On message?
This song was originally a Royalist protest against Cromwell's attempt to ban Christmas and other festivities. For many years it was believed that the British played the tune when they surrendered at Yorktown to the Americans. It's a nice story, but is probably untrue: Yorktown
The relevance here is the turmoil in the international financial markets and the demand this has caused for greater regulation, not least of sport, a bandwagon which the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt. Hon. Andy Burnham, is jumping on. (Tessa Jowell, who used to hold the job had an affection for Charlton, but that may help us now she is Olympics minister).
Whilst there is a good case for effective financial services regulation, although achieving it is another thing, I don't have a lot of faith in regulating everything that moves. Governments make a mess of a lot of the things they get involved in, regardless of the party in office.
Still, if this is the way things are going, it may help Charlton in the short term: we have been seen as 'on message' by New Labour. Ted Heath never evinced any interest in Charlton (not that he had any small talk anyway), despite the number of his constituents that supported the club. It was only recently I discovered that he was a Gooner.
Contacts may need to be developed with Dave and his chums, although they don't seem to be much into football, more an egg chasing crowd. If regulation restored more competitive balance to the Premiership, this might give clubs like Charlton the chance to return to the heights the club occupied just before the Second World War.
Indeed, had the war not occurred, I think that we might have won the championship. That's another charge against Hitler and his gang. Perhaps someone could work this into one of those spoof videos on YouTube where Hitler loses it because Spurs (or some other club) have lost again and threatens to tear up his season ticket.
4 comments:
I always thought it was an AWI song.
Given the attempts to ban xmas now (eg we have a "winter event" not an xmas party), perhaps Girls Aloud should do a cover of World Turned Upside Down.
Pembury Addick
No, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Turned_Upside_Down
It was also the title of a book by Christopher Hill about radical movements during the Second World War.
Christopher Hill was, of course, a historian of the Civil War. A correspondent had the book as a set text at school in the 1970s and dutifully went to see a play based on at the Cottesloe. Apparently, the rites of the Ranters were depicted by several attractive young woman who wore not a stitch of clothing.
But I'm sure the nakedness of such lovelies only reinforced the impression of the Ranters' core beliefs, and was in no way an inducement to watch an otherwise dull play.
(I wonder if Girls Aloud would benefit from a similar approach?)
Weren't the Ranters one of the many sects that sprung up during the 1640s?
Pembury Addick
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