Bong, bong
Lefty twitter is currently having a jamboree on the political high ground over the Big Ben debacle.
Wilkinson is absolutely right that it’s a frivolous matter what with the political control panel oozing smoke and flashing red lights all over it. And Marina Hyde is brilliant in the Guardian today.
But prioritising a massive bell is a smidge smarter than it looks. The bongs of Big Ben are the epitome of Brexiteer cultural values, being entirely about conservation of something British that has Always Been There. Rightwing cultural ideals revere comfort over challenge, the familiar over the strange, aesthetics over practicalities, and conservation over progress.* Short of the Tower of London’s ravens taking up residence at Versailles, a silent Big Ben is as emblematic a problem we could come at right now at the height of the British culture wars. In this way, it isn’t just a convenient political distraction for the overfed public schoolchildren who run our country: it’s a shot in the arm for the kind of patriotism that gave weight to Brexit in the first place, and you don’t even have to pretend to like Nigel Farage to accede to it. Given what this kind of mood can produce, it’s worth paying attention to and it’s no surprise that this less-able generation of Tories are clinging to it.
There’s that. But there’s my next point, which is completely solipsistic but:
I care about the bongs.
I mean, not as much as Theresa May seems to, and I’m not Prime Minister so I can dwell on whatever pointless rubbish I feel like. But there are certain features of life that are irreplaceable, uncommercialised constants of daily life in our cities, and if they go unnoticed it’s because they’re woven into the very fabric of what it is to be — god, I’m going to say it — a citizen of somewhere.** And as a culture person I want to pay attention to these things without handing in my hard-bitten lefty political credentials.
The old point about ‘you can care about this and care about that’ isn’t entirely true of available governmental working hours under a looming Brexit — hence Wilksy’s point up there about political priorities — but it is true of the electorate’s stock of desires. So even as May makes a fool of herself over this, voters as always can spend as many legislative wishes as they want. I as one of them wish all the food banks go out of business, all the borders open, and I wish the sound of Big Ben over the Thames.
I had the same aesthetic attachment to the gorgeous little medley of British folk tunes that opened the day on Radio 4, just before the shipping forecast. It was replaced in 2006 in favour of something more international and contemporary. There was something deeply magical about the unassuming little medley, not because any of us have a particular attachment to what shall we do with a drunken sailor? or even the horrible imperialism of Rule Britannia, but because in listening to it you became part of a bleary little early-morning community of very alone, unwillingly awake people. And the songs were mostly simple folk tunes from the drizzly islands we were sitting on, and that felt nice. All in all, regardless of its parochialism, it was an acknowledgement that we Brits should get some sort of aesthetic comfort when at the rock face of the hideous obligation to participate in the day ahead. And that had a lot of power.
This is a side of life that the left has pretty much ceded to conservatives.
According to Svetlana Boym in her wonderful book The Future of Nostalgia, nostalgia was first described medically, an illness experienced by soldiers that rendered them utterly incapable of combat, so deep was their longing for the normalcy of home. Ultimately, nostalgia was an anti-violent, anti-war impulse. Today when we combine thoughts of patriotism and nostalgia, we assume that this must automatically lead to regressive attitudes and violent nationalism. It can and does (and is, right now).
But, assuming some of those desires for the comfort of the familiar are honest and plainly sentimental, we can also guess that they arrive in us some way before they get mobilised for hate, or against progress.
As a lefty progressive, I’d love to capture that sentimentality and love of place before it gets mobilised towards hate and regressiveness. If, as most lefties do, we assume that culture alone can nourish us on its own terms, then we have to stop rubbishing people for getting upset about having a cultural artefact like a massive bell taken away.
As for the ‘democracy lamp,’ though. Well. Sod that.
*Don’t be fooled by the alt-right, which just dresses its conservatism up with superficial shock value, an overuse of the word ‘fabulous’, and the fond delusion that this makes the Left somehow puritanical.
** Let’s chew that one over another day.
