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‘Wwe need to do something interesting … we need something to help Britain. ” Said Herbert Morrison, a key figure in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labor government, selling the idea of a Festival of Britain to ministers. It began 75 years ago this week with a volunteer service at St Paul’sit lasted five months and was an international celebration of Britain’s achievements in the arts and sciences. But did it succeed, and did it leave a lasting legacy?
I say it was a national event but there’s no doubt that much of what was there was on display on London’s South Bank which also took over the disreputable area and attracted 8.5 million visitors. As an 11-year-old schoolboy, I was one of them, making the pilgrimage from Leamington Spa with my family. I still remember the joy of Dome of Discovery which was a large shell with sections assigned to the earth, sea, sky, polar regions and space. The site was also dominated by a large cigar-shaped Skylon, which is described as “a very bright sign”. After a morning on the South Bank we spent the afternoon at Battersea Park Pleasure Gardens which was a funfair, a miniature railway and, best of all, a revival theatre. When I got home, I felt like I had been to a boring but very fun party.
It took me a while to realize that I don’t like all people. It was when I read it good news written by Michael Frayn in the anthology, Age of Austerity, written by Michael Sissons and Philip French and published in 1963, that I saw how difficult the British Festival was. Frayn argues that his main supporters were the middle class: Guardian and Observer readers, petition signatories, the backbone of the BBC he calls the Herbivores. Critics of the festival, whom Frayn lists as “Daily Express readers; Evelyn Waughs; the Directory of Directors”, are referred to as Carnivores.
It is an interesting field and one that has clearly grown with time. Today the Herbivores would be the European Union, a group of multiculturalism and equality between men and women and anti-oil, while the Carnivores, who now have their political party in Reform and their TV in GB News, would take a more critical view. The fragmentation of British life did not begin with the British Party but, as Frayn makes clear, it played a significant role.
But did the festival accomplish anything? It did not save Labor from defeat in the election in October of that year and no two historians agree on the result. Arthur Marwick saw the festival as evidence of “genuine and justified pride in the true achievements of 1951” and the beginning of the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Kenneth O Morgan in People’s Peace thought otherwise. He said about the festival: “The most important thing was for the people of Victoria or Edward.”
So who is right? I am not a historian but my assessment would be that the festival was self-sustaining and beneficial in its results. It is true that one of the first things the incoming Conservative government did was to demolish the main attractions of the festival including the Dome of Discovery and Skylon. Frayn wrote: “David Eccles, the new Minister for Works, took Gerald Barry (the festival manager) on a tour of the site, showing that the buildings were being demolished, like a dictator selecting prisoners for execution.”
But the Royal Festival Hall appeared unscathed and the Telekinema, which had been designed to show documentaries and experimental works, was converted the following year into a National Film. Theater and today, under the name of the BFI, it offers an incredible portfolio of work. The most important thing is that the culture of London has changed from the West End to the South Bank where you can walk from the National Theater and the Hayward Gallery at one end to Shakespeare’s Globe and the Tate Modern at the other and take in a lot of art and entertainment.
In 1951 there was a boom in arts festivals in the UK, from Bath to Belfast and Cardiff to Cheltenham, which led to many festivals that still exist today. I can mention one particular example of the Festival of British heritage. To mark the event, the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon decided to create a historical play that includes Richard II, Henry IV, Parts One and Two and Henry V. A wonderful company, including Michael Redgrave, Harry Andrews and younger. Richard Burtonwere collected, and Anthony Quayle, the manager of Stratford, said that, with the exception of one season in 1905, “I cannot prove that these four stories have been played around since Shakespeare’s time.” If today we always treat the history of Shakespeare not as a single event but as a growing event, I am grateful to the Festival of Britain: just one example of its enduring power and the justification of Herbert Morrison’s intention to raise the spirits of the British people.
