Regions of Britain: The Fens (1977)

Made in 1977 but feeling somehow older, this pleasant little film takes us round various Fenland locations and discusses the history of the region.

It's good to see Crowland Abbey included among the better-known locations.

Learning to celebrate St George's Day

I miss blogging in scuzzy internet cafes. I was in one in King's Lynn when I looked out the window and saw the town's Conservative Club was flying the flag of St George.

As I then wrote:

Until a very few years ago it would have been unthinkable for it to have flown anything but the Union Jack.

We never used to be so keen on St George. I remember the saint's day being a big deal in the Cubs - we took part in a parade and the mayor was there in full fig - and churches would fly his flag, but that was about it.

The modern renaissance in the use of St George may date from 1996, when both England, the hosts, and Scotland qualified for the European Football Championship.

England fans, it is argued, showed a grasp of the politics of the Union that their countrymen have not always matched and realised they could not brandish the Union Jack. So they rallied behind the Flag of St George instead.

Certainly, by 2014 Leicester felt it ought to mark the day with a St George's Festival, which I went along to:

With its morris dancers, knights and dragons, there was perhaps something contrived about the whole affair. But I was pleased to see it taking place for two reasons.

First, there is variety of left-winmething that whites, particularly the white working class, do not have.

So is good to see St George taking his place alongside Vaisakhi, Diwali and Hannukah in Leicester's roster of municipally recognised festivals.

And perhaps the idea that other people's festivals are authentic while yours are contrived is part of the same faulty view of multiculturalism. After all, every festival was invented if you go back far enough.

Second, if people of goodwill do not take up 23 April, then others will.

In 1979 the National Front staged a march of around 1000 people in Leicester on St George's Day. There were clashes with anti-fascist demonstrators, 40 injuries and 80 arrests.

Even if you don't care for morris dancing, you have to admit it's preferable to a National Front march.

The recent row over England's kit for Euro 2024 was an example of patriotism gone sour, but I stand by these words today.

The Joy of Six 1153

Mathew Pennell looks at the new Liberal Democrat policy document on housing: "I have a vision for housing, I hope it’s based on the most important aspects of the housing crisis - housing is unaffordable, the UK is lopsided when it comes to homes, jobs, opportunities, infrastructure, a lot of social housing is in a terrible state, a lot of new build housing is signed off despite bad planning and placemaking."

John Oxley has good news for Liberal England readers: the Conservatives are heading for electoral evisceration.

 "The marks of restraint are clear on the child’s arm, the bruises that outline a ‘hold’. In normal, everyday language, this means that a member of the teaching staff in a school will have laid their hands on a child who they felt needed to be restrained. In some, but not all cases, that can leave visible injuries. In most cases the memory will stay with them, a psychological mark that will never fade away." Katharine Quarmby fears corporal punishment is returning to classrooms in the guise of restraint and seclusion.

"Take the phrase ‘ghost children’, for example. It seems to have been coined by Robert Halfon, MP in response to Centre for Social Justice figures on pupil absence. Now, it has a life of its own spooking the public and politicians alike." Gemma Moss asks if the concept warrants the attention it is getting.

James Auton defends Britpop against critics who are too cool for school.

"But there, in a Northamptonshire cowfield ("Beware of the bull") that is forever England, reality seemed an awfully long way away. The field sloped down to a dark, dank corner where, secreted by an overgrown thicket, quite hidden from the world, real or otherwise, sat a quiet and algae green pond. We scrambled over some barbed wire and through a tangle of willow and found, with a deep sense of satisfaction, the source of our river." Eric Wark discovers the source of the Great Ouse, which flows into The Wash below King's Lynn.

Conservative members no longer believe in the Union - or Conservatism

These days everyone has tablets and smartphones and there is free wifi everywhere.

But I started blogging in an era when internet cafes were important to the citizen journalist.

You found them in every town, usually in the poorer quarters where overseas students gathered and wanted to make cheap phone calls home.

Many were not cafes at all – you could not even get a coffee – and I wouldn’t have logged in to any accounts involving money in them. But I do miss that heroic era of blogging.

I remember sitting in an internet cafe in King’s Lynn in 2009 and writing this post:

This insalubrious watering hole, just across the road from where I am writing this, is King's Lynn Conservative Club. 

Note the flag that is being flown outside. Until a very few years ago it would have been unthinkable for it to have flown anything but the Union Jack. 

Is this a sign that the average Conservative member, in this part of Norfolk at least, no longer feels much affection for the union?

It seems I was on to something.

Paul Goodman has an article in The Irish Times discussing a Conservative Home  and University of Winchester survey of Tory members:

We surveyed more than 700 Tory party members, and what we found was remarkable. 

Twenty-nine per cent said that the break-up of the union would “finally end the unreasonable demands on England to provide ever-greater financial and political concessions to Scotland”. 

If one added those who believe that this development would “have no real significance for the remaining parts of the UK” and those who think that “any problems could be managed”, that total rises to 66 per cent. Only 33 per cent of respondents said that it “would inflict serious damage on the power, influence and well-being of the remaining parts of the UK”. 

In other words, two in three of those Conservative Party members are sanguine about the end of the union. And more than one in four seem happy for it to happen.

Somewhere behind this shift from unyielding support for the Union lies a deep social change in the Tory Party.

The Conservatives used to speak for people who had a comfortable stake in things as they are. For that reason, as well as perfectly respectable philosophical ones, they were averse to change.

I remember a Labour-supporting friend who was in North Devon during the 1979 general election campaign speaking with something close to awe of the acres of good suiting on the platform at the Conservatives' meetings.

But the party does not look like or feel like that today.

The Tories have discovered ideology and, even more, they have discovered grievance. They are less the party of people with an interest in maintaining the status quo than the party of people who believe they have been cheated.

The culprits vary - immigrants, experts, the European Union, latte-drinkers, refugees, the BBC - but the feeling is widespread.

Only radical action, those members and activists believe, can remove the hurt and see justice done.

All political parties have an element of this about them, but there is something particularly strange about a Conservative Party that no longer believes in Conservatism.

That disjunction lies at the root of the mess Theresa May's government is about to make of the country.

King's Lynn to Hunstanton in 1968

John Betjeman travelled on this line in 1962.

This colour footage of it was shot six years later - a year before it closed.

Click on the picture to view it on the BFI site.

Recently lost railways 4

The final part of this video visits (among other places) Dover, King's Lynn and Birkenhead, before ending on an optimistic note with the reopening of a stretch of line as part of the Robin Hood service from Nottingham to Mansfield and Worksop.

Watch part 1, part 2 and part 3 on this blog.

Six of the Best 507

Alistair McGuire and John Van Reenen say that continued expansion of the NHS is only going to be viable through further efficiency savings of some kind – and even then it is not clear how resource levels will be maintained.

"The more macho elements within Labour are fond of quoting Michael Corleone, in the Godfather Part II, when dealing with the corrupt Senator Geary. 'My offer is this,' says Corleone: 'nothing'. But to make that approach work Michael Corleone had to be willing to murder a prostitute and dupe the Senator into thinking he’d killed her. Rosie Winterton is a very effective Chief Whip but she won’t go quite that far." Philip Cowley on the practicalities of minority government.

Vernon Bogdanor calls for a constitutional convention.

Julia Belluz examines why doctors and scientists are so anxious about the rise of popular science.

"On the night of February 28, 1944, war broke out on the streets of Leicester as black and white American soldiers fought pitched battles. It was the first race riot of the modern age." The Leicester Mercury reprints a 2004 feature by Adam Wakelin.

Andy Marshall photographs the angels of St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn.

Melton Carnegie Museum and St John's Church

Two buildings face one another across Thorpe End in Melton Mowbray. On the south side of the road stands the town's museum.

It is called Melton Carnegie Museum because the building, which used to house the town's library, was paid for by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. I have photographed Carnegie libraries in King's Lynn and Loughborough.

The displays, inevitably, are largely devoted to agriculture and fox hunting, but at least hunt saboteurs have been given a glass case of their own.

Across the road stands the Roman Catholic St John's Church, which Pugin had a hand in designing. Quite how much of a hand is disputed; a pamphlet by Frances Levett makes the boldest claims.

On first sight St John's looks plain - in fact I originally took it for a Noncomformist chapel. But a little study of the exterior rewards you with more and more interesting little details.

Northampton Clown responds to criticism from Clowns International

Remember the Northampton Clown? Under an "Exclusive"label, the Northampton Chronicle & Echo reports:

Tony Eldridge, secretary of Clowns International which represents the entertainers in Britain, has said the Northampton Clown is “doing clowning no favours” ...

Mr Eldridge, whose clown name is Bluebottle, said...

Older reader's voice: "Was it 'You dirty rotten swine! You deaded me'?"

Liberal England replies patiently: No he said:

“The people behind it might see it as a bit of a laugh, but for the victims it can be a horrible experience.

“The fear of clowns – coulrophobia – is a real thing and some people will react very badly to this. Not to mention people who are elderly or vulnerable.

“This has nothing to do with clowning, it’s a small group of people with stupid views and it spoils the fun for everybody else.”

Mr Eldridge said most professional clowns followed a clown code of conduct which included not wearing their costume in public. 

You can see what he means: just ask the good people of King's Lynn.

But the Northampton Clown is having none of it. He told the Chronicle & Echo:

“I wave at people who spot me and they wave back and ask for a photo. I can’t help it if some one who sees me is afraid of clowns. My type of clowning is a positive thing and has brought a lot of happiness to many people who enjoy a bit of fun and mystery.

People of King's Lynn advised to ignore clowns

BBC News wins Headline of the Day today.

Now read about the Northampton clown.

Hunting for the York Community Bookshop

Once I had worked out that my time as a student in York neatly marks the halfway point between the present day and World War II, I decided that there was not a lot of point in continually exclaiming over how much things have changed.

Mind you, they have changed and probably far more than I realise. Take a look at this 1980 photograph of Fossgate, a street that formed part of my walk from the university campus into the city. It seemed perfectly modern to me then, but now looks remarkably old fashioned.

In those days York had two significant independent bookshops: Godfrey's in Stonegate and Pickering's in The Shambles (with its invaluable box of pamphlets devoted to obscure chess opening variations). Both have gone and these days I am not sure even of which buildings they used to occupy.

Before you get to Fossgate on my old walk there is Walmgate, and I have found myself going back there both yesterday and today. Partly it is just for old times' sake, but it is a fascinating area in its own right.

It reminds me very much of the southern side of King's Lynn, which I visited three summers ago. Both areas were prosperous suburbs in Medieval times, had declined by the 19th century and have been the site of quite recent slum clearance and redevelopment. The result in both cases is that you find yourself going down streets of 1960s blocks to find hidden Medieval gems.

There was a bookshop in Walmgate too when I was a student. The York Community Bookshop, very much a child of its era, stocked a wide variety of socialist and radical literature. In fact, its success probably owed far mote to patronage by students from the university than it did to the local community.

Walking down Walmgate yesterday I was at a loss to remember where it had been. But York Stories came to my rescue last night, telling me that the York Community Bookshop was at 73 Walmgate.

I went back there today and found the premises to be occupied by a long-established dressmaker called Thimbelina. Perhaps is some sort of metaphor for the state of political disengagement we now live in, but if I stare and that shop window hard enough faint memories of its radical past begin to stir in me.

Charles Kennedy set to lead pro-Union campaign in referendum

A report in tomorrow's Guardian claims:

Alistair Darling, Charles Kennedy and the former Tory leader in Scotland, Annabel Goldie, are being lined up as the main faces of the pro-union campaign in the referendum on Scottish independence, sources in the three parties confirmed Wenesday [sic] night.

The report also says that Labour and Liberal Democrats have expressed the hope that David Cameron will adopt a lower profile in future.

Will Charles and co. be enough to save the Union? Certainly, the rise of the SNP has been greatly eased by the way that almost all the considerable figures in the other parties have chosen to make their careers at Westminster rather than Holyrood. He may now face more formidable opposition.

But, having been told when young that the future lay in great conglomerates, I grew up into a world more notable for the break up of multinational states - Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. It is hard to resist the feeling that the tides are at present in favour of the SNP.

Another question is how hard the Conservatives will try to save the Union. It used to lie at the heart of their identity, but in this way - as in so many others - the modern Conservative Party has little connection with traditional British Conservatism.

I doubt that David Cameron will want to be the prime minister on whose watch the United Kingdom broke up. But it is hard for him to resist the calculation that it would be much easier for the Conservatives to win a majority at Westminster if there were no Scottish members there.

And, as we were reminded in King's Lynn, to the average Tory member the Scots are just a bunch of ingrates who take more than their share of public spending.

The SNP, equally, is convinced that an independent Scotland would be much more prosperous. They cannot both be right.

My own suspicion is that the end of the Union would make surprisingly little difference to Scotland or England, which is why I find that I am not dismayed at the prospect.

Loughborough's Carnegie library

Loughborough has an ornate Edwardian public library. It is rather like the one in King's Lynn, though not as fantastical.

And, as far as I know, they don't need bouncers at the Loughborough one either.

The similarity of the two buildings is not so surprising, as both are Carnegie libraries. As Wikipedia explains:

A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, and Fiji. Few towns that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. 

When the last grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie.

King's Lynn to Hunstanton with John Betjeman

This film was made in 1962, seven years before the line closed. Some still dream of reopening it.

King's Lynn public library

Last night's Have I Got News for You? included the story about a bouncer being hired to patrol the public library in King's Lynn.

I was in the town last summer and photographer the library. It is a piece of Edwardian fantasy, funded and opened by the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

Places where I blogged this week

The first photograph shows an internet cafe in King's Lynn. I went there so often they were giving me free coffee by the end.

The second shows the library at Crowland, where I was earlier today. It has free internet access and the Abbey ruins in the background as a bonus.

How we won the Ashes in Sutton Bridge

I left King's Lynn yesterday morning on the bus for Sutton Bridge. I got a shock when I arrived as the town's main hotel, which was apparently still thriving according to numerous websites, and found it was boarded up. I was later told that it had been like that for a year or so.

This turned out not to be a problem as I was able to find accommodation just down the road. The cricket was on in the bar and I was pleased to see that we had already got both Australian openers out.

I headed off to photograph the Crosskeys bridge. This structure, the third bridge on the site, was opened in 1897 and originally carried both road and rail traffic - the railway (the old Midland and Great Northern line, which took generations of holidaymakers to the Norfolk coast) on what is now the westbound carriageway and the road on the eastbound side. The railway closed in 1965 and the bridge is now road only, carrying the modern A17.

The bridge is interesting because it a swing bridge crowned with a control cabin and is still opened several times a week to allow large ships to make their way up the River Nene to Wisbech. It used to open more often, but a port has been developed below the bridge at Sutton Bridge which has taken much of Wisbech's trade.

According to Wikipedia the Crosskeys Bridge was used as a location in the film of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. I shall have to see it now.

Having examined the bridge I set off down the banks of the Nene for the Wash. I had read that about three miles downstream, at what was then the mouth of the river (more land has been reclaimed since then - indeed, you never do quite reach the sea when you try anywhere around the Wash), two ornamental lighthouses had been erected in 1831.

They never served as lighthouses but were used as customs posts. The lighthouse on the east bank was the home of Sir Peter Scott in the 1930s. When I reached them they turned out to resemble nothing so much as a pair of salt and pepper shakers.

The path carries on around the Wash - indeed the Peter Scott Walk will take you down the Great Ouse estuary too and back to the ferry at West Lynn.


I had made a pact with God that I would not look at the test score until I had reached the lighthouses. When I did, I found England had taken five Australian wickets and was reasonably pleased.

After I had walked back into Sutton Bridge I was less pleased to find that there were still only five wickets down. So I bought a beer and sat down to watch, whereupon the last five wickets fell in less than an hour.

Not a bad day, all told.

Have grassroots Conservatives given up on the Union?

This insalubrious watering hole, just across the road from where I am writing this, is King's Lynn Conservative Club.

Note the flag that is being flown outside. Until a very few years ago it would have been unthinkable for it to have flown anything but the Union Jack.

Is this a sign that the average Conservative member, in this part of Norfolk at least, no longer feels much affection for the union?

And, by the way, it is perfectly in order to call it the Union Jack.

Greetings from King's Lynn

It's not quite Swindon, but it has its charms too.