Perhaps the most memorable occurrence of that period, in terms of its social history and for our better understanding of human nature, was that two months one winter when the beggars went on strike. The broadsheets, eventually, in their various editorials, would talk of the unfortunate timing of the mass withdrawal of services by the capital's mendicants, what with the Christmas season drawing near, when the beggars could be expected to be at their most productive, as it were; and of the need for immediate discussions amongst the various social partners. The tabloids, for their part, encapsulated the situation as pithily as ever in their banner headlines, taking the issue more lightly at first than they would subsequently do, perhaps due to the novelty of the situation.
But before discussing the strike and its ramifications in greater detail, it is meet to set down here some indication of the background against which that unique situation was allowed to develop. It was a time of course of unprecedented economic growth, with a concomitant increase in the nation's sense of confidence and self-esteem. Fortunes were made almost with ease in such a favourable financial climate, and net incomes in general rose as sharply as the various indicators of economic prosperity. That a rising tide would lift all boats was the received wisdom with which government ministers greeted all inquiries as to the equitable distribution of such bounty: before hastening to reassure that, for those without such vessels to their name, boats - small serviceable craft, necessarily - would be provided. And so people settled down to enjoy a new Golden Age.
Interestingly, however, it was noted early on that the increase in wealth seemed in no way to lead to a corresponding increase in tangible generosity. Rather the opposite: certain commentators were moved to point out that a marked increase in avariciousness was noticeable, with the individual's concerns being regarded as paramount at all costs, and that the traditional virtues of hospitality and civic pride were nowhere to be found outside of the marketing bumphs of the Tourist Industry and certain products of the Hollywood studio-system. It was a point well-made by the psychologists that such a state of self-interest was in many respects natural for the species; and yet, undoubtedly, an unusually intense quality of acquisitiveness had attached itself to much of the nation's social and commercial intercourse.
Thomas Carlyle it was who first referred to economics as the "Dismal Science", and this may have been as a result of the many unpalatable truths uncovered by the power of its precision tools. One such well-known axiom of macro-behaviour stipulates that the weakest are those who suffer most; and so it came to pass that it was the beggars in the street who were first to feel the brunt of that collective shift towards increased self-aggrandisement. Less and less money was directed towards their begging-bowls, or into their cupped hands and upturned caps, to be received by them with an obvious display of gratitude. Conversely, more and more did the pinched and bloodless faces of freezing children begging for alms become a feature of each thronged junction. And so the beggars went on strike.
One moment they were there: torn and bedraggled men on the city's bridges; hunkered women beneath awnings clutching torpid infants as proof of their bona fides; night-time silhouettes in archways laying down cardboard against the cold like participants in some driven scientist's experiment into the effects of hypothermia; fearsome men with clotted beards ranting comically against the security men ejecting them from the better department stores for pestering the customers with the fact of their demented existence; one moment they were there, these and many others from the ranks of that malnourished army of the Portico and Camber. . . and then they were gone.
At first, of course, their absence was not especially remarked upon, except by the few remaining community activists and by the saintly, whether civil or religious, but these in numbers sufficient to make a negligible impact only: lacking access to the means of mass-communication, they found their views receiving scant attention. There was the odd think-piece in a suburban freesheet, the odd few minutes airtime on local radio, to alert the greater public to the fact that the capital's beggars appeared to have gone underground, so to speak, and were refusing until further notice to resume their normal stations on the streets and thoroughfares. But then the public in general appeared to believe that underground, whether figuratively or otherwise, was where the beggars came from each morning and returned to each night. So that no great attention was paid to these prophets.
Of course, such a sudden and comprehensive withdrawal of the beggars could not have remained unnoted for long. And disbelief, which was the first reaction of the public at large to the development, soon turned into a perfectly understandable derision. That beggars should opt to withdraw their labour, as it were, as if they were the providers of some essential public service rather than a drain on the nation's - admittedly overfull - resources, as well as being a discouragement to potential visitors hoping to tour the capital without fear of confronting the unsightlier aspects of urban living: why, that was rich, that was, was the position the various establishment spokespersons felt nicely summed up the attitude of the average man or woman in the street. And indeed, this average human being did nothing at first to contradict that terse summation.
The tabloids, liking to feel that they were either creating or responding to public opinion, followed suit. "Tramps down tools!" one paper blared, above a photo of a designer-distressed young woman and man heading into the sunset, while their matching "his" and "hers" begging-bowls lay artfully discarded in the foreground of the image. "Bag a beggar" was the invitation extended by another, offering prizes to readers who managed to establish the whereabouts of the vagabonds, the bounty to be increased if a beggar was brought back for public display.
Few people, however, took up that offer, and the various churches, constantly exhorting all involved to love one another, seized upon this reluctance as an example of the rectitude that people could be relied on to display even in the throes of difficult moral dilemmas. Subsequent research would suggest, however, that indifference was a more likely explanation for that unwillingness; for the streets were at last free of beggars, and, for the majority, that state of affairs seemed more desirable.
Contempt for the beggars and their disappearance remaining the order of the day, the tabloids felt that it behoved them to continue the policy of meeting their readers' needs. Several papers, for example, ran full page photo-shoots showing the blistered faces and chafed extremities of vagrants, while beneath these the syndicated feature writer jocularly wondered whether this might be the first strike in history where the "scabs" and "blacklegs" were those who remained on strike rather than those who crossed the picket-lines - some fun was had, of course, with the word "picket", above a blow-up of the discharge from a particularly noxious wound.
After about six weeks, the swiftness and absoluteness of the withdrawal of the beggars, which had already been noted in the margins of public awareness, became instead the principal feature of the debate. Anger and suspicion replaced derision as the predominant public mood. Such an abrupt vanishing as had occurred was indicative to some analysts of a level of seditious organisation behind the strike. The various radical and dissident groups were name-checked in the media, and the police urged to raid each of their offices and use whatever force was necessary with the individual concerned to discover the extent of their involvement.
And this was, ultimately, what was most surprising about the whole affair: initial disbelief had become general derision had turned to a period of suspicion had evolved into, finally, a real sense of rage that the beggars no longer felt it their duty to occupy their usual positions in doorways, beneath bridges, at the rear of restaurants pleading for scraps, etc. It would of course be encouraging to state that this anger was engendered primarily by public concern for the fate of the least fortunate. On the whole, however, this seems not to have been the case. Self-interest, again, appears to have been the primary motivation, if the opinions stated in the interviews collated at the time can be regarded as typical.