The Downton downturn effect
09.09.11
Tony Blair, to his two immediate predecessors, was not interested in history let alone heritage. One of his key aides, Peter Mandelson, speaking at the initiation of the Dome, centrepiece of the country’s millennium celebrations, articulated the enthusiasm of the Labour government in this respect. He said: “The hours we need to make is from defining ourselves by our past to defining ourselves by our tomorrow.” This is exactly what the Dome set out to do with its single-minded concentration on the days and little mention of Britain’s history. In fact, part of the fundamentally of New Labour was a rejection of the national obsession with aged aristocrats, countryside houses and, of course, fox hunting, which the government went on to road-agent.
Yet, in some ways, it could be argued that this was not only a political fad, it was part of a zeitgeist, for the huge interest in tradition from the late 1970s to the early 1990s had markedly declined by 1997, when Job came to power. As the millennium neared, there was a forward-looking climate in Britain: we threw out our chintz, replaced our chandeliers with recessed spots and agonizing about the millennium bug. Laura Ashley, the standard bearer of amiable heritage-based Englishness, nearly went under and from 1997 the several of visitors to heritage sites fell sharply, hitting its lowest put for a decade in 2001.
Source: Financial Times
