In my early years we had next door neighbours who were Scots. The mothers both belonged to the Primrose League, the fathers had similar First World War service, and the sons were class mates at school. My mother always invited them to spend Guy Fawkes night and Christmas with us. Her friend invited us for Halloween and Hogmanay. We therefore had four celebrations to enliven the winter months. Birthdays, Wedding Anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Regimental and School reunions - all enliven and diversify the year and are personal family occasions. Coronations and Jubilees are national.
The coming Millennium is, theoretically, common to all Christians. It is, give or take a year or two, a memorial of Christ's birth. It is also the end of one century and the beginning of another. I have never heard of junketing in the year 1000, though many may have feared that the end of the world was upon them. What then should we be celebrating?, but first let us reminisce on landmarks of comparatively recent years.
Why the 1851 exhibition? - A good idea of Prince Albert's to promote trade and display new inventions. Did you know that the 1851 exhibition was the birthday of Brass Bands? Before that, mobile bands were “Military”, whether their musicians were soldiers, marines, or civilians, and consisted of coronets, trombones, clarinets, oboes, flutes, in fact a variety of techniques, some of them very difficult. A Frenchman named Distin and a Belgian called Adolphe Sax (inventor of the Saxophone) both had stalls at the Exhibition. Distin developed the three valve principle which greatly increased the scope of the cornet, filling up the gaps in the harmonic scale by providing three extra tubes which lowered the tone of the instrument by 1, ½ and 1½ notes respectively. Combinations of these three tubes made it possible to play a full diatonic scale.
Sax extended the principle to horns of various sizes from the big “oompah” to the slightly bigger cornet known as the Flugel. All these are still known as Saxhorns. It therefore became possible to assemble a band in which only the trombones did not employ the three valve system. Delegates from several famous North Country “Military” bands visited the Exhibition and immediately saw the advantage to toil worn fingers of factory workers and miners of the comparatively undemanding three valve technique. The Brass band was born. Fourteen years later the Salvation Army was formed and they too adopted the new instrumentation. So there was virtue in Prince Albert's brain child.
The main excuse for the 1951 Festival of Britain was its being one hundred years after 1851. Only the Festival Hall, of its numerous attractions, remains. I remember the old shot tower in which molten lead, poured from a great height, granulated into buckshot. It was for the Festival, fitted with a transmitter which bounced signals off the moon. “Ping” and the signal was on its way, “Pang” and it had come back. I took the promoter's word for this.
A funfair was set up in Battersea Park. One of its great novelties was a centrifuge. It was about 15 feet in diameter and twenty feet deep, like an outsize tine of baked beans. People stood in a ring around the perimeter. The “can” revolved, accelerated, the floor retracted. The passengers were left fastened to the wall of the can by centrifugal force. Various juvenile celebrities, such as the present Duke of Gloucester, then a schoolboy, were photographed in suspension, no doubt at a private session. But when I, as a rank and file punter, turned up, it was a different story. One paid at a toll booth, then queued and ascended a spiral cat walk outside a much larger cylinder, about the size and appearance of a Wiggins Gasholder (If you don't know what a Wiggins Gasholder is, ask me next time we meet and I will bore you stiff with the details.)
Once inside the “Wiggins Holder” I found myself on a descending spiral catwalk, with a handrail. The punters were encouraged to bang the handrail in rhythm to a loudspeaker that blared out a pop song of the period (Truly, truly fair, Truly, truly fair, how I love my truly fair). This rhythmic thumping kept the queue moving briskly. Far below us was the “can of beans”. We drew level with the centrifuge and found ourselves truly-fairing ourselves out into the open again. Here was another paydesk followed by a queue to get on the centrifuge. Most of the exit queue gave it up as a bad job and went on to the roundabouts. Years later a friend told me that the centrifuge went on tour and appeared for a few days in Holsworthy.
Which brings me to the Millennium Dome. The most obvious thing about this is it's horrendous cost, plus vast amounts being spent on ancillary projects such as an extended underground line and a very large Ferris Wheel. If we are celebrating 2000 years of Christian celebration, on which the advance publicity casts much doubt, then we should be remembering what effect Christian standards, if any, have had on our national character. I believe it is substantial. As long ago as Chaucer the poet describes an army officer of the period as “a verray parfit gentil knight”. In a less intense vein, Gilbert wrote and Sullivan musicked the words “He might have been a Russian, a French or Turk or Prussian - but he is an Englishman. For he himself has said it, and it's greatly to his credit, that he is an Englishman!”
In spite of Gilbert's tongue in cheek treatment of this hallowed subject. I think he's got something. To have woven essentially Christian principles into the concept of an English Gentleman, is an achievement. In our wars we have been more often right than wrong, and in spite of the crime wave and football hooligans our young men still go to the wars and acquit themselves with honour. It is this virtue we should be remembering and rejoicing in at the Millennium and not throwing vast amounts of tax payers money at the site of England's former biggest gasworks.