Ah yes, I remember those days well, to be famous names puke pissedup in the churchyard in Montpelier etc. etc. Though I suppose as someone said about the 60s, if you can remember them you missed the full experience ... hmmmm...
Re the "tenancy" "tendency" - definitely tenancy, as in council tenant. The "council" being the local authority, "councillors" being the elected representatives, usually 2 or 3 to a ward, so the average council would have some 30-50 council members.
Council housing was a powerful movement which really gained momentum in the post 14-18 war 1920s, and the experience of being tenants of council houses or flats - ranging from "cottage estates" in the suburban areas to 2-5 story brick walk up flats (flats being apartments for the benefit of iggerant Yanks<wicked grin> (a word derived from the Scots) that were so characteristic of the more central areas of London built in the 30s-50s era before the nightmare of the 60s and 70s concrete tower blocks.
The experience of the working class in the council house was a defining relationship, a love hate one given the gross incompetence of many local authority housing managements (I know about that - I spent a couple of years in the 80s breaking my heart trying to modernise and improve such a service as a manager before walking out on the job as a hopeless case) but also the racial memories of private landlordism and its ills led to a lot of basic support. The public sector housing, which did supply the majorty of the working class with a least a basic decent housing despite the problems (which were real and serious) was destroyed shortly after in the 1980s by the Thatcher Govt by the "right to buy" which enabled the tenants of the better housing (houses in streets etc.) to buy at serious discounts. A policy that led to vast increases in homelessness, broken homes, many repossessions as working people suckered into mortgage debts were fucked over in numerous monetarist-inspired recessions, and many deaths etc.
But at the time of innocence in the 70s it was cool to berate being a "council tenant" and all it entailed for a clientilist relations etc. etc. etc. Little were they to know the maelstrom to engulf them within a few short years of 1977 or so..
Malcolm
In article <v04220801b46707ff8e0a@[166.84.250.86]>, dhenwood at panix.com (Doug Henwood) wrote:
> Rob Schaap wrote:
>
> >I've never seen the lyrics, but I've sung 'em often enough (I find
> lyrics
> >come to me only after the eigth pint, so I may about to talk crap).
> >Anyway, I was always singing about a council *tenancy*?
>
> I always thought that too. Isn't "council housing" Britspeak for a
> public housing project, and a "council tenancy" would be the state of
> living there? Though Dennis' reading is ingenious.
>
> Doug
>
>
>