An occupational hazard of an interest in postwar architecture is reading the same article over and over again. Each fresh take promises to overthrow a sacred cow in an unprecedented act of revisionism; each repeats journalistic tropes around cultural conservativism and Conservative animosity stretching back half a century or more. Anyway, here's (the start of) my effort ...
For better or worse, the visual arts haven’t featured large in Britain’s national mythologies of late. Yet, in September 2018, Theresa May launched what is now known as Festival UK* 2022, proclaiming: ‘Just as millions of Britons celebrated their nation’s great achievements in 1951, we want to showcase what makes our country great today.’ This ‘Festival of Brexit’ was met with scorn, hilarity and anger among artistic communities – followed, last year, by infighting and accusations of hypocrisy as groups from Assemble to the White Pube accepted the government’s shilling.
So far, so normal. More interesting is that May chose to leverage popular affection for the Festival of Britain in her flawed attempt to heal the wounds of Brexit. Why, 70 years on, does this one cultural event – first proposed in 1943 as a commemorative rehash of the Great Exhibition (with a not-dissimilar mix of industry and imperialism) – endure in the national imagination, symbolising the social-democratic identity of post-war Britain?
One vital factor in this tenacity is the Festival’s rapid abandonment of its predecessor’s internationalism, in large part due to financial constraints, with Labour’s deputy prime minister Herbert Morrison demanding domesticity: ‘Something jolly… something to give Britain a lift’. The principal result, the Land and People exhibition on London’s South Bank, was housed in determinedly non-totalitarian architecture scattered across an informal landscape, with partisanship, commerce and imperialism largely eschewed. There were major exhibitions in Glasgow and Belfast; the Lansbury Estate – ‘a cross-section of a neighbourhood’ – in east London; pleasure gardens in Battersea; two travelling displays, one on a converted aircraft carrier; and over 2,000 events in cities, towns and villages across the country.
In wider contexts, historians have long paid the festival little mind. Those on the right tend to give it only a cursory nod. Left-wing counterparts admit flaws but salute its aspirations – Kenneth Morgan called it a ‘triumphant success’ while regretting its Little Englander tendencies. Within the arts, however, the festival has played a far more central role, widely denigrated both then and now for its provincialism and mediocrity; as a Trojan horse for consumerism; and for its half-hearted approach to socialism and culture....