London Through a Lens Living in '66

1966 has always been held up as an iconic year for London.

Now, 50 years on, I want to see if it really was that special.

I have chosen five of my favourite photographs that capture

what it was like living in '66.

They tell the story of fashion.

This was the launch of the world's first ever supermodel.

The changing face of music.

The Stones were dangerous and challenging.

Cultural celebrations.

The Calypso was alive.

The Latin music was alive.

And tensions.

The prejudice.

No Irish, no dogs and no blacks.

Then there is crime and gangsters.

Family firms who operated in London, like the Krays and the Richardsons,

both of whom my father worked for.

We will see how they affected the lives of ordinary Londoners.

And football.

Well, we all know what happened at Wembley in 1966.

NEWSREEL: Geoff Hurst achieved the hat-trick.

To beat the Germans, oh, that was just absolute quality.

In April 1966, Time Magazine declared London the swinging

capital of the world.

It was Swinging London and it was swinging

all over the place.

The boys, the girls, they were swinging.

We were all swinging.

Fashion was happening, photography was happening,

hairdressing was happening.

And most important of all, music was happening.

And London swung.

But was London really swinging for everyone?

It wasn't swinging for us at all.

It wasn't really that different.

Time Magazine had turned the whole of London into this

kind of Tinseltown.

Creatively capturing it all were a new breed of photographers.

This was an era of absolutely brilliant

black and white photography.

The photographers were helping to build the fantasy

of Swinging London.

The only way that people saw their heroes was through the work

of these photographers.

So they were, you know, they were superstars.

As photographers were challenging traditions, so too was

London's fashion scene.

Many young writers and journalists were keen to capture this cultural

wave, and perhaps no one was more successful than Deirdre McSharry.

When I was 30, I was made woman's editor of the Daily Express,

when it had a circulation of four million, with a huge budget

and very good photography.

I had an office of 12 people, I had no idea what to do with them.

I was realising the power of the picture over the words,

or as well as the words.

This was the launch of the world's first ever supermodel.

Named Twiggy.

This wasn't a face you could turn away from.

This was a face you had to address.

I started with Leonard in '63.

To have been that lucky to have been there in the '60s,

we were treated like pop stars.

In '66, Daniel was a young hair colourist at cutting edge

Mayfair salon Leonard's.

This young girl came in and she had ginger

This young girl came in and she had ginger hair down to here and it

absolutely looked awful, but she had the most incredible face.

We took that hair away.

Leonard cut my hair very short and he got a friend of his,

Barry Lategan, to take some photos of me and Leonard hung them up

in his salon and Deirdre McSharry of the Daily Express saw them.

She already had this notion of herself with these

little eyelashes painted on.

Because of the brilliance of the photographey,

Because of the brilliance of the photography,

they looked almost like pieces of sculpture.

So I sat up late at night, typing, saying, "This is the face of 1966."

She became an instant phenomenon.

We had no idea how big it was going to be.

When those Twiggy pages came out, several eminent columnists said,

"Oh, what is this stuff?, you know, these terrible clothes,

"on these thin little girls?"

They wouldn't say working class, but that is what they meant.

This was the other world that was breaking into

London in the mid 1960s, it was part of the revolution.

Having become the pin-up girl of a generation overnight,

Twiggy soon capitalised on her fame by starting her own fashion label.

And London's fashion scene was booming.

The clothing.

The clothes, man, I mean guys' clothes, ladies' clothes,

oh, man, it was just fantastic.

People around the world were buying these clothes

to look like English kids.

Can you dig it? They're looking like English kids!

But how was it for Londoners looking on from afar?

I remember Twiggy, I remember reading about her in my magazines

I remember Twiggy, I remember reading about her in my magazines

but I don't remember anybody going, "I have got to run

around looking like her."

Twiggy and a lot of the Americans were coming over and a lot

of the trust fund hippies.

It is fine for them, they are knocking about the West End

spending thousands.

We had to get a bus to the West End.

NEWSREEL: Swinging Carnaby Street, the trendiest fun fashion centre

in the world.

Yes, this is the place where it all happens.

The Carnaby Street thing is a bit of a misnomer,

because earlier on it was brilliant, you could buy individual pieces

of clothing and by '66, they were already made

and we wouldn't go near it.

No, I can't find Swinging London at all actually.

It's in the shop windows, but it is not on the streets.

About '66, you had the girls in Beaver,

didn't you, shops like that?

I used to go to High Street Ken a lot and look in the shops.

And I bought in C, I didn't buy in the boutiques,

because I had to be careful what I brought home.

It would be like, "You are spending money on this?"

For people like Barbara, a teenager at the time,

following the latest trends meant one thing.

Utilising her mother's dressmaking skills.

Really trendy stuff, you couldn't buy at a reasonable price.

If you wanted something up to the minute,

you pretty much made it.

And for those who worked, like Mickey and Fred,

London's economic revival put more cash in their hands.

As the wages went up, we used to go to a tailor,

about five of us on a Saturday, to get measured up for a suit,

and we put ten bob deposit on.

The first suit, would been a mohair suit, would have been ?27.

You are talking about five or six weeks to have it made,

so you go back to a fitting and put another ten bob on.

And you spent a lot of money, if you could, on clothes.

I used to give my mum a couple of bob, but she would always

give it back to me.

That was a real occasion, when you have that suit made

then you wore it at the Lyceum, it felt brilliant, felt wonderful.

Rising wages were going on, more than just fashion.

There were big changes on the music scene in '66 as the Beatles

played their last official live show.

The previous year, I had sat next to my mum,

and I wasn't allowed to scream, I had to just sit there.

And there was nothing more boring.

Everybody screaming and you have actually got to sit there.

It was the worst show I have ever seen.

London bands like the Who, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones

were now leading the way.

I was listening to the Stones once and my dad came in and said,

"Why are you listening to that filth?"

The Stones were dangerous and challenging and confrontational.

In '66, I was 20, so I was very young, they were very young,

we were experimenting.

It was the very peak of their initial success.

It was an extraordinary moment and has become so famous.

I mean, it's such a famous image of the band.

Gered managed to capture the image at first light on a bright

winter's morning in '66.

We'd been recording all night, starting at about ten o'clock

in the evening and finishing at five, six o'clock,

and I had this idea that it would be a great time to shoot the band,

that early in the morning look after an all-night session,

world-weary, stoned, hungover, worn out.

They just looked just how I thought the Stones should look.

And we came up here to Primrose Hill to try to capture the early light,

London laid out in front of us, just looking extraordinary.

And we probably had 20 minutes of good time before they started

whingeing and complaining.

And that was it.

And I got the cover for Between The Buttons.

# Doing things I used to do...

This image, it was lost.

This image never came back from the printer.

So this actual transparency has never been seen.

And that saddens me, but fortunately,

I have got some fantastic outtakes.

MUSIC: As Tears Go By

I wanted to contribute something, so I put a piece of glass in front

of my lens and I smeared the glass with Vaseline and if you do it side

to side, everything dissolves, so that is how I got this effect

here, where the band appeared to be sort of part of the environment,

in a sort of druggy acidy feel.

I had never taken acid, so I was basing it all

on hearsay and what I felt that it might be like.

While Gered didn't care take drugs,

While Gered didn't take drugs,

a culture of drug-taking was starting to emerge.

In the '60s, you had purple hearts, and now and again you would see

someone high as a kite, but very rare.

For policeman Bob Dixon, there was a whole new world

for him to get used to.

We occasionally arrested people and they would have purple hearts

in their pockets,

which used to fit beautifully inside a packet of Polos.

How many purple heart do you need to stay up all night?

20-30.

I've never had any, but...

I think that one was bombers, or something.

Bombers, the black bombers, and tubes.

Bombers, the black bombers, and doobs.

And they were always chewing chewing gum and I wondered why.

It makes your breath stink.

By all accounts, it was the nightclubs that were really

exploding into life.

Being a young man, I would be hitting the nightclubs at night.

It was not a time to stay at home.

It was hard to be married.

Honestly, if you got married that year, there is so much action

going on out there, you know what I mean?

It was nonstop.

There was no thought about it, if you had

two or three hours' sleep, you just carried on.

Friday was a lot younger.

Friday night, if you went out, it was a lot younger.

Saturday night was your mum and dad's night.

Five or six o'clock in the morning, it is packed full of people.

It is packed with people at five or six o'clock in the morning,

you know what I mean?

The Marquee club, you know what I mean?

Everybody knew the Marquee club.

You wanted to get in and feel the vibe, you know what I mean?

The Flamingo club.

You know what I mean?

The Scene club.

You know what I mean?

I was in the United States Air Force,

that is how I got over to England.

I joined to get away from Vietnam.

I didn't want to go to Vietnam.

Geno was part of a big international cultural influx,

which some of London's club scenes were quick to pick up on.

Particularly popular was music from the West Indies.

The music was driving.

The music was thriving.

The Calypso was alive.

The Latin music was alive.

Going through the clubs.

Reggae came out and went into the dance halls.

There was a club called the Roaring Twenties

and it was the first black club I ever went to in my life

and it was the first time I ever heard reggae music.

I didn't know what it was,

I heard this beat and the black fellas were all dancing.

Latin bands, the combos, the trios,

the one-drummer/singer like myself, working through.

It was just wonderful.

I really didn't want to come to England.

There was an opportunity, a one-way ticket across

the Atlantic and here I am.

I thought I would come for five years, I never expected

to spend five decades.

After the war, there was such a lack of manpower.

A lot of people from the West Indies came to live here.

They were working class people with all the rest of the people

who were already here.

As the West Indian community became more established,

its culture flowed onto the West London streets.

1966 is the official year the Notting Hill Carnival was born.

We were developing a federation of a Caribbean nation that didn't

happen in the Caribbean,

but was taking actually movement here in the United Kingdom.

It was a getting to know period, celebration.

I am glad the police is in focus.

Those of us who came through that period know that the police

were doing a lot of dangerous things.

We would come in here, very young, and enjoy

the atmosphere and see what was going on in Portobello Road.

Running almost the entire length of Notting Hill from north to south

is Portobello Road.

From being quite a working-class lad, to come here and see this

was just like another world for me.

And from that moment,

I just decided I would really like to work down here.

I am past retirement age now and I still don't want to give up.

That is how much I love the road.

While London has always had better and worse off

living side by side,

back in '66, the extremes were more pronounced,

especially in Notting Hill.

This end, the south end, was always considered

a little bit more posher, if you like, and once you got over

Westbourne Road, it was, like, more the Badlands.

You had to watch your step.

There was a part of it that was practically,

either third ranked to be the most deprivated part in Britain.

Another family were moved into this basement when the house they had

been occupying fell down.

And there was lots of not very nuce landlords, Rachman in particular.

And there was lots of not very nice landlords,

Rachman in particular.

The legacy of the notorious landlord Peter Rachmann was still very much

being felt in '66.

He operated in rundown areas of London, where he would buy up

houses and intimidate sitting tenants by filling the properties

with recently arrived West Indian immigrants, who were

desperate for accommodation.

There was a lot of resentment against people from the West

Indies, which was wrong.

Soon there'll be so many people here there won't be enough houses

and jobs to go round.

Why not keep Britain, Britain?

Keep it white, as it should be.

The prejudice usually came, I mean, other than, "No Irish,

"no dogs and no blacks", you know, that was on just

about all the signs.

Coloured people also run into difficulties because people

don't want them living next door.

I've come about the room which you advertised.

Ah, yes, it's let already, sorry.

Let.

How long ago was that let?

About two hours.

OK.

Let's call that the boiling pot, all spring, trying to establish

to establish ourselves against a wall of rejection.

There's a cafe round the corner here, you see, and I was eating

in there and three of them walked in and I'd just ordered

some chicken, you know, a whole chicken, roast chicken,

you know what I mean?

And he says, "Whatever you do to that chicken,

we're gonna do to you."

So I slowly picked up the chicken and kissed its butt.

HE LAUGHS.

They left me alone!

As far as the coloured man is concerned, if he complies

with the law, then he is going to be no more vulnerable than any other

member of the community.

But to Alex, it was the law that you needed to guard

against on a regular basis.

I got to the top of Wardour Street and a plainclothes

car moved past, back.

Bam, bam, doors open.

And may I tell you the sentence as they told me?

"What the BLEEP not or like you doing on the road here,

"this time of the night?"

Bang, on to the wall.

The younger policeman against the war.

-- The younger policeman pinned me against the wall.

Those periods, you had to learn, once the police came after you,

you locked your hands because they would say

that you hit them.

At that period, people used to talk about "bobbies" and the police.

Come on.

The police were not angels.

I'm not going to can every police the same,

but we have some bad eggs in the police force.

Bob Dixon, a bobby on the beat in the mid-60s before joining

the CID, saw things from a different perspective in the East End.

As regards any racial problems in the police,

I didn't really, across anything that would be classed

-- I didn't really come across anything that would be

classed as racial prejudice.

Comments were sometimes made about, say, black people

coming over or whatever.

I didn't come across that, greatly.

And in '66, the police themselves were facing a violent new reality.

Three plainclothes officers were murdered by the criminal

Harry Roberts and his gang.

The fat man, they shot him through the head.

Then he's shot through the window at this man.

That was the third man in the police car?

Yes.

Yes.

It came on the radio that officers had been shot in west London.

While two of Harry Roberts accomplices were caught,

he managed to escape and went on the run.

I'll never forget the posters that went up to get him.

My friend George Hunt, I got a phone call.

"My dad's been nicked!

"The police have got him down in Carter Street police station."

I said, "What's going on?"

He said, "They think he's Harry Roberts."

We were all absolutely shocked.

It wasn't common in those days for guns to be used,

particularly with regards to policeman.

Eventually caught, Roberts served 48 years in prison for the crime.

Elsewhere across London, criminal gangs had built up

clearly defined territories.

Every street had its little gang.

The East was like the Kray manor.

And then you had south London, you had the Richardsons as well.

There were gangs in the West End.

Well-known gangs, controlled the area.

But for ordinary Londoners living in the gangsters' manor,

life was deceptively respectable.

You never saw a public explosion, every one bashing each other.

Especially if you had a new suit on, you don't want to have a fight.

You don't to have a tear up with a suit that you just paid

30 quid for.

Local people, they could not have been safer with those types around.

I never heard of them causing trouble for normal people.

Some key criminals went out of their way to be seen doing

something for their communities.

The Krays had a great reputation with the locals and at Christmas

they used to put on parties for the old-age pensioners

and that sort of thing.

# You think we look pretty good together #.

They will always be, to some Eastenders,

a legend, if you like.

They really were the Robin Hoods of their time.

OK, with a naughty side.

The Krays could be gentlemen, but they could also be the Krays.

I like being known as the Godmother.

It gives me a sort of carte blanche to not put up with any

rubbish from anybody.

I was the first of the 60s Miss Great Britains,

which is quite a nice title to get and also that's when I first met

the Krays which was the beginning of a new part of my life.

This is a Christmas card from Reg Kray.

That is Reggie's writing.

It is a wonder the postman ever found it.

Friend, God bless.

As a woman, there is something exciting about a beautifully

turned-out gangster, in a suit.

What's more exciting than that?

But their celebrity status was being funded by thuggery

and their crimes were gaining new levels of attention.

I seen Reggie and Ronnie beat the man to a pulp,

till he couldn't stand up.

I think they are inclined to be sort of...

Well, animals, really.

It was definitely on the streets, everybody going, "What's going on?"

And it all culminated in this pub when, on March 9th 1966,

Ronnie Kray shot dead rival gang member George Cornell.

The myth itself did not start till the year 1966, really,

when things started to happen.

You know, when George Cornell got killed by Ronnie Kray and then

the Richardsons got brought into it.

Cornell had worked for the South London gang

the Richardsons and Ronnie had apparently been provoked

by a comment about his sexuality.

There is no way you would even laugh at him or even call him a fat

poof, which supposedly is what George Cornell did

and lost his life because of it.

In fact, I have a personal connection to this era.

My father worked for both the Richardsons and the twins.

Reggie Kray was in fact my brother's godfather.

As a professional criminal, my father was fairly unique

in associating with both gangs.

He knew that they operated through fear.

So while the Krays promoted themselves as latter-day

Robin Hoods, their world was about violence and power.

The Krays lives might have been very different.

As teenagers, they pursued a boxing career at this

club in Bethnal Green, where my dad also used to box.

I'm the chairman.

I'm an immigrant from Soho.

You had to look after yourself proper.

You really had to.

So you had to learn how to fight.

I was the head of the family and I had to protect my brothers,

that's how it was, you know.

You go home with your teeth hanging out, you ears hanging out, the lot,

and that's how it was.

The Krays were young lads.

They boxed in the original Repton Boys Club.

This was their club.

They came from this club.

This was their era.

They turned professional quite young, but I suppose

more than anything else, their dedication was out the window

because they started drinking, as I understand it, quite young and,

from then on, they just become gangsters and I think their

interests with boxing went out.

Ronnie, definitely, from what I can understand, had that mad brain.

He was a crackpot.

I think he always had that mad brain, so people come

from the street creed, if they're winning the fight,

they want to continue winning the fight and they don't want

a referee saying stop, they want to keep bashing them.

The shootings in '66 marked a crescendo in their criminal

activity and, ultimately, by the end of the decade,

the law caught up with them.

Every day, you could hear the sirens going.

There would be about six motorbikes, two or three cars, and two big vans

and it was the Kray twins on their way to court

and the whole sight.

"Yes!"

"The Krays!"

And then in the evening, when the trial day was over,

they'd come back and everybody would be out there again,

in the street, cheering them on.

I'm absolutely convinced that the Krays and Richardsons went

on for as long as they did because of the fact that there

were corrupt policeman.

I'm pretty sure about that.

While the Krays' archrivals the Richardsons were being arrested,

on July 30th, 1966 three East End lads were getting ready to make

headlines for all the right reasons.

Whether you hated football or liked football or not,

there was a kind of pride.

Nowadays, it's blown out of all proportion.

Then it was, "We've won the World Cup."

To beat the Germans, that was just absolute quality.

The summer of celebration reached its pinnacle

with the World Cup and Wembley was set to reach its capacity

of over 96,000.

Tickets were understandably like gold dust.

Mr Davies, it's been said that touts like you are going to make

an enormous killing on this World Cup final, is that true?

On the actual final itself, yes, that's right.

What you think of people who buy tickets from you at these prices,

do you think they are mugs?

Well, they're mugs to the extent that when they were first

advertised, if they were that keen to go, they should

have applied then.

It's all a question of supply and demand.

We couldn't afford to go games, that's for sure.

Couldn't get tickets, anyway.

So we were all watching it on televisions at home.

The World Cup totally passed me by because we didn't have TV.

I don't remember it at all.

We were all at my mum's place and there was about 18 people

in the room looking at the television and by that time,

Jean was pregnant and she was due to have my daughter

on the day of the final.

She was sitting there and every time we scored, we'd be looking

at Jean.

Hurst.

CHEERING.

Towards the end of the game, of course, we're all cheering,

and we're all praying that her water wouldn't break!

It's there!

Peters has scored.

And when Germany equalised, it's getting worse and worse.

Seconds before the final whistle, agony for England.

And then we scored another one which was disallowed

and then allowed.

No, it bounced out!

The referee consulted the linesman and goal it was.

Racing to beat the whistle, Geoff Hurst achieved the hat-trick.

It was England that the whole world of sport was now cheering.

She didn't have the baby until about a week later,

so we were all right there.

I felt proud for the country.

After all, they did invent it.

If America had invented football and they had never won the World

Cup, they'd change the rules!

"The goalposts are too small, man.

"Make them much bigger."

HE LAUGHS.

When we won the World Cup, we shot off to Epsom Downs and had

a football, an old-fashioned leather sort of football and we put a jacket

here and a jacket there and I was the goalie.

I was just a woman who'd never played football before.

It was so crazy, we were so full of the fact we'd won the World Cup.

On the night of the final, fans took over Trafalgar Square.

But the very next day, life was getting back to normal.

I can remember reading the next day that Bobby Moore went out to a pub

with a couple of his mates.

Nowadays, he would be straight on the television,

there would be awards.

Ridiculous, isn't it?

As we've seen, 1966 was a time of stark contrasts, new music,

exciting fashion and the elation of victory, up against social

conflict, deprivation and violence.

There's a lot to celebrate from that year and much to consign

to the history books, but I do feel the myths and cliches

of swinging '66 really are based in reality.

They do say that if you remember the '60s, you weren't there.

But I was there.

It was all the right places at the right time,

so it was just like a way of life.

It was a very small section of London.

By the 1960s, the difference of people instead of being

excoriated was being appreciated.

It wasn't something that I was particularly aware

of, living in Fulham.

Before the '60s, if you was to suggest that great music came out

of London that affected the world, they wouldn't believe you.

From '67, it began to fall apart and the realisation that it wasn't

all fantastic out there.

You know.

But '66 was good!

HE LAUGHS.

# Baby, baby, you're out of time #.

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