh, this will cheer you up, this will cheer you up, Ethel.
0:47:41 > 0:47:44'Great new from Holland's Haageland Prison.
0:47:44 > 0:47:48'Inventor Digby Goodswine, 39, who was shot in the head
0:47:48 > 0:47:50'in a controversial bar shooting
0:47:50 > 0:47:52'when mistaken for an off-duty terrorist, we remember,
0:47:52 > 0:47:54'has regained consciousness
0:47:54 > 0:47:58'and is enjoying a hearty canteen lunch of pork-style product
0:47:58 > 0:48:01'in the company of three Liberian government ministers,
0:48:01 > 0:48:05'facing cannibalism charges at the International Criminal Court.
0:48:05 > 0:48:08'I don't know why I read that bit. Anyway, moving on.'
0:48:11 > 0:48:16Philanthropists' model villages, paternalistic industrial villages,
0:48:16 > 0:48:20milord's estate villages, ideologically-founded colonies,
0:48:20 > 0:48:23therapeutic farms, temperance coralls,
0:48:23 > 0:48:28transcendental bivouacs, serenity workshops, rehab hamlets,
0:48:28 > 0:48:32happiness garrisons, uplift development spas,
0:48:32 > 0:48:36spiritual utopias and utopian-ish settlements.
0:48:36 > 0:48:39No matter how diverse they were,
0:48:39 > 0:48:41they all suffered pre-planned regulation.
0:48:41 > 0:48:44They were ordered, controlling.
0:48:44 > 0:48:49They might be quasi-military or religious or pedagogic.
0:48:49 > 0:48:54In every case, they were pettily proscriptive of something or other.
0:48:55 > 0:48:59They fostered dependency and resentment.
0:48:59 > 0:49:03The rules were not made by the people who inhabited them.
0:49:03 > 0:49:10Them, an impersonal construct made the rules and Us,
0:49:10 > 0:49:12obeyed them, on pain of exile.
0:49:24 > 0:49:28Liberals want everyone to be like them and to be grateful to them.
0:49:28 > 0:49:32Utopias are almost by definition bound to fail.
0:49:33 > 0:49:37Modest projects which set out to do little more than improve our lot
0:49:37 > 0:49:41are, however, liable to succeed.
0:49:41 > 0:49:43Democracy is evidently all pretence.
0:49:43 > 0:49:46It belies the literality of its name.
0:49:46 > 0:49:48But that pretence is important.
0:49:48 > 0:49:51It offers some hope of self-determination.
0:49:54 > 0:49:57When Adam delved and Eve span,
0:49:57 > 0:50:00then, there was no Them - we were all Us,
0:50:00 > 0:50:01and disorder asserted itself.
0:50:03 > 0:50:04It still asserts itself.
0:50:16 > 0:50:18It was the same proximity to London
0:50:18 > 0:50:21that had made Essex the site of so many
0:50:21 > 0:50:24philanthropic essays that caused it to become the site
0:50:24 > 0:50:28of post-war new towns, overspill towns such as Basildon and Harlow.
0:50:32 > 0:50:36This was the formal Essex, official Essex, planned Essex.
0:50:43 > 0:50:46That closeness to London had another side to it.
0:50:46 > 0:50:50There was, and gloriously still is, a different Essex,
0:50:50 > 0:50:54an Essex on the sly, an under-the-counter Essex.
0:50:57 > 0:51:01A cockney shangri-la, a homemade heaven on earth,
0:51:01 > 0:51:05a place that arose without, so to speak, benefit of clergy.
0:51:08 > 0:51:12Illicit, unwanted, save by the people who wanted to be there,
0:51:12 > 0:51:15the people who wanted to create it.
0:51:15 > 0:51:17Above all, abhorred by planners
0:51:17 > 0:51:22because it pays no heed to zones and usage-belts, to macro-parks
0:51:22 > 0:51:25and bio-scapes, to sectoral methodologies
0:51:25 > 0:51:27and cranium drainage drivers.
0:51:27 > 0:51:31Pathological taxonomies and obsessive neatness are AWOL.
0:51:35 > 0:51:39Planners are people, who, like scum-of-the-earth politicians,
0:51:39 > 0:51:43are life's prefects, social and or emotional cripples,
0:51:43 > 0:51:46whose mission is to tell us what to do
0:51:46 > 0:51:47and what not to do.
0:51:49 > 0:51:51Essex is notorious in this regard.
0:51:53 > 0:51:57The Essex Design Guide was first published almost 40 years ago.
0:51:57 > 0:52:02It ordained a simpering, winsome pseudo-vernacular, neo-traditional,
0:52:02 > 0:52:06bogusly folkloric style of architecture for the county.
0:52:06 > 0:52:09South Woodham Ferrers was the earliest but by no means
0:52:09 > 0:52:12the most saccharine example.
0:52:12 > 0:52:16The guide presaged what came to be known as the new urbanism.
0:52:16 > 0:52:19Its example was gradually copied elsewhere,
0:52:19 > 0:52:23notably on the eastern seaboard of the United States and in Dorset.
0:52:23 > 0:52:27The Thomas Hardy theme park for slow learners called Poundbury,
0:52:27 > 0:52:30owes much to its example.
0:52:30 > 0:52:32The Essex Design Guide was, in some degree,
0:52:32 > 0:52:36a reaction against monolithic modernism.
0:52:46 > 0:52:50But the major cause of its velvet gloved authoritarianism
0:52:50 > 0:52:52was places like this,
0:52:52 > 0:52:58places where high-minded haut en bas utopianism was notably absent.
0:52:58 > 0:53:01Places where DIY resourcefulness
0:53:01 > 0:53:05and bricolage were employed in service of a better life.
0:53:20 > 0:53:25No grand plans, just chalets, make do and mend, recycled components,
0:53:25 > 0:53:30lashings of asbestos and corrugated iron and, in special cases,
0:53:30 > 0:53:35a kit form house like the Cottabunga, delivered for £250.
0:53:35 > 0:53:38A lot of money, that, between the wars when a building plot
0:53:38 > 0:53:39might be bought for a fiver.
0:53:39 > 0:53:41Add a tosh of paint. Make it bright.
0:53:44 > 0:53:48And sit back and relax and await the brickbats of the National Trust,
0:53:48 > 0:53:52the Council for the Preservation of Rural England,
0:53:52 > 0:53:55bien-pensant environmentalists of all shades
0:53:55 > 0:53:59such as the tireless ranter, James Wentworth Day,
0:53:59 > 0:54:04who described Essex as the dustbin of London.
0:54:04 > 0:54:08One-nation technicians of welfarism, public health officials,
0:54:08 > 0:54:12await the accusations of defacing rural England,
0:54:12 > 0:54:14of a gangrene spreading through the land,
0:54:14 > 0:54:16await the council's bulldozers.
0:54:20 > 0:54:23For this is genuine folk art, people's art,
0:54:23 > 0:54:27unmediated by the design guidelines which volume builders'
0:54:27 > 0:54:31ersatz rural boxes obediently adhere to.
0:54:31 > 0:54:35And because it is unmediated, it is deemed offensive.
0:54:35 > 0:54:39And because it was owned by little people, people who don't count,
0:54:39 > 0:54:44poor whites with no voice, it can be swept away with impunity,
0:54:44 > 0:54:47like the century-old allotments sacrificed for the Olympian festival
0:54:47 > 0:54:51of bling and brawn and steroids.
0:54:57 > 0:55:01Who is Essex for? Who is England for?
0:55:01 > 0:55:04Successive planning acts have granted local authorities
0:55:04 > 0:55:10draconian powers to effect, what are essentially, modern-day clearances.
0:55:10 > 0:55:12Much of the Essex coast was once like this.
0:55:19 > 0:55:23Today, nature - whatever that is - is fetishised,
0:55:23 > 0:55:28So reptiles and wildfowl are granted greater rights than homesteaders.
0:55:40 > 0:55:45The disappearance of the people's Essex is a matter of great regret.
0:55:45 > 0:55:49But we must grudgingly accept that it's a graphic lesson
0:55:49 > 0:55:51about the inevitability of dissolution.
0:55:58 > 0:56:03It signals how conditional the notion of the land actually is.
0:56:04 > 0:56:06It's forever shifting.
0:56:06 > 0:56:09Permanence is an illusion.
0:56:09 > 0:56:11It tells us how short our term is.
0:56:12 > 0:56:15Because it's so susceptible to the sea,
0:56:15 > 0:56:18because it's pervious to the pull of the moon,
0:56:18 > 0:56:22because it's so strangely fragile, Essex is a sort of exemplar.
0:56:23 > 0:56:26A place where all kinds of philanthropic essays
0:56:26 > 0:56:29and stabs at hope have been attempted,
0:56:29 > 0:56:32even though it must surely have been obvious
0:56:32 > 0:56:34that little would come of them.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37Better to have tried than not to have tried.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43The sea, formerly known as the German Ocean, is the enemy,
0:56:43 > 0:56:48the bounteous evil against which all defence is ultimately in vain.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07The devil, disguised as the sea, will breach all dykes.
0:57:07 > 0:57:11The name Grimsdyke derives from the Norse for devil.
0:57:21 > 0:57:24Elemental change is accelerated here, it's more evident.
0:57:25 > 0:57:30That change serves as an emblem of human powerlessness.
0:57:30 > 0:57:34No matter how dogged they may be, the questionably spiritual
0:57:34 > 0:57:38and the physically practical are both revealed as provisional.
0:58:00 > 0:58:05Everything decomposes. Everything fades, rusts, rots.
0:58:06 > 0:58:10Everything returns to the immemorial ooze.
0:58:12 > 0:58:13Everything.
0:58:13 > 0:58:17Absolutely everything is swallowed up by it,
0:58:17 > 0:58:21swallowed, for it's a voracious sump inhabited
0:58:21 > 0:58:23by an eternal and mutating Driberg.
0:58:46 > 0:58:49Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd