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
