Chris Bunting. Times Higher Education Supplement, August 2004. To be published reproduced in "Big Questions in History" (Jonathan Cape, Hardback, date to be specified)
In the title sequence for the 1970s British sitcom Citizen Smith, the hero "Wolfie" Smith, general Marxist revolutionary about town, used to stride out from Tooting Broadway Station whistling an up-tempo version of The Red Flag. The camera followed Wolfie, clad in Afghan coat and Che Guevara beret, as he whistled his way up Tooting High Street and kicked a can across the railway bridge. At the other side of the bridge, he thrust his fist in the air, struck a heroic pose, and bellowed across South London, "Power to the People".
Sadly for Wolfie, there was never a revolutionary mob waiting to surge forward at his rousing words. It took our hero four series, and endless revolutionary schemes, to realise that his dreams of being swept to power and lining his enemies against a wall for "one last fag, then bop, bop, bop" were just that. Tooting was happy in its chains.
Every age and every place has its Wolfie Smiths. There is always someone hoping that the social and political system will be turned on its head. And realisation of these desires has, more often than not, been a distant fantasy. For every storming of the Bastille, there have been 10,000 Socialist Workers Party meetings in nearly empty halls spent grumbling about the apathy of the masses.
Just occasionally, however, somebody puts his head above the parapet, shouts "Power to the People" and finds a chorus of excited voices shouting back. And when the idea of revolution catches hold of a society, all hell can break loose.
But why do these radical changes happen in certain places and certain periods and steadfastly refuse to happen in others?
(Because this article is to be included in a book , I have decided not to reproduce the main body of the text on the web. The full chapter will be included in "Big Questions in History", Jonathan Cape, Hardback, date to be announced)