Taking Liberties

Last Chance to See

I've been lucky enough to have spent the last week in the Pyrenees, riding some of the great mountain cols, such as the Tourmalet, the Aubisque and the  Portet d'Aspet. I'm not sure which required greater effort, 400 miles of hills or the exhibition, but the hours on the hills certainly gave time for some reflection.

On a lot of the mountain roads, there remains the lettering left from supporters during recent Tour ascents ("Cav Cav Cav", or "Contador").  At first, they are cheering, encouraging, letting you believe that you may have some ability, but very soon they become, at least for me, a reminder of the vast gap between such riders and this wheezing curator.  It's a good job I wasn't doing an AudioBoo, like my colleague Jamie Andrews during the 'Berger Run', as I suspect there would be nothing but heavy breathing.

The graffiti was often much more serious, and perhaps was a form of protest we should have included in the exhibition in a way other than the oblique stencil visual language of the signing and posters.  The most pressing issue in the Pyrenees, at least going by the marks daubed on roads and walls, is currently the introduction of a dozen or so Slovenian brown bears: "Non Aux Ours" (perhaps it should have been written in Slovene).  During one lonely ascent, far behind the group, I pondered the best way to fend off a peckish beast.  Could I release a wheel in time?  Bribe him or her with a PowerBar?  But then, the bears had been here long before I, or indeed, pretty much anyone, had arrived.

More serious questions of political legitimacy were also raised.  There had recently been a round-up of ETA suspects in the Alps, and several lonely bridges and passes were marked with slogans supporting, or opposing Basque separatism.  Returning home, I find that the political, constitutional, and emotional aspects of terrorism are still playing out in a not very elegant dance between London, Edinburgh and Libya.

There is also a more local endangered species: it is the last week of the Henry VIII: Man and Monarch exhibition at the Library.  The show closes 6 September, so there are only a few more days to see his flirtatious marginalia to Anne Boleyn or to get a sense of what it felt like to joust.  There may also be echoes of attempts to balance politics, the law and constitutionality in a very tricky situation.

Dates

Today is 14 July, or as it's known with more violent echoes in Britain, Bastille Day.  The French national day always brings to mind happy memories: France is one of the few places where I can be convinced to try and dance, and this includes the convivial atmosphere of the fire station in the 18e as part of their traditional firemans ball.   

The French spent a fair amount of time discussing when to hold their national holiday (or festivals), both during the Revolution and afterwards. 14 July was only settled on in the late nineteenth century, suggesting how difficult it can be to agree on a what might be called the national story.  In Britain, the idea of a national day comes up from time to time, but although 15 June (a possible date for 'Magna Carta Day') would at least be in summer, the lack of a clear moment of rupture or creation in our national history perhaps suggests that any such event might be at best rather artificial and souless; at worst, it would deny the complexity of history and promote an outdated view of nationalism.

That said, inventive and joyful national events, perhaps involving picnics and dancing, are a good thing.  And why does it have to be on a set date?  A roaming national festival, perhaps one year co-inciding with Wimbledon and celebrating Darwin (survival of the fittest?), the next the Ashes and Newton (gravity and physics must have something to do with cricket, surely?)...

Declaration of Independence

It's the tenth anniversary of the Scottish Parliament this week (1 July) and most opinion polls seem to suggest that while devolution has been popular, the desire for independence from the Union seems to have waned. If anything, the anniversary has been rather understated, with any hand wringing about national identity, Britishness, etc. relegated to water-cooler and discussions of events in SW19.  

There may be more sports-related remarks on this blog following 4 July. That date - and discussion of independence - also brings to mind a recent discovery in The National Archives, according to PhiloBiblos.  An unknown copy of the first printing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (called the 'Dunlap Declaration' after its printer) has been uncovered by a New Jersey rare book dealer.  The dealer also paid a visit to the BL (which at the time was displaying one of TNA's copies of the Declaration in the exhibition), but as far as I know didn't make any similar discoveries here...

Still, issues of national identity still abound: according to the blog account of the discovery, "The whole thing was really very English. No cause for excitement. You find a new D of I, you have a cup of tea, and you move on."

Challenging the Past

An early morning view of the Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery (looking at my mug shot, I see the web editor has also been inspired to grab his paintbrush by yesterday's post).  The exhibition looks like it's going to be a great success - the queues were already long when we left. The curator gave a great, and well-timed tour: after doing several at Taking Liberties, I know how tricky it can be.

One of the most interesting, and possibly suprising rooms looked at Picasso's play with historical styles and types.  It was taking history and making something new, and vibrant from it.  Elsewhere there were still lifes, with skulls and the inevitably reflections on mortality and war.  I was briefly reminded of the current brutality in Northern Ireland and how it seems like a particularly grim and pointless historical dead end. 

The Cabinet

A running theme of this blog could be things that we couldn't include for one reason or another. One item that we considered requesting as a loan was a document signed by all members of Lloyd George's cabinet in Inverness in 1921. The PM called the meeting during his holiday in Gairloch to respond to the declaration of the Irish republic. Until recently, it was the one confirmed occasion that the cabinet had met outside of London.

The signatures would have been interesting to display in the section on 'The United Kingdom?', but it would have also been something around which we could have discussed the idea of cabinet government. Traditionally, discussions in the cabinet are private - allowing, in theory, frank debate. Members are expected to present a united front afterwards. The need for a space for untrammelled debate within government is at the crux of the current decision not to make public the debate about decision on the Iraq War.

In the end, we decided not concentrate on the nuts and bolts of how the UK is governed (Parliamentary committees, how bills are scrutinised and legislated, the relationship between local and national government, and so on), but to try and bring out some of the crucial, central issues, such as where does power lie, what does sovereignty mean, and where did the idea of political 'rights' come from.

I suspect the final question will come up at a lecture taking place at Royal Holloway on 3 March, when Peter Linebaugh will be talking about the Magna Carta Manifesto. And, while I'm plugging, Will Kaufman will be playing and talking about the songs of Woody Guthrie at the BL this evening. Or, if you're staying in, find out more about Magna Carta on the One Show at 7pm.

Please wait for further announcements...

A trip to Wales at the weekend, which meant a long wait in the coffee shop at Newport station thanks to 'an electical fault', 'problems in the Cardiff area' and 'level crossing issues'. It is a week to go before St David's Day (1 March – which coincides with the last day of the exhibition), so I was thinking about the Welsh aspects of the exhibition.

The highlight has to be the Pennal Letter, generously loaned by the French Archives Nationales (although the Laws of Hywel Dda may come close). Last seen in the UK during the opening of the Welsh Assembly, it committed the Welsh, a people 'oppressed by the fury of the barbarous Saxons', to the obedience of the Avignon pope as part of Owen Glyn Dŵr's campaign for French support against the English in c.1406.

There are many legacies of this, not least the string of castles built by Edward I. Some of these I saw at the other side of the valley at the weekend, as well as, more tangentially, some of the graffiti daubed on bridges suggesting that I 'go home'. A delay with First Great Western, I reflected, wasn't helping with this.

Along with perhaps the earliest devolution pamphlet, there is a strong showing of Welsh material in the Chartist section. Newport witnessed perhaps the most violent incident of the Chartist campaign in 1839. On 4 November, John Frost led a large group of armed men into the town. Two other groups were supposed to join then (led by William Jones and Zephaniah Williams), but they were late or never arrived. The 3,000 armed men that did make it attacked the Westgate Hotel, where several Chartist prisoners were being held, guarded by 32 soldiers and several special constables.

Twenty of the Chartists were killed and many were injured. Frost was captured, and he was tried at a special assize in Monmouth on 10 December. On 16 January 1840 Frost was sentenced, along with Jones and Williams, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. There were protests at the severity of the sentences from MPs and on the streets. After a legal review, the sentence was commuted to transportation to Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania).

Frost eventually received a pardon in 1854, on condition that he never returned to Britain. He spent some time writing and lecturing in America, but finally returned to Britain in 1856, after the general pardon granted after the ending of the Crimean War. He died in Bristol in 1877.

Historians argue whether the Newport Rising was a peaceful protest gone bad, or part of a national armed conspiracy. There are certainly signs of detailed planning by Frost and his colleagues. It remains, for now, the last armed insurrection in the UK.

Meanwhile, the Convention on British Liberty has inspired an article in History Today, which argues that 'the freeborn Briton is a myth. British freedoms have always rested on custom and convention, not on any fundamental law: on the transient goodwill of a mostly generous political elite'. Still, perhaps the fact that the trains don't run always run on time points to a decent dash of disorder.

Pomp and circumstance marches on. Should it?

The Queen’s speech, which took place yesterday as part of the state opening of parliament, is one of those few remaining islands of pomp and ceremony, popping its head about the contemporary sea of politics and celebrity.

I always find it a rather strange event, with HRH enunciating a slew of government bills, using current phrases such as ‘anti-social behaviour’ and ‘constitutional renewal’ that jar with the ceremonial context, a bit like the modern reading glasses that she wears while draped in ermine and velvet. I bet she wishes that crown was made of titanium, or some other lightweight alloy.

Lots has been written on the invention of such traditions. The ‘modern’ ceremony largely dates from the opening of the new Palace of Westminster in 1852, itself a Victorian fantasy of gothic continuity, and took on its full array of pomp and pageantry following the accession of Edward VII in 1901.

The state opening is stuffed full of historical performances, such as the searching of the cellars, which recall the aftermath of the gunpowder plot, and the House of Commons slamming their door on the gentleman usher of the Black Rod reminding the lords and the crown of their independence.

Are these genuine, historical traditions, or reinventions? No-one really seems to know, although people seem to take delight in either revelling in or debunking them. Fun as it all is, I wonder how much it serves to demonstrate the importance of the parliamentary process, or distances people from it.

The exhibition has several examples of attempts to invent traditions, or symbols of power, notably in the section on the Civil War and the Restoration. Time and effort was put into designs for Cromwellian coins, and medals for Charles I.

In the section on the development and devolution of the UK, there are early designs for the union flag following the union of the Scottish and English crowns and, a century later, parliaments. The film of the opening of the Scottish parliament reveals a much more restrained affair than the one we witnessed yesterday.

Local man burns cakes, and other news

I helped with two breakfast tours of the exhibition this week. The guests were mayors and councillors from local London boroughs - a good reminder of the role of local government, and also that all history is, in some way, local or regional history. After all, politics, as all good politicians know, ‘is local’.

Some of these provincial allegiances have filtered into the exhibition: a good thing, as it takes some of the focus away from London or the larger history of the nations of the British Isles. One of my co-curators was happy to be able to include some items from the north-east in the exhibition. I, sadly, had to cut something from Somerset: a Loyalist Association petition from the 1790s, in which patriotic folk from the shire swore to defend the British constitution from French sympathisers, with their crazy talk about the rights of man. These were the kind of people who gave Coleridge and Wordsworth trouble during their stay in Nether Stowey.

On reflection, much of the exhibition could have had a Somerset theme: Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxon laws (The BL restaurant could do themed cider and burnt cake afternoon special); the Henrician destruction of the monasteries through the hanging of the last abbot on the Tor; the Civil War Battle of Langport; Quakers and socially-aware housing in Street; Bristol and the slave trade; the General Strike in the coal mines of Radstock…

The same playing out of national events on a local level could probably be replicated across the UK. This is, in fact, what Hidden Heroes, part of the broader Taking Liberties programme, plans to do.

Today, though, I’m blowing Somerton and Frome’s trumpet: in an age lamenting political apathy, this constituency can boast the highest level of voter turnout, according to a BBC survey ‘Changing UK’. I won’t say that this is because there is nothing else to do, but instead wonder if it has to do with the greater sense of ‘local belonging’, something else charted in the survey.

Facebook 1776: America is no longer listed as being in a relationship

A friend kindly sent me a text at 5am this morning, so I woke up to hear the US President Elect's speech on the radio, making a mix of old and new media (SMS and, well, DAB).

But up to 2am, and then from 5am, the new, social media had been buzzing. It was nerve-racking fun to sip a drink and catch up with friends en masse via IM, forums, and email in the US and across the UK as we saw pictures of people voting from NYTimes.com, debated the merits of CNN and MSNBC stream, and wondered about what it meant.

This morning, Professor Sue Thomas posted an update on Facebook that the social media – things such as Facebook, blogs and twitter – had transformed the Democrats' election machine, something the Republicans had been unable to do. It certainly helped to achieve the record amount of campaign dollars that Obama has raised.

The exhibition's interactive (which you can also do online, now) points to the challenge posed by new forms of communications technology in terms of citizenship and politics. But I also like an older – and very rare – printed document on show: the Dunlap printing of the Declaration of Independence. There are 25 known copies of this revolutionary broadside (it was 24 until a couple of years ago, when a stray copy turned up at a flea market).

It includes some of the most famous lines of any historical text: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…” The language and sentiments are of course indebted to the Englishman John Locke, whose thoughts on government are on display in the same case.

The Declaration was drafted at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman and Robert R Livingston, with Jefferson providing most of the text. Late on 4 July, the revised text was approved, and the 'Representatives of the United States of America in General Congress Assembled' authorised copies to be printed and 'proclaimed in each of the United States & at the head of the army'.

John Dunlap, a young printer at nearby 48 High Street and Market Street, was charged with producing these copies. He ran off 200 copies that night (making the odd mistake in the text along the way), long before the final manuscript copy of the Declaration was formally signed. The copy on display at the Library was captured by British forces and sent back to London, where they assumed the government would be interested to read the news 'that the associated Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, free and independent States, and they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.'

I doubt they would be friends on Facebook.

The political news cycle

1. I'm not really one for routine, but any would-be assassin should be advised that at 8.30pm, I'm usually in front in front of More4, watching the impeccably-suited Jon Stewart on the satirical Daily Show. US television can be spectacularly good, at least when it comes to multi-series drama programs, but the cultural space claimed in recent years by a comedy news show attests to the spectacular failure of much of its news output.

Last Friday’s guest was the "former Prime Minister of Great Britain", Tony Blair. As the comments on the site's website pointed out, Jon Stewart didn’t seem to know what country Tony formerly governed. I'm with Mr Stewart on this one: Great Britain is in common usage in the US, and the full title of 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' is a bit of a mouthful for a studio in Comedy Central.

This said, it's something that we've had to be acutely aware of in the preparations for the Taking Liberties exhibition. 'The UK' is a handy shorthand, and 'British' works fairly well as an adjective, but the variety of names and titles for the peoples and states that have lived or existed here over the centuries makes it likely that we've made a mistake somewhere in the labels – or erred on the side of vagueness and as Fowler said, 'elegant variation'. For example, 'these islands' is a useful phrase, but to my mind at least, brings up images of palm trees and sandy beaches, rather than somewhere 94,000 square miles in size and often quite chilly.

And of course, this nomenclature matters vitally. While Taking Liberties is about political rights, which many would argue are universal and not tied to any particular place or culture, the way we have worked them out is intensely specific and local. Where we live, and how we feel about our country, matters. We just hope that we haven't given the impression that the way things worked out was inevitable. Our mental maps can shift, quite dramatically. In a couple of weeks, you'll be able to visit the BL at St Pancras and spot any mistakes we've made, but also see things such as Matthew Paris's Map of Britain , which shows how our geographic perspective has changed over time.

2. I am now the proud owner of a dayglo orange London Freewheel marshal's vest after a day of helping cycles get across busy roads, reuniting the odd lost child with their parent, and, mostly, enjoying cycling around traffic-free streets along the Thames and central London. But what does this have to do with political rights? Well, cycling is quite good at letting your mind wander and sparking odd connections, and a couple of thoughts occurred. For one thing, the invention of the bicycle, as well as helping to increase the human gene pool, correlates arguably with the rise of mass political movements. How else could you get to mass protests? The event itself was one of the rare modern occasions when the world is, for a little while 'turned upside down'.

Much like festivals and feast days in the Medieval or Early Modern World, the servant became the master. Those on bikes ruled the streets, and HGVs were forced, for once, to wait outside the Freewheel zone. One of the items we sadly haven’t had room to display is a print of an election parade that took place in Wootton Basset, Wiltshire in the early 1800s. While we are showing prints of Hogarth’s famous series of election paintings, which satirises the corruption of the 18th-century electoral process, the procession at Wootton Basset is a much more of a joyful affair, a civic festival. As the historian Frank O'Gorman has suggested, something essentially democratic may have been lost during the transition from this public, 'raucous' process to the formality and secrecy of the modern ballot box. The Freewheel itself was a lot of fun but, as I discovered as a marshal, had a lot of rules. Entrances and exits to parks were strictly controlled, and the sea of dayglo vests in St James's made one think about those who criticise the abundance of health and safety regulations – again, a balance of rights, responsibilities and freedom.

We will be showing Turner’s Northampton Election (c. 1830-1), kindly loaned from Tate Britain, which captures a moment of transition between the old system, and the new, more ordered - and possibly more staid - electoral process that was gradually constructed following the 1832 Reform Act.