of public confidence. It was a recognition that while people may say that they want police to reduce crime, what they really want is for them to reduce fear. Bobbies on the beat were never really there to catch crooks but to be a presence: to worry potential villains and calm the law-abiding citizenry.
Shortly after taking office in 2010, the Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May announced that, in her view, the mission of the police was ‘to cut crime: no more and no less’. But within three months she was saying she wanted more bobbies on the beat to tackle antisocial behaviour rather than simply criminal activity. Like almost every occupant of her post before, Mrs May appeared to be evoking the ghost of old Dixon, who knew how to deal with nuisance and mischief. ‘Let’s get them out from behind desks filling forms and out on the street where people want them and they want to be.’
There is a longing for a return to some mythical bygone age where cheerful constables kept neighbourhoods safe and secure. But what we really want is a return to a time when neighbourhoods kept neighbourhoods safe and secure, a time when locals would regularly stroll their own streets and offer a cheery ‘Good evenin’’ to all.
C is for Cheese
The ancient village of Crudgington in Shropshire has a name and a history that ring true. But don’t be fooled, all is not always what it seems. The Old English and Celtic roots of the settlement’s original name, Crugelton, translate as the hill-hill hamlet: it is as though the locals were determined to stress their neighbourhood’s aerial aspect with a double emphasis of its hilliness. Crudgington, however, is not on a hill. The village can trace its history back to 1231; it is listed in the Domesday Book. In the search for the authentic English village, you cannot find a more reliable provenance than that. But if you sniff the air in Crudgington you might still detect the faint whiff of falsehood. This is where they dreamed up Lymeswold cheese.
In telling the story of Britain’s glorious cheese industry, one encounters contradictions that still shape the national conversation: heritage versus modernity; local versus global; authenticity versus artifice. It is a journey through many ancient battlegrounds but, you may be glad to know, it has a happy ending.
Once upon a time, thousands of farmwives across Britain took paddle and churn to the fresh milk that was not consumed by the local villagers. On thousands of kitchen tables, thousands of cheeses were prepared. This was the method of preserving the protein goodness of the cowshed so the ploughman might have his lunch. But then, as the second half of the nineteeth century steamed and clanged into view, all that changed.
The arrival of the railways transformed rural life, the engine of empire dragging the local village to the global market. Crudgington was among the hundreds of places that got its own station. Instead of farmers selling fresh milk only to the community around the herd or flock, crates could be despatched far beyond, even into the hearts of rapidly expanding cities. A network of milk trains and doorstep deliverymen brought farm-fresh milk to every corner of the nation. And we lapped it up.
Farmers could scarcely cope with demand from a growing population. The need to preserve the leftovers all but disappeared. Instead, new industrial technology allowed producers to centralise cheese-making, mopping up any excess milk from across their region. To brand their product, cheeses increasingly took on the name of the area from which they hailed. But more than that, the search for consistent quality meant recipe, shape and size were controlled. From this process emerged the reputations of some of the truly great cheeses of Britain, but it also rang the death knell for small, local cheese-makers. Hundreds of varieties were lost forever; individuality did not fit with the times.
It was to get worse. Rationing in the Second World War saw the Ministry of Food stipulate that only one type could be manufactured — the National Cheese. A form of rubbery cheddar, this abomination came to define cheese in the nation’s mind. To this day there are many who still think of cheese as a lump of orange sweaty fat, grated onto a slice of white.
By the 1970s, bland, processed, homogenised factory-made gunk was routinely skewered on cocktail sticks and accompanied by a chunk of tinned pineapple, a pitiful display of what amounted to British gastronomic refinement. Our plates reflected an unshakeable faith in mass production and technological advance, the qualities that had spawned an empire two centuries before.
The country was pinning its hopes on arresting economic and industrial decline through the appliance of science. Food was predicted to become space-age rocket fuel. ‘Much of the food available will be based on protein substitutes,’ the presenters of BBC TV’s
Despite all this, the big cheeses in the UK’s dairy industry were casting envious glances at our continental cousins with their fancy Brie and Camembert, products oozing with authenticity and sophistication. It was noted how British high-street shoppers were being sold symmetrical slices of globo-gloop in airtight plastic pouches while French fromageries offered consumers dozens of local artisanal cheeses, beautifully prepared and perfectly stored.
There was anxiety in the air. Membership of the European Economic Commuity (EEC) and the introduction of European-style decimalisation had led to disquiet over an apparent loss of British national identity. Some feared that obsession with an antiseptic future had led us to forget our rich heritage. In May 1982, at a dinner in Edinburgh for the French Prime Minister Francois Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher quoted from a recently published book that had compared France and Britain and suggested it was no longer at all clear who has what, as nations copy each other so quickly. Her speech posed the question as to whether a nation’s essential genius will be lost in the process of unification. Mrs Thatcher thought not. ‘The nation of Racine, Voltaire, Debussy and Brie will persist,’ she concluded. ‘The nation of Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Elgar and Cheddar is also alive and strong.’
But within months the nation of Cheddar was attempting to copy the nation of Brie. It involved the forced marriage of cutting-edge science and traditional craft, the ceremony taking place in a shed in Shropshire. Following a two-year gestation at the cheese laboratory in Crudgington, on 27 September 1982, Lymeswold was born.
The cheese was the brainchild of Sir Stephen Roberts, an entrepreneurial farmer who ran the Milk Marketing Board. At the time, Britain’s dairy industry was tormented by what it regarded as unfair distribution of European agricultural subsidies. French farmers got the curds, it was felt, while the Brits were left with the whey. Sir Stephen decided to take the French on at their own game, and lab-coated food technicians were briefed to construct a new English soft cheese, with a white mould rind but without the runny, pungent characteristics of Camembert or Brie. These properties, it was felt, would give the product the broadest appeal. From Crudgington, he hoped, a cheese would emerge to restore British pride and mount a challenge to the global dairy market.
His invention needed a name — something that would evoke the tradition and local provenance of great English cheeses. Marketing experts tested many ideas, but the one which scored best in research was Wymeswold, the name of a small Leicestershire village that had been considered as a production site at one point. Trademark considerations ruled that one out. After further discussion, the cheese was christened Lymeswold.
It was a huge success. In the House of Commons, politicians hailed it as a potential boost to Britain’s balance of payments; the Agriculture Minister Peter Walker revealed that even his dog enjoyed the new cheese. Domestic demand was so great that there were soon shortages in the shops, but it was its popularity that would prove to be Lymeswold’s downfall. To foodies, the cheese reeked of slick marketing, its mask of authenticity as thin as its white rind; when under-matured stocks were released to increase supply, critics were happy to encourage a reputation for poor quality. Demand quickly fell off, and ten years after its launch, Lymeswold was quietly buried. Few mourned its passing.
These were, though, desperate days for Britain’s dairy farmers. The price of milk had plummeted so low it was impossible to make money from it. Resilience and imagination were all that stood between them and the collapse of their industry. What happened next is the uplifting story of how localism triumphed over centralised control; how the joyless yoke of homogenisation and industrialisation was lifted from the creativity and diversity of the British Isles. It was the moment when we realised that big wasn’t always beautiful, that new wasn’t always better than old, that science didn’t always trump art. It was the time when we rediscovered the true meaning of authenticity.
The sharp-suited marketing men spotted it first. ‘TREND: People are choosing authenticity as a backlash to aspects of modern life,’ one agency’s analysis reported. ‘TREND: Consumers are seeking to “reconnect with the
