commercialised, becomes either heritage or kitsch — trinkets bought in the airport store,’ Anthony Giddens warned. Well, maybe — but the New Labour project he helped design regarded heritage as a key to the future peace and security of the United Kingdom no less. The government-regulated lottery has diverted billions to heritage projects, which it says provide ‘the foundation of a confident, modern society’. The old is seen as vital for the new.
But heritage has the power not only to define but to divide. One only has to go to Northern Ireland to see how traditions have evolved as expressions of separateness and sectarianism. During the late nineteenth century, Irish nationalists and British patriots manufactured customs to differentiate each from the other. Whether it was Gaelic League or Orange Lodge, communities on both sides sought ways to highlight cultural difference.
While Orangemen were parading their Protestantism in bowler hats and sashes, nationalists were seeking to establish an ‘authentic’ Irish cultural identity. The president of the Gaelic League Douglas Hyde called for the rejection of English colonial culture (‘West Britonism’, he called it) and encouraged his countrymen to recover Ireland’s language, manners, customs, music, games, place names, personal names and literature. From these culture wars flowed the bigotry and hatred that contributed to decades of violence and unhappiness.
In the 1990s, European Union funds were spent trying to reverse the process. A grants scheme promoted the development of cultural traditions which would ‘encourage cultural confidence and an acceptance of cultural diversity in Northern Ireland’. Effectively, this was cash for customs — money was on offer for those who could come up with new traditions that encouraged community cohesion.
‘Identity’, it has been said, ‘is always a modern project: an attempt of differing political and economic interests to construct their historical pasts as the representation of the “truths” of their present day practices.’
The author of that, American sociologist Jonathan Church, spent time on the Shetland Islands investigating what he called ‘confabulations of community’. Confabulation is a wonderful psychological term to describe the confusion of imagination with memory. But Dr Church used it to mean something altogether more sinister — the way in which invented traditions may be used to construct a false identity.
He had gone to Shetland to study the Hamefarin — a homecoming festival first held in 1960 and revived in 1985, which stressed the ancient Viking roots of the people of the islands. It seemed like innocent fun, but Dr Church was anxious this new tradition was closing down a more complex historical back story featuring Scottish kings, German merchants and American oil tycoons. ‘A singular gaze has become appropriated and institutionalised in the power of official memory,’ he concluded.
Traditional ritual possesses a magic, a powerful nostalgic force. Once it has entered the folklore, it is sacred — part of what is called the civil religion of a state (see ‘Q is for Queen’). Revision, as with a bible, must be conducted with great care. But the transformation of Britain’s ethnic and cultural make-up means revision is deemed necessary and urgent. In describing a modern national identity, tradition may be seen as an obstacle.
British pomp and pageantry were often created to remind people of their place — consolidating the feudal or hierarchical structures of British society. Everyone knows his or her position in the Lord Mayor’s Parade. On inspection, ceremonial may have its origins in morally dubious military and political activity. Custom and tradition are sometimes criticised as sexist, elitist, racist and worse. Certainly, their impact can appear at odds with contemporary values and ambition. Great and ancient universities have been urged to give up the Latin ceremonial, gowns and processing which, it is argued, can appear elitist and act as a barrier to social mobility. In the dying days of the twentieth century, the first female members were welcomed into the Long Room at Lord’s.
Social identities based on class, faith and politics may have been diluted, but the passions behind them cannot be dismissed. Enter the heritage industry to smooth out any dangers during transition, promoting a sanitised version of our past to encourage a placid future. I once walked through a miserably predictable shopping precinct in an old cotton town in Lancashire, where the only unexpected feature was a glass box set into the pedestrian paving. Inside was a shiny mill wheel turning very slowly. Britain’s homogeneous high streets, illuminated by the same corporate shop windows, have left many towns exploring their past in the search for distinction. Derelict buildings are being restored, traditional activities revived and neglected customs embraced once again.
The problem with this strategy is that, like Lymeswold cheese (see ‘C for Cheese’), it tends to be bland and a bit dull. Each quiet revolution of the gleaming mill wheel is a feeble nod to a real revolution, driven by invention and exploitation, struggle and greed. Authenticity would demand not polish on its bearings, but blood, sweat and tears. Such rose-tinted history is perfumed with sentimentality. But to engage with truth means accepting our past, warts and all. In celebrating ancient battles, we risk opening old wounds.
Government ministers have claimed that heritage-led regeneration can cut crime, improve public health and make communities function better. Slices of heritage can act as focal points ‘around which communities will rally and revive their sense of civic pride’, argues one regeneration agency. Most politicians would accept that passing laws isn’t a terribly good way of achieving these vital social outcomes and, in the face of obvious community tension and disharmony, one can imagine the hope they have for a dose of heritage and tradition.
Success lies in finding and promoting aspects of our past which are non-divisive, but not so ‘safe’ as to render them inauthentic. Which is where the silly hats come in. Britain’s straight-faced eccentricity is regarded as a national strength, a characteristic of self-confidence and independence. Absurd relics from our past can be shaped and embellished, buffed and displayed as symbols of British assurance and autonomy. Ridiculous customs, bizarre traditions, ludicrous dress and the silliest of hats: we know that it is harder for people to laugh at us if we know how to laugh at ourselves.
T is for Toilet
I shuddered when writing the above. I was brought up to believe that ‘toilet’ was a term never
Almost any term associated with the disposal of human waste is loaded with social baggage in Britain. In asking for directions to the… [insert euphemism of choice here], we probably reveal more about ourselves than if we were to squat in the gutter. My family, when absolutely required to describe the facility in question, would most probably plump for ‘loo’. This three-lettered sobriquet of disputed derivation is now, apparently, the most popular choice of any, a timid little thing without hard consonants or even an ending to speak of, a word that barely whispers its presence in a sentence.
Contrast ‘loo’ (regularly used by 80 per cent of Brits) with ‘bog’ (a no-nonsense label employed by just 15 per cent) or khazi (less than 4 per cent of people utilise this Cockney slang); the latter are words with self-confidence, even attitude, and they are falling out of fashion. Four out of ten of us talk of ‘going to the bathroom’ when we have no intention of taking a bath. The ‘little boy’s/girl’s room’, ‘powder room’ or the ‘restroom’ (invasive Americanisms) are similarly coy descriptions for facilities that seem to require increasing amounts of demure disguise with each century that passes. Indeed, the start of the twenty-first was marked by the coining of a new British euphemism: the designers of the eco-friendly tepee-shaped public convenience in the Millennium Dome were moved to describe it as a ‘beacon of relief’.
Britain’s changing relationship with basic bodily functions reflects the evolution of its society. It is not just vocabulary: the toilet charts the boundaries of public responsibility and private life, of our relationship with each other and even with ourselves. The shiny porcelain of the bowl acts as a mirror to British values, identities and hang-ups.
The Slovenian writer Slavoj Zizek famously suggested that ‘you go to the toilet and you sit on ideology.’ In an article for the
