The British Government has certainly been putting in the
overtime over the last few years to eke every last drop of nation-building elixir
out of big events like the Olympics, the Jubilee, the Royal Wedding, royal births,
WWI anniversaries, WWII anniversaries, the Falklands anniversaries, the Richard
III commemorations, etc. You name it, it will have been blanket-covered by the
state broadcasters and their stooges in Fleet Street, festooned with Union
flags and lashings of Dunkirk spirit, images of smiling people and One Show vox pop platitudes, all carefully
choreographed from some Whitehall office with a brass sign on the door saying ‘Project
(re)Britain(ize)’.
This is only to be expected of a state apparatus which has
known for some time that it is in real danger of imploding under the weight of
its own contradictions and historically hard-coded iniquities, in danger of perhaps
being reduced to some sort of leviathan London city-state no more significant
on the world stage than Singapore or Dubai; just colder and rainier. Seriously,
we shouldn’t be surprised and we can’t really blame them for trying to convince
us that there really was a ‘great’ Britain once. State apparatuses only exist
for one purpose, to protect and perpetuate the state and its apparatus, and
since time immemorial they’ve been doing this by fair means or foul.
Now, you can be the judge of whether ‘proactive management’
(state co-opting) of ‘British’ historical anniversaries falls into the ‘fair’
category or ‘foul’. As far as I am concerned, they are an aggressive, cynical
and manipulative insult to the intelligence and political maturity of the
people they are designed to dupe. They are also, as it happens, effective only in
polarising opinion, sending neatly corralled hordes of already convinced loyal Britishers
into a frenzy of tearful patriotism whilst sending otherwise moderate Brito-sceptics like myself (and
50% of Scotland) scrambling even faster for the ejector-seat button. None of
this would matter were it not for the fact that occasionally a really
interesting and important anniversary does come around such as the Battle of
Waterloo (well, the Congress of Vienna really); historical events which really should
be reviewed more frequently but which are largely neglected in the annual round
of remembrances of more recent British ‘successes’.
To that extent, I’d love to think that Breakfast News, the
One Show and the Daily Mail will have a probing discussion of Britain’s role in
the restoration of despotic, monarchical rule across Europe in 1815, its collusion
in the suppression of the powerful new
forces of radicalism and democracy which the French Revolution had unleashed across
the continent (and to which even England would succumb 15 years later), and the
unprecedented stampede for British overseas colonies which came about as a
direct result of the defeat of her only serious naval rival and the acquisition
of key French territories overseas; a stampede that would result in the
hundred-year moral obscenity that was
the British Empire of course. Somehow, carefully guided by that
pin-stripe-suited Sir Humphrey in Whitehall, I suspect our beloved media will
probably lead with that hero of liberty John Bull giving the nasty big-nosed
French dictator a good spanking, saving Europe at the same time and showing the
world once more how things should be done, how ‘great’ Britain really is. The
Union is safe in your hands Sir Humphrey, rest assured.
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