There can be no doubt that Demolition Day will be highly charged. No, people will not have to pay any money to watch their prefabs being smashed to pulp. Demolition Day will be charged in the currency of raw tension, see-sawing emotion, and palpitating pathos.
Knocking our prefab estate down will be the biggest event to take place in this neck of the woods since - well, since the day when our prefab estate first went up. When the old crowd gathers around to watch them pummel the steel frames, plaster-board lining, and asbestos cladding into dust hardly a single wrinkled cheek will manage to stay dry. ("And some people will cry as well"). There are rumours that a few ex-prisoners-of-war from Germany and Italy who helped build some prefab estates will be turning up as well.
Do not count on any banner-waving delegations being dispatched to the Guildhall to demand a last minute reprieve. No cheers would go up if a headline proclaiming The Big Move Is Off! was splashed across the front page of the Bath & Wilting Chronicle. Even delaying Demolition Day for a few months would produce a gnashing of teeth and a tearing of cloth. In some parts of the country prefab residents have gone on hunger strike to stop their pads being bulldozed into oblivion. There is no chance of that happening here. Smart new houses with brick walls are waiting to be moved into just a quarter of a mile away. The well-worn skins of nineteen forties'
have no place in a world of chrome-lined milkbars with bumper-sized jukeboxes. The
nostalgicians are in full retreat. The people want the keys of full council house citizenship - and they want them now!