TRUE BRITS - PANORAMA

On Monday night, Panorama looked at the issue of Britishness in a program called True Brits. Unfortunately I missed it, but here is the background information on the program, taken from the Panorama website.

“In June this year, Liam Byrne, home office minister for borders and immigration, mooted the idea that the August bank holiday be made Britishness Day - a day of national celebration of our country along the lines of America’s 4 July holiday. His suggestion was instantly dubbed a “blunder” by the Scottish National Party, which was quick to point out that the August bank holiday is at the start of the month in Scotland, while in England and Wales it is at the end.

But even if this scheduling glitch could be overcome, huge questions still remain about how Britishness should be defined. So, on the very day which Mr Byrne suggested should be Britishness Day, Panorama: True Brits tries to answer the question what exactly is Britishness? And just as importantly, why is the government suddenly talking about it? However, as Panorama reporter Vivian White soon finds, virtually everyone seems to have a different definition of what Britishness is - that is if they are able to come up with one at all.

‘Loss of freedoms’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown - who revealed this month that he is preparing to write a book on what it means to be British - has said that it is all about shared values: ”We share the same values about liberty, about democracy, about the need for social cohesion and for people to work together co-operatively,” Mr Brown said.

British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin says being British is about being of British stock, in other words white. But in recent decades the ethnic makeup of Britain has been transformed by mass migration.

Governments both past and present called on people to celebrate their differences and called it “multiculturalism”. In July 2005 projecting that rainbow world identity helped us to win the prize of hosting the 2012 Olympics.

But the very next day a few British citizens made it clear their loyalties lay elsewhere by mounting the 7 July suicide bomb attacks on the London transport system, forcing Britishness and a debate about what it means be British top of the agenda.

Radical view

However, as True Brits reports, when the government poses the question “are you really one of us?” the answer is often not a simple Yes or No. Mozzam Begg, a British-born radical Muslim, is best known for having spent two years in Guantanamo Bay, only to be finally released without charge. When being held by at the US detention facility his American guards were in no doubt as to his Britishness - referring to him by the name Great Britain and even making sure that he was kept informed when the Queen Mother died. He however, is not so sure, telling the programme that he does not “think anybody knows actually what Britishness is including the people who want to tell us what they think Britishness is”.

And north Yorkshire schoolboy Cameron agrees. He believes the government are asking us to define Britishness for them because they don’t know what it is and need our help.

When asked whether “being British is more important to my sense of identify than my family’s country of origin” 43% of young people from ethnic minorities disagreed as opposed to 29% of their white counterparts. In other words young people from ethnic minorities are more likely to plump for their family’s country of origin as their marker of identity than young white people.

Rite of passage

And they are not alone - as the programme reports, in 1974 when forced to pick only one national identity, 31% of people in Scotland said that they were British, but by 2006 this figure had fallen to 14%. In 2005 the government introduced new procedures for foreigners wanting to become British citizens whereby applicants have to read a book called Life in the UK and sit a 45-minute test on society, history and culture before taking part in a ceremony marking their change of nationality.

The programme asks if this kind of education about Britishness and ceremony should be extended to young people turning 18, to mark their graduation to full status as a True Brit. One of the teenagers Vivian speaks to says that the government should not be asking what is Britishness is at all because a British citizen will be different everywhere you look.

Perhaps this in itself is something to celebrate. But, as the programme reports, even if we could agree on what to celebrate we are unlikely to agree on how to - after all isn’t all of that Union Jack waving stuff frankly rather un-British?”

Here are some viewers comments about the program.

Posted in ENGLISHNESS | No Comments »

FAMILY TRADITIONS

After nearly four months on the road we’ve now arrived in Cleator Moor, the small Cumbrian town where my mum grew up and where many of her extended family still reside. It’s been a place of pilgrimage for our family almost every summer since she left for London in her early twenties.

In his thoroughly researched book Cleator and Cleator Moor, Past and Present, which first published in 1916, Caesar Caine, Vicar of Cleator, wrote: “The ancient parish of Cleator lies midway between St. Bees on the Cumberland coast, and Ennerdale Lake which is embosomed amid the most westerly summits of the Cumbrian hills. From either of these beautiful, and deservedly popular resorts, Cleator can be reached by the pedestrian in about an hour. Nor is Cleator to be despised by the lover of nature and the sight-seer, in spite of its mines and manufactures of to-day. The place has many beauty spots, and boasts of an overshadowing mountain, rich in wild life….without its mines, manufactures, and rows of houses, [Cleator] has become most familiar to me, and I have learned to love it more, in some respects, as it was, rather than it is.”

Joined by my mum and dad, we’ll be spending the next few days visiting - and photographing - some of the holiday spots around Cleator Moor, resurrecting old family traditions such as walking along St Bees Head, having a bbq on the shores of Crummock Water, attending some County shows, throwing skimmers into Lake Ennerdale (above) and climbing some mountains (such as Scafell Pike- below).

Posted in PLACES | No Comments »

DADDY, THAT MAN’S NAKED!

I couldn’t resist posting up another picture from the nudist weekend at the Tan Hill Inn. This was the scene that greeted my daughter from the motorhome!

Posted in POSTCARDS | No Comments »

POSTCARD IN THE TIMES - WEEK 13

Continuing my weekly dispatch in The Times, week 13 was taken in Tan Hill, Yorkshire Dales.

Tan Hill, Swaledale, North Yorkshire, 17th August 2008

Members of the British Naturism Society attend a pub weekend at the Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in Britain. Despite the torrential rain, members took advantage of the fact that nudity was permitted in a private area of the pub as well as the camping area. The British Naturism Society has over 16,000 members and naturism is growing in popularity all the time.

This week we’ll be in Cumbria.

Posted in POSTCARDS | No Comments »

DIARY OF SIR JOHN WITTEWRONGE

It’s Bank Holiday Monday and I should be climbing Helvellyn along with the hordes of holidaymakers and ramblers who are in the region to make the ascent of this popular Lakeland mountain. Instead I’m camped out in a tea house in Keswick trying to stay dry, with hordes of holidaymakers and ramblers!

Whilst tucking into a steak pie and cursing the English summer that never was, I came across today’s  Weatherwatch in The Guardian. It points out that the holiday month of August has always been prone to extremes, with high rainfall chief among them and quotes from the weather diary of Sir John Wittewronge of Rothamsted, Hertfordshire. In his August 1685 records Sir John notes that his apricots and peaches by reason of the “unseasonable wett weather ripened very ill” and a good number of the peaches “rotted and fel off.” The year “was a long and wett unreasonable harvest as I ever remember.” His entry for today, August 25, reads: “A cloudy day with frequent showers of rain, in the evening thunder and lightening and rain to some purpose from five to past seven continually and after by intervals til 9.”

Anyway, I’m becoming somewhat of a cliche discussing the weather so much on the blog, so I promise this is the last time I do so!

Posted in TRIP LOGISTICS | No Comments »

CUMBRIAN COUNTY SHOWS

August’s unseasonably wet weather has played havoc with Cumbria’s county shows after the region saw almost an entire month’s worth of rainfall within the first 12 days. In the past week alone over half a dozen county shows have been cancelled due to flooded fields, among them the Keswick Agricultural Show, Lunesdale Show, Hawkshead Agricultural Show and Rydal Sheepdog Trials and Hound Show. The latter was cancelled for only the third time in its 106-year history.

The county show has been a summer fixture in most Cumbrian towns and villages for over a century and has always been of vital importance to the local community. Many of the shows have managed to remain genuinely traditional Lakeland affairs. So I was particularly disappointed to hear that the Patterdale Dog Day had been cancelled this week due to a waterlogged field. The show has kept to its original format and fiercely resisted the lure of commercialization.

This is in stark contrast to many of the national agricultural shows such as The Royal Show which I attended earlier this year, where I counted an astonishing 48 corporate sponsors including HSBC, Trinity Private Wealth Management, RAC, Muller, Renotherm foam insulation, McDonalds and all the major supermarket chains who were trumpeting their support of British farmers. (Such as M&S, one of the major ‘partners’ of the show, who had a large hospitality tent for their clients).

I’m planning to attend the Grasmere Sports And Show this weekend so decided to phone the organizers to check that it would still be going ahead. The reply I got from the director of the show was definitive: “Young man, Grasmere Sports has been running since 1852 and never been cancelled. It went ahead during both World Wars so it’s going to take a lot more than a few drops of rain to stop us this year!”

One show that did beat the rain this week was held at Gosforth (it only went ahead following an emergency committee meeting on Monday). It was a very understated affair with the traditional mix of horse and pony displays, Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling, a local produce tent and various competitions. Peter Wright’s honey won the best exhibit in the section, while Gosforth WI took first prize in their category with their exhibit ‘A leisurely lunch’. In the horticulture tent, Mark Hewertson, who won in the gladioli, pansies and fuschia categories, was named the Best in Show. My favourite competition judging took place in the poultry tent where Robert Brown, from Uldale, took the top prize with his clay/wheaten. 

Posted in EVENTS & PASTIMES, PLACES | No Comments »

INTERIOR DESIGN

We’re now in Cumbria and have spent the last couple of days visiting relatives. I’ve always been interested in people’s interior design choices so here are a couple of bathroom interiors at one of my relatives-

Posted in MISCELLANEOUS | No Comments »

PIGEON FANCYING

I spent last Friday enjoying a crash course in the sport of pigeon fancying, with the very amiable Billy Marr as my tutor. While thirty of his pigeons were enjoying their daily fly, Billy ran me through his techniques for breeding, training and racing pigeons. Like most pigeon fanciers, Billy was born into the sport. Along with his two brothers he has been breeding and flying pigeons for over 30 years from his loft in the North Allotment in the town of Easington. (A town based around the local colliery, which closed in 1993. It was also where most of Stephen Daldry’s film Billy Elliot was shot).

During a race, all the pigeons start from a transport truck which can be parked up to 200 miles away, but the finish line is each pigeon’s home loft. Each race has a distance, but not all the pigeon’s fly the same distance. The first pigeon to reach its loft isn’t necessarily the winner. The fastest flyer, calculated in yards per minute, wins the race.

Each member has a clock synchronized with the club’s master clock. The distance from each owner’s loft to the start of the race has been surveyed and calculated. Each pigeon wears a registration band on one leg and a rubber band on the other. In the Easington Working Men’s Club that night I watched Billy and his fellow members of the South East Durham Federation synchronize their clocks for tomorrow’s race. 

The pigeon’s rubber band is the ‘message’ it’s carrying. That message goes into the clock, and the clock marks the time the pigeon returns. The pigeon’s time of return is used to figure the speed of the bird and crown a race winner.

I found it fascinating to witness Billy’s devotion to his pigeons - a species Ken Livingstone famously described as “flying rats”. In the north-east of England, where pigeon racing is still popular enough to support hundreds of local clubs, a handful of wonderfully named federations such as the Up North Combine (which Billy is a member of) and the West Durham Amalgamation and weekly races contested by tens of thousands of pigeons, the tradition and the passion are deeply ingrained.

The sport requires a huge time commitment and for those who want to win, and it is no longer a particularly cheap hobby. Billy feeds them corn that costs over £10 a bag and every bird receives an annual vaccination against paramyxovirus to keep it in peak condition. It costs between 50p and £1 to enter a pigeon in a race, which may be contested by up to 6,000 birds, but the prize money is modest (the winners at a recent national event shared a £4,000 pot). Buying birds for breeding can be expensive, however - the record is £110,000 for a single pigeon  (Invisible Spirit bought by 

Young people are not exactly flocking to pigeon racing, and everyone concedes that the sport has been in decline since the glory days of the 1950s. Peter Bryant, general manager of the Royal Pigeon Racing Association, says it loses about 2,000 members a year. “We call it the Sony PlayStation and David Beckham syndrome,” he says. “It’s very difficult to get youngsters into the sport. The old racers are dying and the youngsters aren’t coming through.”

For a comprehensive background to the sport in the UK go to this link.

Posted in EVENTS & PASTIMES | No Comments »

CURIOUS KIDS

My ebony camera proved to be of great interest to a group of (bored and drunk) teenagers I came across on the site of the old colliery in Horden.

Horden Colliery had been one of the biggest mines in the country. From the beginning of construction in 1900 to nationalisation in 1947 it was owned and operated by Horden Collieries Ltd and was operated mainly for the purpose of working undersea coal.

At the height of operating in the 1930s it employed over 4000 men and produced over 1.5million tonnes of coal a year. The colliery thrived until the early 1970’s when water and geological problems occurred.  It finally closed in 1986.

Posted in PLACES | No Comments »

HEROIC ARTICULATION OF THE REAL

I’ve just come across this interview with Stephen Shore on Darius Himes’ blog while researching another post. It’s very enlightening on Shore’s work (of which much has been written). The answer to the following question particularly resonates and, dare I say it, partly explains what I’m trying to do with the 5×4 in We English!

Darius Himes- Gerry Badger has described your work as an “heroic articulation of the real.” Which to me carries connotations of the work as a support for contemplation. What do you think he means by this?

Stephen Shore- For me it has to do with the view camera. In the original Uncommon Places, there’s a picture of Eason, PA, with a red and white Volkswagen van in it.

I made that photograph on the first day that I used the 8×10; all the work in A Road Trip Journal is made with a 4×5 and then I took one short trip in ‘74 with the 4×5 before borrowing a friends’ 8×10. As you’re looking at the photograph, you realize that there is a boy sitting in the window and that you can even see his breath on the glass. It was this photograph that made me realize that with this camera I don’t have to walk across the street and photograph him. I can let him be a tiny little thing to be discovered in the picture. This was a very different technical approach from American Surfaces, for instance. So that changes the relationship of the viewer to the picture and the function of the picture. It’s not just a window directing your attention–”here look at this”— but is something itself to be the object of attention and to be explored. I think that’s similar to what Badger is saying.

Posted in INSPIRATION | No Comments »