This post especially for Chris, over at the Virtual Stoa.
There’s an important similarity between David Blunkett’s recent thoughts on women’s drink culture
‘They may be the ones who countenance it rather than calm it,’ he said. ‘It is not chauvinistic to say the presence of women has often been a calming influence, in terms of young men starting to lay about each other.’
and the Harry Enfield 1950s public announcement parodies which outlined the grim consequences of letting women drive, work, etc, which ended with a stern “Women, Know your place.”
Suzanne Moore spotted this back in 2000, but I wonder whether anyone has paused whether it’s merely coincidence that the British Home Secretary’s sad scramblings for a new moral idiom should so closely resemble the fag-end of nineteenth century Blanquism.