The Long 1970s

I can't help noticing a recent resurgance of interest in the 1970s at the moment. The '70s have long had a fun popular cultural resonance, with fond memories (for some)of flares, the Bay City Rollers, the Brotherhood of Man, the drought of 1976 and the Silver Jubilee. There is also the memory of the counter-cultural response to this bubblegum stuff with the rise of punk (crystalised in the popular imagination in the Sex Pistols).

However, over the last year or so, a different aspect of the 1970s is emerging in popular culture. Damned United, the new film about Brian Clough and Red Riding, Frost/Nixon (a film about the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1977) and the recent TV adaption of David Pace's novels both, in their own ways,both reflect a very view of the '70s, with a reminder of the shabbiness (physically and socially) of the 1970s and the political complexities of the period. The 'long 1970s' from Paris '68 until the Miner's Strike of 1984 saw a period of social and political discontent that arose out of the failure of the 1960s hippies to effect change (and the re-politicisation and radicalisation of the left in the events of Paris 68) and was dealt a death blow (in the UK at least) on the picket lines of Orgreave, Ollerton and Ferrybridge. Although the Tory's came to power in 1979, it was only following the Falkland's War and the Miner's Strike that they were secure enough to push through many of their most distructive and radical policies. The local and global problems, Cambodia, Vietnam and Beirut and the rise of Republican violence in Northern Ireland and the appearance of left-wing terrorism (Angry Brigade in Britain; RAF; Action Direct and the Red Brigades in Europe; the Weather Underground and the SLA in the States), as well as considerable labour unrest and the rise of the unions, were ignored as much by punk as by the Bay City Rollers (with the honourable exception of the anarcho-punk movement including such bands as Crass), who as early a 1978 sang 'I see the velvet zippies in their bondage gear, The social elite with safety-pins in their ear,I watch and understand that it don't mean a thing,The scorpions might attack, but the systems stole the sting.. '

I'm not sure why this interest in the seemier, or at least more mundane side of the 1970s is reviving. Possibly because its now far enough away to be looked at slightly more dispassionately, rather than through the ironic lens of Abba tribute acts (is Mamma Mia a crime against humanity? Discuss). We've just had the 25th anniversary of the 84 strike, and whilst the wounds are still deep, it was noticeable in recent coverage, that those involved on the right from tory ministers to police on the front line were much more conciliatory and at least openly acknowledging the social damage done, whilst those on the left are willing to admit that whilst the struggle may have been a just one, the timing of the strike and the decision to proceed without a ballot were badly mishandled by Scargill. An interesting take on the memory of the strike is Jeremy Deller's 2001 re-enactment of the Battle of Orgreave, one of the key turning points in the strike.

South Downs

Sorry, I know its been ages since I posted, but the joys of essay marking and English Heritage paperwork have been calling.

Anyway, I found this nice little article about the landscape of the South Downs, which has just become the latest National Park. It particularly drew my attention as the article mentioned the Copper Family, who are important as performers of Sussex folk songs, and part of an unbroken family tradition of singing going back to the 19th century. You can see them in action here.

On a vaguely connected tack- I had a rare trip out on Monday when I got to the Spiers and Boden gig at the NCEM in York - a good night out indeed- they also lead the excellent Bellowhead, who I am still trying to catch live (you can see them on Youtube here and with a drubk looking Jon Boden here)

Never mind the pancakes

Yesterday was Shroves Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent. For us in England, it generally means PANCAKE DAY!, whilst for many other countries its Carneval (literally- 'goodbye to meat'); both traditions emphasise the giving up of good food in advance of a time of fasting in the run-up to Easter. However, even within England there are many other traditions connected to the Shrove Tuesday, for example, the playing of Shrove Tuesday football matches was once common. These aren't 'soccer' matches, with equal numbers on each team and pitch. These are full-on, crowd-participation melees played over a large area, sometimes an entire parish. Many of these football traditions declined when the 1835 Highways Act forbade the playing of ball games on the road. However, they still exist in some towns, including Ashbourne Derbyshire. Here are some pictures of yesterday's match from BBC Radio Derby

Steam dreams

I’ve been pondering stream trains recently. Driving home a few weeks ago we were surprised to see a large crowd of people standing on the railway bridge near us, which goes over the main east coast line. It turned out that they there to watch Tornado, the first new steam train to have been built in Britain for fifty years. Apparently the station was packed, as was the station up at Darlington where it was heading. Then yesterday morning I took Isobel to the National Railway Museum, which is handily just down the road from us. Although we were there at 10.30, within an hour the museum (which is big) was absolutely heaving with families and children. Isobel loved it, which as she comes from a railway family on her mum’s side is presumably genetic.

It got me thinking about the popularity of steam trains in the UK though. As well as the excellent railway museum in York, it now has an outpost in Shildon (Co. Durham), and in the last couple of years a major new museum has opened up in the railway town of Swindon. If anything, stream trains are becoming more popular than ever, which I find fascinating. In the past, the stereotypical steam fan was a weighty fifty-year-old man (almost always a man) who remembered the last days of steam himself and still hankered to be an engine driver. Now the core audience appears to be children; neither they nor their parents are able to remember the glory days of steam, yet we’re still obsessed with it. Obviously, for many of us adults, there is an element of faux-nostalgia for a time and society we don’t remember and probably never existed anyway. It’s no surprise that one of the biggest themes running through the merchandising in the railway museum shop is that of old railway posters, with their imagery of seaside holidays and bucolic countryside. Steam trains evoke a world of Brief Encounter, Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, Night Mail, the Railway Children and Ivor the Engine, a pre-lapsarian England before Dr Beeching wielded his axe. However, whilst for adults the thought of steam engines might set off this nostalgic riffing, it can’t be true for the children, who presumably just love the steam engines for being big, noisy, smelly and steamy (what’s not to like?).

However, when I’ve travelled abroad I’ve not come across much evidence for the cult of the steam engine in the same way it exists over here. Why is it such a British phenomenon?

More on morris...

Interesting article in Saturday's Guardian about Mary Neal who is one of the unsung heroines of the folklore revival in the early 20th century, but who made the mistake of getting on the wrong side of Cecil Sharp. Mary Neal was an socialist, suffragette and social worker who used dance as way of encouraging and helping factory girls in London. Her approach to dancing emphasised the fact that dance was a developing tradition and that forms and performance styles could change and evolve over time. This contrasted with Sharp's highly formalised approach to folk dance which focused on developing a fixed canon of repertoire and was dogmatic about performance style. They fell out and the subsequent hagiography of Sharp more or less wrote Neal out of the story. This is now being remedied though and the EFSDS held their first Mary Neal day on Saturday.

Neal is also interesting for her involvement in the Kibbo Kift, an early version of the Woodcraft Folk (kind of lefty version of the Scout movement), which also involved individuals like Rolf Gardiner (who I've blogged about before) whose subsequent career had a distinct right-wing trajectory. The Kibbo Kift also utilised a range of interesting imagery including Anglo-Saxon / Viking ideas and concepts drawn from a 1930s concetpion of Native American life. I hope to come back to this at some point.

NB: the photo is of morris dancing at Stonehenge in the 1950s taken by RJC Atkinson (the photo is from the excellent English Heritage Viewfinder website)

Romans in Durham

I've tended not to blog about my research much. However, I thought would write a little about a major new project I'm closely involved with which looks like it might be playing a big part in my life for the next five years.

I am part of a team from the Department of Archaeology at Durham University and the Department of Classics, Stanford University, planning a major campaign of excavation on the Roman fort at Binchester (Co. Durham). We are going to be carryig out six weeks of fieldwork at the site each year between 2009 and 2014. We are also going to be putting in place a wide range of more non-intrusive strategies (field walking; shovel pitting; geophysical survey; LIDAR etc) which hopes to locate the fort in its landscape context.

Those of you who know me will be aware that I am not particularly a Romanist (though I have published on Roman material); my heart is really in the early medieval period with a focus on the spread of Christianity. Luckily, Binchester, as well as being a key Roman military installation on the main road between York and Hadrian's Wall, has also produced significant evidence for the continuation of activity well into the fifth and probably even the sixth century, and went to become a centre of one of the estates owned by the Community of St Cuthbert at Durham.

The project will have its own blog at some point, and I'll probably put updates on here as well. It's only just dawning on me what a major undertaking this is going to be!

And now...here's the gallery

After the death of Oliver Postgate just before Christmas, its sad to see that Tony Hart has died. Its rather disconcerting to see the landmarks of one's childhood starting to die off.