1997: The Future that Never Happened

by Richard Power Sayeed

'Beautifully written, brilliantly insightful'
Owen Jones

Tony Blair and Noel Gallagher shaking hands at No. 10. Saatchi's YBAs setting the international art world aflame. Geri Halliwell in a Union Jack dress. A time of vibrancy and when the country was united by the hope of a better and brighter future. So why, twenty years on, did that future never happen?

Richard Power Sayeed takes a provocative look at this epochal year, arguing that the dark undercurrents of that time had a much more enduring legacy than the marketing gimmick of 'Cool Britannia'. He reveals how the handling of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry ushered in a new type of racism. How the feminism-lite of 'Girl Power' made sexism stronger. And how the promises of New Labour left the country more fractured than ever.

This lively, rich and evocative book explores why 1997 was a turning point for British culture and society - away from a fairer, brighter future and on the path to our current malaise.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Music, Race, Feminism, British Literature

384 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2017

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book provides a snapshot of a pivotal year in British history, and I learned plenty of things I'd never heard before. I was eleven in 1997, and I distinctly remember the New Labour victory, the Girl Power explosion, the almost runic repetition of 'institutional racism' on the news every evening, and of course, Diana's death. It's a strange experience to read a historical account of a time you actually experienced, both satisfying and weirdly alienating, like hearing someone read your obituary. You can't help but think of all the details that are missing, the slight elisions or misinterpretations, even if you concur with the general thrust of the narrative.

The central thesis statement of Richard Power Sayeed's book is that 1997 marked a watershed moment in British culture and politics, in which a range of radical ideas were reformulated for the mainstream, stripping them of their power to subvert or critique hegemonic power structures. To make this point each chapter focuses on a different aspect of contemporaneous culture, including the New Labour election, the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, the death of Princess Diana, and the emergence of Oasis, the Spice Girls and the YBAs as pop culture behemoths. I found a lot of the analysis of these subjects engaging and convincing, but Sayeed does have a tendency to reiterate his main point. I feel like the statement, 'This event was a rare moment in which a radical idea gained mainstream attention, but alas, this only led to moderate reform and an empty veneer of progressiveness," was rephrased about fifty times. I really liked the 'Britpop' chapter, which narrates how the restructuring of Radio 1 to cater to younger listeners led to the saturation of tiresome, skinny-white-boy bands, and how the initially subversive, androgynous Suede became supplanted by Oasis lad-rock as indie became mainstreamed. The YBA and Royal Family chapters seemed less insightful to me, perhaps because the modernisation of the Windsors following Diana's death is so well known, and because Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are also figures who have been discussed ad nauseam.

Perhaps the most effective chapter is the one concerning the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, in which Sayeed narrates how the notion of 'institutional racism' became reframed by the mainstream press, leading to widespread misunderstanding regarding what this actually meant. Rather than being understood as a term indicating how subconscious bias and structural inequality leads inevitably to racist treatment of non-white people by the police, the tabloids and news media reframed this to mean 'cartoon racists lurk in the police force.' This meant that rather than the enquiry leading to greater understanding of how a case like Stephen's could be so botched by the police, the narrative became one of eradicating overtly bigoted individuals rather than reassessing how policing was being conducted. This is a sobering account of what happens when an idea which threatens the status quo quickly becomes assimilated into its language without impacting its practises.

There is also an incredible anecdote of the infamous "Murderers" Daily Mail headline, which lead to the intense news focus on the case and is a rare example of the paper acting in a social responsible manner. Lest the reader suspect that Paul Dacre's soul briefly escaped from its imprisonment in eternal hellfire, this was in fact entirely motivated by the fact that Lawrence's father had done some odd-job work for Dacre in the past. That the case would quite probably have lingered in obscurity had it not been for this incredible coincidence is one of the most damning evidences of the reluctance of the mainstream media, and British society in general, to engage with the reality of ongoing racism. Sayeed claims that "[t]he events following the inquest into Stephen's death made forms of racism unacceptable, but they made the forms that remained invisible," linking the enquiry directly to the post-racial, post-racist myth of the Noughties and beyond.

A similar note is struck in the Spice Girls chapter, which gives a fairly standard account of how the machine behind the group appropriated the notion of Girl Power from radical feminism and Riot Grrrl, and transformed into a banal consumerist slogan. What I did appreciate here was that Sayeed doesn't turn his nose up entirely at the band, but acknowledges that their rampant popularity in this era meant that a generation of girls -and, I would add, boys- accepted as common sense the notion of girls as capable, confident and more powerful together. There is a pleasing ambivalence struck here between discomfort with the unprecedented marketisation of the group and the more positive social effects their visibility may have had. Although he is right, of course, that the group did not ever advocate radical change, I think this is a bit of a ridiculous expectation for a pop group anyway, and I liked that it didn't dismiss them out of hand.

Overall this is an accessible and enjoyable slice of British history which, even if its main premise is a bit overegged, is nonetheless a valuable entry point for those twenty and twenty-one year olds who, terrifyingly, were born in the same year as Tubthumping and the Teletubbies.

[Jordan Phizacklea-Cullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Britpop, the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the transformation of the British Royal Family into celebrities, the Young British Artists' movement and New Labour's well-meaning 'centrism' culminated in 1997 to, respectively, the bloated peak success of 'Be Here Now', the Macpherson Report into institutional police racism, the death of Princess Diana and the infamous 'Sensation' exhibition at the Royal Academy and the birth of the Blair government is eloquently examined in Richard Power Sayeed's first book. As social history, it offers valuable reappraisals, in particular the notion that the 'New Lad' era and Britpop's cheerful over-exposure of the Union Jack would sow the seeds, twenty years later, of the toxic 'men's rights' movements and the chest-beating nationalism that led to Brexit and UKIP's rise. In truth, it's more fond of that era than it perhaps recognises or is willing to admit, but the insight is original and brilliantly written.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved how the book traced many of the problems exacerbated by austerity back to Blairism and so called "New Labour." Richard Power Sayeed is a really engaging writer, deftly threading together extensive research and cultural analysis from a variety of sources & mediums. I liked how it wasn't so academic and invested in storytelling, crafting a narrative.
It reminds me of work by British artists like Black Audio Film Collective, Mark Leckey & Jeremy Deller where the past & archives are excavated to make sense of the present.
There is a melancholy now of course reflecting on the book in light of socialist Labour's defeat and the fall back into neoliberalism but I still believe historians are the best oracles.

[Heath Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine social history of a turning-point year. Enjoyed chapter on the young British Artists, which was very comprehensive. Other parts were a bit more generalist and thin.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

How 1997, specifically New Labour’s election victory and the surrounding cultural zeitgeist, was a year of compromise and dilution, whereby effervescent strains of subversive feelings, including anti-racism, resentment of the royal family, and feminism, were co-opted and in the process defanged of their radicalism. This is a thoughtful analysis, though not without elements of thick description and purple prose (including, for instance, about the decoration of the office of Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre) which sometimes overplays its hand. That said, the surrounding Stephen Lawrence chapter is easily the most incisive and timely. Others do stray into the anecdotal and descriptive, with much scene-setting that could have been trimmed back in favour of leaner prose. It is, overall, an interesting survey of pop culture written in light of austerity and Brexit and a more general treatise on the risks of the assimilation of radical ideas by unscrupulous actors.

[Kieran · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing so utterly alien, and yet so cosily familiar, as the recent past. 1997 marks a turning point, as the Tories went down and Blair and New Labour rose to replace them.

In this book, Sayeed sets out to re-examine this lazy analysis. He presents 1997 as the year that radical ideas entered the mainstream, but to get there they were diluted. The seeds of our current chaos were planted alongside the attempts to make things better.

[Imogen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book that focuses on a year of change in the UK. However, I felt thst I couldn't give it more than three stars. There were a few too many typos and some phrasing that took a few tries to understand. Although descriptive paragraphs hped to set the scene when it came down to the arguments I would have liked more concrete references for some of the conclusions drawn. I also think a chapter on factors beyond this particular year in causing problems would not have gone amiss.

[Dan Sumption · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting read, but it over promises & under delivers - a bit like the political revolution of 20 years ago.

[Gary McLelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read

[Ricky Bevins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written and enjoyable read that gives a more comprehensive view of British culture in 1997 that one might expect. A great introduction for younger leftists to learn about the insidious vapidity of Blairism and understand the cultural moment that saw him elected, while repeatedly convicing the reader that any radical movements that compromise with the mainstream for greater visibility and accessibility shall do so at their peril.