Posted by Andy Morley on April 23, 1999 at 09:31:27:
On the radio this morning, great concern over the possible closure of a centre for English studies near Sheffield; this against a background of Scottish and Welsh devolution. Academic alarm that rich Americans might descend to carry off our culture - apparently they have designs on an archive in Sheffield University. At this university, the folk-club with 6 members re-named itself the Ceileidh Society and shot up to 200. All this put forward as justification for the view that we are a disorientated, dislocated people, awash with transatlantic cultural invasion, crippled with guilt about our past. What a load of B****x..!
I presently work in a city that is as cosmopolitan in its ethnic groups as any in the world. I perform Irish music with some of my friends because that is what, in this same city, they learnt at their mothers' knees. I avoid English folk music because it is way too precious, out of keeping with the robust culture to which I belong. Non of this makes me any the less English - it makes me more so. We have always been cosmopolitan, open to outside influences, willing to trade and to go out and engage with the world at large. This is one of the main impressions Voltaire took away with him after his exile to this country in the 18th C and it is still true. It is because we have a strong sense of our own identity that we can afford to be open and tolerant. It is only amongst fearful, inward-looking academic-type groups and covens of right-wing nutters that these views prevail. Long live the revolution..! (the 1688 one will do me for now, so long as TB minds his p's and q's)