ABSTRACT
This article uses the music of the Kinks to explore the social and political impact of the ‘post-war consensus’ on the British working-class. The songs of Ray Davies composed between 1965 and 1971 can he usefully read alongside accounts of the post-war period by authors such as Richard Hoggart, Michael Shanks, Anthony Sampson and those associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Davies negotiates social change through a particular perspective that draws on multiple political identities that are characterised as ‘Orwellian Socialist’, ‘Patriotic Conservative’ and ‘Working-Class Populist’. Davies’ perception of a changing Britain also reflects and engages with the work of contemporary social investigators such as Willmott and Young and their research on class, community and suburbia. This article posits the view that popular music in general and Ray Davies and the Kinks in particular provide a significant historical source for making sense of post-war Britain. Unlike many of his musical contemporaries, Davies was a critic of the popular perceptions of ‘swinging London’, ‘affluence’ and ‘consensus’. Throughout the 1960s, Davies’ work critiqued the impact that successive government policies had on British society. His songs pre-dated the more ‘overtly political’ punk genre of the late 1970s yet addressed similar themes in emphasising the limitations of the ‘post-war consensus’.
