Celebration and the state

Tuesday November 15, 2011

Government likes to control the way we celebrate in public, observes Tom Miers

Autumn’s three festivals bring a distinctive flavour to the season. Halloween, Bonfire Night and Remembrance Day each draw poignancy from the otherwise drear weather. The clock change helps by providing a dark background to the ghosts and flames of the first two, while November’s mists weep with us for the fallen.

Festivals? This is what they have surely become, replacing saints’ days and the marking points of the agricultural calendar to provide a cluster of stepping stones mid-way between summer and Christmas.

Each tells us something about the society we are developing.

Halloween is sometimes sneered at as an Americanism. But in truth it draws on European traditions of ghoulishness and the terrors of the night. It has certainly eclipsed All Saints Day (our local church minister even dressed up as a witch), but old timers can sniff about the pumpkins and hack nostalgically at turnips instead. My children enjoy Halloween more than almost every other public event, nearly as much as Christmas.

Commercial interests have poured money into it, which perhaps makes it a bit naff. But the exuberance of children always takes things over the top. And the competition is as much in ghostly realism as in tacky money makers. Halloween at its best brings capitalism, family and neighbourhood together, surely a combination to be welcomed.

Bonfire night is frowned upon by the authorities. This is to be expected. Fire is a symbol of freedom, defiance and lack of control. And in that rather weird, contradictory, pre-modern way our ancestors had, the bonfire of the guy both celebrates and brutally murders the rebel. But even in my remote village, the health and safety culture is all pervasive. Without a policeman or warden in sight, we were strictly corralled behind a fence. Would one of us sue if we scalded an overcoat?

Charles Moore in the Spectator wonders if the police will use the M5 crash – possibly caused in part by smoke from a bonfire night celebration – to lobby for more controls on fireworks and Guy Fawkes events. Given the modern zeitgeist for government bans on any enjoyable pastime that involves the slightest risk, this will be an effective and symbolic barometer for the death of freedom.

By contrast, Remembrance Day – or week, or month (it seems to go on for ever) has the full stamp of government approval. Politicians and newscasters compete to flourish their poppies first. We must all stop for two minutes on 11th, and then again on the nearest Sunday. Our football teams now wear the poppy, backed noisily by government at the hint of FIFA bemusement.

Don’t get me wrong – I honour those who died for our country as much as the next man. But I remember quieter, more modest commemorations in the past. Remembrance Day has been infected with the sort of mawkishness reminiscent of Princess Diana’s funeral. It’s a curious thing, this state-approved emotion. It is not the glorification of war, far from it. It is more of a let’s-be-all-sad-together-and-feel-good-about-ourselves love in.
Ask real soldiers, past and present, and they look slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. Veterans tell you that the world wars weren’t so bad, actually. Serving soldiers hate the way the prime minister reads out the names of the dead in Parliament. They thank God that Wootton Basset is no longer on the way back from Afghanistan.

Emotion is one of the deities of the new religion. And like all religions, it is dangerous to the state unless brought within it. Tony Blair realised this in the aftermath of Diana’s death, and began the process of nationalising the British cult of public mourning.

Tom Miers is Editor of the Free Society