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Introduction to Milton Keynes and its music

In Milton Keynes local music was unquestionably flourishing. A quick preview of the music-making going on between 1980 and 1984 can give a preliminary indication of its extent.

Here, then, is a summary list of the main groups and activities in and around Milton Keynes in the early 1980s, each the subject of fuller exploration in later chapters: three to four classical orchestras and several dozen youth and school orchestras; five to eight main brass bands and several smaller ones; nine or ten independent four-part choirs in the classical tradition together with many small groups, and choirs in most schools and churches; around six operatic or musical drama societies, including two Gilbert and Sullivan societies; over a dozen jazz groups playing in regular jazz venues known to their devotees; five or six folk clubs, a dozen folk groups, and about four ‘ceilidh’ dance bands; two leading country and western bands plus other more fluid groups and an extremely successful club; and a hundred or more small rock and pop bands. Live music was being heard and performed not just in public halls but also in churches, schools, open air festivals, social clubs and pubs, and the local newspapers were teeming with advertisements about local musical gatherings.

Definitive numbers are impossible, if only because groups typically formed, disappeared and re-formed during the four years of the research, and because of varying definitions of ‘music’ or of ‘group’ as well as the problem of just how one draws the boundaries of ‘Milton Keynes’ or of ‘Milton Keynes music’.¹ But in all there must have been several hundred functioning musical groups based and performing in and around the locality, and hundreds of live performances each year.

How can this striking efflorescence of the musical arts be explained, and how was it sustained? One crucial factor might at first sight seem to lie in the special position of Milton Keynes as one of Britain’s ‘new towns’ with consequential financial and social benefits. Let me start therefore by explaining this background.

Figure 1 Borough of Milton Keynes and surrounding area

Figure 2 The new city of Milton Keynes (designated area) at the time of the research

Milton Keynes originated from 1960s plans to create new towns to relieve industrial and social pressures in London and the South-East. An area of 22,000 acres in North Buckinghamshire was designated in 1967 as a ‘new city’² and a development corporation created with government funding. The plans were being implemented in the 1970s and 1980s, so that the population of the designated area grew from 40,000 in 1967 to 77,000 in 1977, 95,000 in 1980, 112,000 in 1983 and 122,000 in 1985 with a target of 200,000 in 1990. The site was partly chosen for its established north-south communication links: starting from the Roman Watling Street (to become a main coaching route north, later still the A5) as well as the Grand Union Canal, nineteenth-century railway and, more recently, the M1.

By the early 1980s ‘the new city of Milton Keynes’ had become known throughout the country for its glamorous advertising, its large covered shopping centre (reputedly the largest in Europe) and its imaginative landscaping with its millions of trees. It had also managed to attract a variety of both large and small firms, mostly light industries, distribution centres and offices offering a wide spread of employment. The promotional literature describes it, in typically glowing language, as ‘a growing city which is providing people with an attractive and prosperous place in which to live and work’.

The town thus built up was not totally new, however, despite the impression sometimes given to outsiders. The Milton Keynes ‘designated area’ also incorporated thirteen or so existing villages and, more important, three established towns of some substance. These were Bletchley, originally a local market town, then, from the establishment of the London-Birmingham railway, a thriving industrial centre and later London overspill; Wolverton, once itself a ‘new’ town, home of the railway works from 1848, for long the largest single employer in the area; and Stony Stratford, dating back to the thirteenth century and still notable for its Georgian high street and old coaching inns. As can be seen clearly in the aerial views in figure 3, Milton Keynes was a mixture of the old and the new. The locality was thus influenced not only by the new plans of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) interacting with both private enterprise and public authorities, but also by already-established local institutions. Because of the existing links which already ran across the area, Milton Keynes was often thought of as not confined just to the ‘designated’ site of the ‘new city’ but also as taking in the slightly wider area covered by the Borough of Milton Keynes (BMK). BMK included around 20,000 more people and covered the town of Newport Pagnell and villages such as Woburn Sands. These had long been part of the local connections in this part of North Buckinghamshire and were also increasingly associated with Milton Keynes. Indeed for certain purposes such as educational or church organisation it was such links and not the ‘designated area’ boundaries which were applied (figures 1–2, and also the discussion in the appendix, p. 346); much of the analysis here assumes this wider sense of ‘Milton Keynes’.

Figure 3 New and old in Milton Keynes

(a) The crowded village of Stony Stratford with its long High Street (the old Roman Watling Street), old inns, churches, market and Horsefair Green

(b) New city housing estate (Fishermead), showing the more spacious new layout with the typical Milton Keynes grid pattern, roundabouts, and green tree-planted areas separating the estates

Figure 4 The changing age structure in Milton Keynes and its comparison with national patterns. By 1983 the population of Milton Keynes was still very much younger than in the country as a whole, but less so than in 1976. There was still a higher proportion of those aged 0–11 and 20–40, but there had been a significant increase in the proportions of teenagers, middle-aged and older people in the population. Based on Milton Keynes Household Survey, 1983

During my research in 1980–4 there was thus a rapidly growing population, drawn mainly from London and the South-East. New houses and halls were being built, schools, pubs and churches opened, and new industries established. The population structure was fairly characteristic of a developing area: more in the 0–11 and 20–40 age groups and more families with young children than in the British population as a whole (a difference gradually decreasing as the town became established). Similarly the socioeconomic structure had its own particular features, with a relatively, though not strikingly, high proportion engaged in skilled manual (and perhaps later non-manual) work (see figures 4–6). The owner-occupier rate for housing was low, if rising, by national standards (41 per cent in 1979, 49 per cent in 1983 as against the 1983 national average of 57 per cent). This was hardly surprising given the numbers of houses for rent built in the early days of the city, but the high proportion of what was – in effect – council housing may be unexpected to those who think of the Milton Keynes population as all ‘middle class’ or unusually well-to-do.

Figure 5 Socio-economic profile of Milton Keynes in 1979. Based on Postal Survey, 1979

Milton Keynes thus represented a complex interaction between old and new and was in some ways gradually moving nearer to the national average. In certain respects it could indeed claim to be a ‘new city’ – an image effectively propagated by the vision (and lavish advertising) of the development corporation and its officials – and was certainly characterised by an influx of new population and government funding in the 1970s and early 1980s.

It could be, therefore, that the proliferation of music in Milton Keynes should be related to this recent development. One could point to the gathering of a young and mobile population in carefully planned urban locations and to the enlightened policy of MKDC, who from the start emphasised the development of recreational facilities and the encouragement of the arts. The patterns of local music could thus be viewed as a successful response to these development policies in the favourable context of a new city.

This clearly was one dimension. But it would be over-simple to see it purely in these terms. The evidence for this assertion will emerge from the later description, but one point is worth making at once. This is that amidst the effective advertising, it is easy for outsiders to forget that Milton Keynes did not begin from a tabula rasa. There was already an extensive population in the area, particularly in the established town of Bletchley (which long continued to be the single largest centre of population within Milton Keynes) but also in Stony Stratford and Wolverton, each with further links to such other nearby centres as Woburn Sands, Newport Pagnell, Buckingham and the intervening villages. These towns and villages had their own active and continuing cultures – different, no doubt, from the larger-scale and more ‘nationally’ oriented institutions later encouraged by the MKDC but each with its own validity. The later developments in the 1970s and 1980s can only be fully understood as involving some interaction – often congenial, sometimes abrasive – with already established local institutions.

Figure 6 Milton Keynes facts and figures (1983). Based on Milton Keynes Household Survey, 1983

A detailed account of the earlier history of local music would be a subject on its own, but some illustrations can put the later situation into perspective. One was the long choral tradition in the locality. This went back to the last century, particularly in the established association between choirs and local churches and organists, and continued strongly in more recent times. Between the wars, for example, there was the flourishing Co-operative Choral Society in Bletchley under its lively railway conductor, still well remembered by older Bletchley inhabitants, followed by the Bletchley Ladies Choir, which lasted for over twenty years from the 1940s on, as well as regular choral performances in the local churches, and a well-attended Free Church Choir Festival in the 1950s. Many of the surrounding villages had their own choral societies and competed with the Women’s Institute choirs in the Buckingham music festival. Newport Pagnell’s choral society, still flourishing in the 1980s, had been putting on performances and inviting outside artists to sing with them since 1910 (with a few interruptions), and people still talked of the wartime occasion at the Electra Cinema when Owen Brannigan sang and was paid with £10 and two dozen eggs. These earlier traditions formed the base for later developments like the still-existing Bletchley-based Sherwood Choir, drawing many of its members from the older Bletchley Ladies Choir. This and many other recent groups were able to build on the established choral tradition not only for their singers but also for ready audiences, instrumental support, and recognised performance venues like the old churches.

The same interaction between the new and the already established was also to be found in other musical forms. Brass bands played an important role in the ‘new city’, merely the most recent manifestation of an already strong local tradition which included several brass bands dating back to the turn of the century or earlier. Similarly there were earlier orchestras such as the inter-war Apollo Orchestra in Bletchley, church concert parties like the Spurgeon Baptist Chapel’s Busy Bees, and dance bands like the Papworth Trio (figure 7) who were performing all through the war for parents’ association dances in the school halls – a role now more usually fulfilled by the ‘ceilidh’ folk bands – and continued to play for Bletchco Players (a drama group still in existence) till the 1950s. The newer musical groups thus fitted easily into the local situation, sharing in the same tradition of performance for local events and societies.

There was also the already-existing base of individual performers and local music teachers, some of whom had been putting on regular recitals by their pupils in the inter-war years, and of schools and other groups producing operas and musical plays. To this was added the foundation of the LEA’s North Bucks Music Centre in Bletchley in 1964. This provided a focus both for school music and for local groups founded in the seventies to practise on its premises off Sherwood Drive, among them the Sherwood Sinfonia, Sherwood Choir and re-formed Bletchley Band.

Figure 7 The Papworth Trio, a popular dance band in the Bletchley area from the 1930s to the 1950s, led by the local greengrocer, pianist and organist Tom Papworth

Many other 1980s groups too had their roots in earlier societies: for example the flourishing Milton Keynes Amateur Operatic Society (founded 1952 as the Bletchley Amateur Operatic Society following the tradition of the pre-war Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Amateur Operatic Society), the Milton Keynes and District Pipe Band (founded from Bletchley, 1971/2) and the Bletchley Organ Society with its regular monthly meetings since 1971. Similarly many of the earlier local festivals continued into the 1970s and 1980s, sometimes the models for parallel festivals in the ‘new city’. Among these were the annual Bletchley Middle School Music Festival, the Bletchley and District First Schools Folk Dance Festival, the Boys’ Brigade annual procession, and the Spurgeon’s Church ‘Carols for Everybody’, a yearly event since 1961. The Milton Keynes Festival of Arts was founded as the Bletchley Festival of the Arts in 1968 and by the 1980s was attracting thousands of entries each year from throughout the city and beyond. The tradition of music in the schools was important too, and ex-scholars of the (earlier) Bletchley Grammar School and Radcliffe School in Wolverton were formative influences in local folk and rock music, and together with newcomers were still making an active contribution to the local music scene in the 1980s.

To explain the musical character of Milton Keynes solely in terms of the new city or initiatives from above would thus be an over-simplification. It is understandable that some of the officials planning the arts should take the view that cultural development had to be initiated from the top – even half-believe that without their support grass-roots music could not really flourish. This, after all, is an approach in keeping with the accepted planning philosophy that ‘in all types of new community the basic responsibility for recreational provision lies with the local authority’ (Veal 1975, p. 79). An early arts manager in the city explained the process of ‘bringing art into the lives of those living in a new city’ from the viewpoint of planners: ‘It is a slow but rewarding process. One digs, fertilises, plants, prunes and tends – with a great deal of love. After many years the roses will have developed and the prize blooms will be ready for show.’³ Certainly this central encouragement was one real element. Without the initial sponsorship by the MKDC and BMK many of the larger-scale and more ‘nationally’ oriented and ‘professional’ musical institutions like the Wavendon Allmusic Plan, the Milton Keynes Chamber Orchestra, or the ‘February Festival’ would never have been set up; and MKDC in particular had an impressive record in tapping both private enterprise and local initiative to encourage a wide variety of local recreational opportunities. But concentrating only on a top-down model would be to miss the essential contribution of the existing musical traditions which not only often continued as important foci for local interest but also laid the base for later additional activities. Indeed some MKDC administrators explicitly recognised this, notably certain leading individuals in the ‘Social Development’ programme who made a point of working with existing musical groups and responding to the initiatives of local residents. The informal processes and expectations underlying the local practice of music and the people who maintained the local clubs and groups over the years thus also played a crucial role, one that cannot be understood by considering the official institutions alone.

Probably no city is ‘typical’, and it will be obvious from the above that Milton Keynes in the early 1980s certainly was not. It was a ‘new city’ growing in population by some tens of thousands during the research and characterized by lavish publicity, demographic and social structure divergent from the national ‘average’, and the special impetus of new challenges and new developments in a new environment. In the absence of comparable studies, we do not yet know what is ‘typical’ of musical practice in contemporary English towns. This study does not therefore claim to present a detailed representation of all English towns, but to give an ethnographic account of just one at one particular period.

Hence I have no doubt that the details of the extent and nature of the musical activities presented here or the personalities who helped to create them are indeed unique. But equally I feel certain from the informal evidence discussed later, from the existing foundations in the area, and from the very mix of people from different origins in Milton Keynes, that many of the broad patterns described in later chapters are to be found fairly widely in England – an invisible system structuring and maintaining local music up and down the country.