Introduction
Several moments and periods of upheaval and bloodshed in the history of the United States have become in the historical narrative of that country a re-assertion of both the most lauded national founding principles and even of the earlier colonial mentality. Such events, while their popular poignancy might diminish, still frequently serve to guide or define the outlook of American politicians of the present with wider repercussions not least for modern Britain that as a rule so often takes a cultural, social and political lead from the United States. However, many critical, formative events in this country's history have seemingly become regarded as antiquity and without any lingering regard outside the realm of academics.
Lack of acknowledgement to the great sacrifices of the past made to uphold similar defining national principles in Britain may be said to parallel the much-noted loss of national self-confidence following the devastating world wars of the early 20th century. Is the work of the past not only being overlooked but in danger of being unpicked and with it the sense of where we come from as a country? If so, a re-assessment of the perspective with which we view Britain today is urgently due.
The soul of a country must come from knowing the paths which it has trod and the rocks out of which it was hewn. An experience of outstanding music or art of whatever form can offer such an outlook-changing connection to this past. Reflecting on a couple of inspiring works, this article offers a personal view on whether the reality of the present is in fact testing whether the Union can survive at all in the future and whether indeed it even wants to survive.
Monumental events
In 2003, a patriotic American wrote an album of often patriotic music covering major historical periods both in America but also further afield. It was released to great acclaim in many quarters but also caused some consternation as an impassioned political subject might be expected to. For a contribution to a music genre that is often lampooned (yet has often drawn its inspiration from history) this album - The Glorious Burden - stood in stark contrast to the much of the self-indulgent superficial output of the popular music industry. The musician and lyricist in question is Jon Schaffer, who though based in Florida, still owns a historical military collectibles store called "Spirit of '76" in his native Indiana. The centrepiece of The Glorious Burden is a 32-minute epic called Gettysburg 1863 which, with musical echoes of the period and stirring orchestral accompaniment, recounts the events and the very real human cost of the three day battle.
Jon Schaffer (www.icedearth.com)
Schaffer's object of translating his obvious passion for history into poignant music was for many a resounding success and indeed moments in the album cut to the bone in evoking the reality that must have been inflicted upon the minds and senses of those who partook in these events. Being a man with a heartfelt respect for the past, Schaffer identified the significance of Gettysburg and managed to distil this alongside pieces covering other events (such as Waterloo) into a particularly inspired example of his own brand of music.
That Gettysburg is described as "hallowed ground" by Schaffer reflects his belief that a debt of gratitude and recognition is owed to those who fought and died for these ideals and identifies, if not in words, then with the spirit of Lincoln's phenomenally succinct address at the same site after the battle. Indeed, Schaffer's song about the excruciating winter of 1777-1778 at the Valley Forge Revolutionary War rebel encampment laments a selfish indifference to the past which beckons ill for a constructive future and is a plea to appreciate past sacrifice:
Close your eyes and imagine
The solider at Valley Forge
The suffering that he endured was real
Starvation, total war.
...
Would he look upon us now in anger and disgust?
His providence, our birthright and our creed
Will we let ignorance and laziness bring our demise?
Complacency, we're blinded by our greed.
Lincoln was keen to emphasise at Gettysburg that such later sacrifices in American history were not in vain from the perspective of both sides and that what took place there should similarly not be forgotten:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
...we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ? that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ? and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. "
Union fatalities at Gettysburg: the photographic record of a nationally defining tragedy (www.wikipedia.com)
Britain's civil conflicts are, of course, more distant in the past but certainly not so more separated from the present that the ideals for which men were compelled or obliged to sacrifice their lives can be regarded with a distant disregard or even contempt as though the implications of their personal tragedy do not constantly reach our own existence today. What would these past voices say to us if they could today?
The forgotten warriors
Unlike the American civil war there are no photographs of the English civil war (which of course extended elsewhere in the United Kingdom) or the Jacobite rebellion and its bloody, symbolic conclusion at Culloden. Yet these events were just as real and as idealistic with no less a matter at stake in each case than the future destiny of the entire United Kingdom.
Culloden 1746 (www.britishbattles.com)
It is perhaps more the question of what values that ideal Union would be based upon than how idealistic were the two sides that discriminates between the American and English civil wars. In the latter, whereas one side favoured absolutism in the form of a supreme governing Monarch, the side that emerged victorious professed what seems as more virtuous to modern ears. In spite of this, the country was left with a tyrannical puritanism which punished those seen as supporting the defeated Royalist cause. What caused Lincoln to call upon the civil war generation in his country to be "dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced" and what Schaffer pays homage to in his balanced tribute to those same fallen is a patriotism that is not commonly attributed to those who battled for the future in 17th century Britain.
Arguably, however, it was that same test of endurance for a nation that was being fought out over a longer time frame. This test, at least in its most violent expression reached a pinnacle at Culloden in 1746 where Jacobites under the erstwhile exiled Stuart, Charles, finally succumbed to the British army. Although the men in battle were 10 times less the colossal numbers at Gettysburg, the future existence of the Union hung in the balance and beneath that were the divided yet fervent loyalties and similar hopes of opposing bodies of men. These same men faced the same chilling, terrible personal fate of countless other battles. Yet it paints a picture of blind ignorance that in the free, prosperous country which is their legacy - and whose course their valour and sacrifice undeniably advanced - these critical battles in a theatre of all-out war are barely commemorated in Britain today as well as being unrecognised as regimental honours. The end of religious and political absolutism and the stability of Britain's constitution secured by the period involving the English Civil War and the victory at Culloden enabled a heretofore unprecedented and still since in some ways unparalled period of growth and success.
A threat today?
The lyrics of The Glorious Burden are endowed with phrases that reflect Schaffer's wish to show why many of the events he described matter as much now as they did to those living in their aftermath. When he writes in High Water Mark "In Washington D.C. Lincoln feels the Earth shake/What happens here this day/The fate of a nation" he describes the state of total uncertainty as the magnitude of what is happening hits home at the very upper reaches of politicial power. It is tempting to speculate that the inability or unwillingness to relate to what living in such a sustained state of affairs might really feel like is what gives so many of us in the present such a glib or casual attitude to titanic events in our own country's history.
A culture that has grown increasingly used to an instant-effect and service on-demand lifestyle is not accustomed to slowing down to appreciate the dreads and hopes of the past in their context. Whether this brings our demise as Schaffer questions is therefore the biggest question that can be asked here. In Britain, the greatest threat to the nation today is not necessarily an ideological one but may simply be not enough people not caring enough about the future of what is, after all, their homes, their reality and - for most people most of the time - their very lives. In the last month, the separatist Scottish Nationalist Party which holds power in a devolved Scottish parliament by a hair's breadth declared that "the idea of Britain went bust a long time ago" in response to a government plan to permit government buildings to fly the Union Flag all year around (rather than on Royal occasions). Although the SNP has been rebuked as parochial and divisive on many occasions, the fact that a separatist party is now in a privileged position of power has divided British opinion across a huge faultline for the nation with ambivalence on one side and the other welcoming what would destroy the Union as though the same could not also easily happen to England, subsequently.
Similary, and whatever one's opinions on the European Union, the current lack of an offer of a referendum to the British public on a constitutional-treaty with nationally-superseding aims that are explicitly laid out in its text is yet to raise noticeable concern for the consequences. An organisation called Global Britain once encapsulated this with the words: "Unless as a nation we make a much more serious effort to understand these issues, we shall have abdicated our responsibility to all those who come after us. Future generations will be amazed to see how far we sleepwalked our way into a totally different type of society and political system, without any real grasp of the immensity of what was at stake."
Should such concern emerge for what is happening in our country would it even approach what American civil war General Robert.E.Lee (a man, incidentally, with direct lineage to English ancestors) attests to in his men who would have striven to the bitter end?:
"but feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. "
As the threat to the Union does not, for a given, come from a single ideology the solution to apathy should not either. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been keen to define and assert admirable supposed values of "Britishness" and this has been criticised for not mentioning the institutions such as the Monarchy and Parliament which also might be said to define us but should this really be an either/or situation? Wouldn't it be better to open up our eyes here in Britain as Schaffer implores to the listener in Valley Forge and realise the blessing to ourselves of what has been achieved at huge cost?
One thing is clear and that is defeatism must not be allowed to gain the upper hand which is where we came in: can the Union survive and do we want it to survive? It's time to remind ourselves of what has been sacrificed and on what grounds in the past and that indifference to this has as little place as it ever did.
A personal note
Ghostly reminder from the past
Jon Schaffer's commemoration of his country's past through masterful lyrics and music, together with his "Spirit of 76" store recalling the creation of the United States, impacted me in such a way that I started to think more of the historical significance of my own birth-date. It appears that on this date long ago were two tumultuous events that defined the nation Britons live in today: the Norman Invasion of England in 1066 and the battle of Scottish independence at Byland in 1322. At least one would irrevocably alter a thousand years of British history and one was part of a series of events that sent repercussions through the centuries so that once again the future of the Union appears unresolved and, at worst, threatened. I have long wondered how many people, when seeing the departing shoreline from an aircraft, or, on seeing the famous white cliffs when returning across the English channel, gain a sense of something much, much bigger and infinitely more precious to us all than just the minuscule political window of our home we see through the media, framed for us on a daily basis. What does that say to us along with the other thousands of miles of coast and the endless stories that are scattered along them?
What sharpened the urgency of The Glorious Burden's overriding message was seeing on a shop shelf one day a re-issue of the tremendous soundtrack to that other inspirational insight into bygone valour and idealism: the film Gladiator. Like the gladiator and his hopes for Rome, like the divided loyalties but common hopes and fight for ideals of a fateful generation at Gettysburg or Culloden, the vision of him emerging from the blackness of time spoke a thousand words - loudest of all were "don't forget what I did".