Category Archives: Events And Notable Dates
May Day
May Day has been with us for centuries. Its overt meanings, and even the actual date, may change, but the sense of taking a day to do something different and more personal remains. People in every age and every part of the world have welcomed the onset of Summer and the chance to throw a party.
It’s May Day today. The first of May, that unequivocal date which, unlike the contested first day of Spring (is it the vernal equinox on 20/21 March, or the newer BBC version on 1 March?), is firmly set in the European calendar.
When I was small I genuinely thought that May Day was about Morris Dancers and Maypoles. We lived in villages in Hampshire, Wiltshire and then Gloucestershire, and my father was a rural science teacher who took his local community involvement seriously – so we all enjoyed a flavour of the festive rituals of many centuries, and are none the worse for that.
Holding on to traditions and ideas
I suppose that in some ways that was the end of a very long period in history, already mostly shattered by global stife and the increasing grip of technology. Looking back, it might be seen as idyllic, though that it certainly wasn’t; give me double glazing, wider horizons and lots of running hot water any day.
But there are vestiges of the ‘old’ May Day way of life which still resonate. The festivals (May Day, Harvest and what have you) were unselfconscious and for everyone. Our understanding of the seasons and cycles of the earth – I learned about crop rotation at a very early age, and about its history back to mediaeval times not much later – is something which still informs my perceptions, albeit now in terms of eco-systems. And the things we did were family inclusive; sometimes overly so, but at least everyone was there.
New meaning for old ideas
Only after I came to the city did I learn that there was also another ‘meaning’ to May Day – its use, on the first Monday of May, as a celebration of workers’ rights. Thus, 1 May 1886 in the United States saw the very first International Workers’ Day…. not to be confused with 1 September, which after historical debate is now set in America as Labor Day.
Such reinvention of celebratory events is not however confined to the U.S.A. In Liverpool since 1978, when the date first became a Bank Holiday, we have seen the first Monday in May used to underpin general festivities, to recognise Trade Unions and, occasionally, to celebrate shire horses. The scope is huge in a place with such long historical links to labour, but also with wide-open spaces such as Sefton Park right by the city centre.
Modern May Day
Activities this year for May Day are a million miles away from my hazy childhood recollections. There range from a demonstration in London to promote a Trade Union Freedom Bill, to a grass-roots Labor Arts Festival in Edmonton, Canada and a Maypole event at Liverpool’s Tudor half-timbered Speke Hall and Morris dancers (yes!) outside our wonderful St. George’s Hall, via big marches and strikes across the U.S.A. in favour of regularising the status of illegal workers.
Thus morphs the traditional May Day in a more politically conscious era, whether the objective be workers’ rights or a determiniation to see celebration through the arts of community in a more fragmented world. We can only be glad, whatever the detailed argument about the causes espoused, that people still see fit to make the effort.
We have lost much of the original understanding of May Day, and I’d guess that many people active today are not even aware of its historical roots. But things change only in some ways. For every person involved in worthy trade union activity today, there are probably still hundreds carrying on the original idea behind May Day, taking a day off work and getting out their lawnmower or barbecue set, as they prepare for some family’n’friends time in the garden.
Let’s hope the sun shines for everyone, demonstrators, gardeners and revellers alike.
Wirral’s Ness Gardens: A Place To Learn Whilst You Enjoy
Ness Botanic Gardens, owned by the University of Liverpool, are a delightful example of how learning and enjoyment can come together. They are the creation of a cotton merchant who wanted to share his absorbing interest in plants from across the world (and especially from the Himalayas) with the people of his hometown, Liverpool. This work, begun in 1898, continues to prosper to the present time.
Ness Botanic Gardens are on the Wirral near Chester, away from the River Mersey facing the splendid windswept views of the Dee Estuary which overlook the North Wales coast. They offer delightful views which take one back to more pastoral times, and include the habitats of many species of birds and wildlife.
This apparent tranquility and timelessness has not however prevented some very forward-looking management on the part of those responsible for the site. Just this week (14 April 2006) saw the opening of the new Horsfall Rushby Visitor Centre, designed alongside a wider programme of development to encourage year-round enjoyment of this special location.
Where academic excellence meets family fun
The story of the Gardens is both unusual and enlightening. They were created by a Liverpool cotton merchant, the Fabian Arthur Kilpin Bulley, who wanted to establish in Britain the ‘new’ Himalayan and Chinese mountain plants he had funded the plant explorers George Forrest and Frank Kingdom Ward to discover . And so in 1898 began the adventure which was to become Ness Gardens, a place of elegance and education, as it welcomed vistors from near and far.
In 1942 Arthur Bulley died and left his ever-expanding Gardens to his daughter Lois (1901-1995), who presented them to the University of Liverpool in 1948, with an endowment of £75,000 per annum on the understanding that they be kept open for the public. Her intention that this beautiful place continue to fascinate and inform both young and older people is reflected in the current Visitor Centre, scientific programme and educational developments.
Journey of discovery
Our own involvement in Ness Gardens began back in the 1970s, when a reseach student friend at Liverpool University experienced what, at that time, seemed like a cruel blow. He had been assiduously observing a derelict site in the city centre to find out what sort of road-side plants and grasses best grew on such unpromising terrain when, because of a misunderstanding by a Council employee about location, a ton of topsoil was dumped on his experimental venue. The anguish was terrible – should there be an official complaint because the experiment was ruined; or should there be celebration of the act of reclaiming the derelict site for better use, albeit by mistake?
Resolution of this dilemma arrived in the form of an offer to recreate the dereliction by transporting a huge load of rubble to a fenced-off location at the edge of the University’s Ness Gardens. Our humble role in this adventure was occasionally to give our friend a lift over to the site to continue his work. The experiment was repeated, the results brought forth much in the way of understanding how to use grasses to reclaim land, the young scientist’s career was launched to great acclaim – and we became regulars at Ness Gardens.
The research and development continues
The striking thing about Ness Gardens is that, not only does it change dramatically with the seasons, but it has consistently expanded and grown over the years. The Gardens have spread across much more of the site, with a growing number of areas of specialist interest (the latest is the ‘Prehistoric Garden’ just created from an existing clay marl pit); and the world-class science has similarly developed over time.
Here is a place always worth the journey, where there is a conscious intention to deliver first-class research in the context of a welcome for everyone. Support the Friends of Ness Gardens if you can – and be sure to visit their new Centre and see the Gardens for yourself.
Good News On Hope Street
It has been over a decade since the campaign to renew Liverpool’s Hope Street was first mooted; but now at last we’re almost there. To mark the event, all the partners involved have agreed to host a day in June [later deferred to Sunday 17 Septmeber ’06] of arts-based celebration on the street. The arts, as ever, will give us common cause and help us to enjoy together the space which we have all been hoping to see refurbished for so long.
Today marks a new phase in the development of Liverpool’s Hope Street Quarter.
It may not have looked much to the casual observer – just a handful of people talking about an event in June. But to me it seems really significant: we, that is HOPES: The Hope Street Association and Liverpool Vision and the City Council have agreed to co-host a celebration of the completion of the Hope Street refurbishment, open to all who want to be there, and acknowledging the very complex partnerships which we have had to nurture over the past few years to get to where we are today.
The arts as common ground
Here, if ever there was one, is an example of how people coming from very different places can find common ground – a particularly apt metaphor in this instance – through the arts and community activity. If everything goes according to plan, mid June this year will see people from many communities sharing a friendly, family, fun event in Hope Street, enjoying the many ways in which we can all become involved in arts and community activities. [Later note: the event eventually came about on 17 September ’06, as part of a wider Hope Street Festival Day.]
The connectivity is why this event is so important for me. On the one hand we have very large organisations – the North West Development Agency in this instance – and on the other, we hope, the smallest arts groups and people from local communities, all sharing the successful completion of a long and testing project, over a decade in the making.
We’re not quite there yet – there are still many other things to attend to as we make progress on this exciting regeneration programme – but we’re well on the way. And the door is open to everyone who wants to be involved!
From Euston To Ecology, Engineering And Enterprise With The Virgin Trains Windowgazer
Travel takes many forms. The idea behind the ‘Windowgazer Guide’, a booklet explaining what can be seen as one’s train travels from London Euston northwards, is excellent. Here is a concept which can take us not only on physical journeys, but also on journeys of discovery of many sorts, scientific, environmental, cultural and much more.
How many people know that, as their train passes Stafford on the way northwards from London Euston, they are right by the 360 acres of the Doxey Marshes, an especially important breeding ground for lapwing, redshank, snipe, yellow wagtail, sedge, warbler and pochard? Or that a short while thereafter as they get to Crewe they are at the centre of a town celebrated in 1936 by W H Auden and Benjamin Britten in a documentary (Night Mail) extolling the work of the Royal Mail trains?
These are two of the interesting facts which I learnt from the Train Manager as he read from a travel guide over the public address system, on my journey home from Euston just this week.
It’s one of those odd co-incidences that the same day I ‘discovered’ the Windowgazer Guide I also learnt that today (9 April 2006) is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of Britain’s greatest bridge builders, Isambard Kingdon Brunel – the man, so my Windowgazer Guide tells me, who came with his colleague engineer Thomas Locke especially to observe the installation of Robert Stephenson’s pioneering Britannia tubular bridge, now spanning the Menai Strait which divides Angelsey from the rest of Wales. My interest already alerted by the commentary on my train journey, I found the story of Brunel immediately relevant and memorable.
Always something new
This has set me pondering the many ways in which we can learn something new every day.
The Windowgazer Guide I saw is a free publication available on the Virgin Train North West line from Euston to Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. You obtain it from the refreshment carriage bookshelf, and it offers all sorts of interesting information about your journey.
The scope for this sort of publication, drawing together information across the whole range of arts and science is enormous. And it’s not ‘just’ trains which offer opportunities of this sort. Almost every journey does the same.
Bringing local knowledge to bear
The trend towards local access to the internet, be it via schools and community centres, libraries, housing associations or whatever, affords huge scope here. It would be great to see projects across the country which encourage local people to share their knowledge via the internet so that we can enjoy journeys illuminated by fascinating facts and ideas, wherever we go. What we learn might sometimes spark new and beneficial ideas of all sorts, who knows?
Perhaps there’s a way that someone could use the ‘Grid‘ to make available a route map of the U.K., with trainlines, roads, canals and whatever else marked out, onto which individuals and local communities could add their particular knowledge of where they live and work?
Getting from A to B is one form of travel. Sharing information and enjoying new ideas is another, perhaps even bigger, adventure.
World Health Day
‘Working together for health’ is this year’s slogan for World Health Day (today).
The World Health Organisation (WHO) quite rightly asks that we take time just for one day in the year to think about what ‘Health’ actually means. So today, 7 April 2006, is World Health Day.
This year’s strapline is ‘working together for health’. Reduction in child mortality, improvements in maternal health and combatting HIV / AIDS, malaria and other diseases are amongst the Millennium Development Goals ** which all Member States are signed up to meet by the year 2015.
[** The other five goals are eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, environmental sustainability and a global parnership for development.]
A time to reflect?
But here we are in Britain, one of the half-dozen most wealthy countries in the world, and even we don’t get it right on all counts. There is plenty to worry about in the health of our nation; but it cannot be said, as of some other countries, that anyone ‘has’ to starve or die of cold, lack of clean water or because of any of the other horrendous experiences of people in other parts of the world. In the U.K. we have choices, and we have resources, which really do mean this never has to happen.
I say this neither (I hope) to make inappropriate comparisons – poverty in health or anything else in the U.K. is relative; poverty elsewhere is grimly absolute – nor to offer bland pronouncements about what we ‘ought’ to do to reduce such awful suffering in other areas of the globe.
What I seek to understand more clearly is how we can think in a more joined-up way.
Only connect…
We in Britain, like those in other first world countries, mostly know that how we treat our bodies and what we do to promote sustainability are critical both for ourselves and to what happens to people elsewhere, as well as people here. We know too that responsibility for this lies with us personally and as parents, as well as with ‘the government’, or ‘them’.
There’s a message here. It’s at base very simple. The fundamental question is, how do we deliver action?
If World Health Day does nothing else, perhaps it encourages us to reflect how, across the globe, we are all interconnected and interdependent. The ‘links’ are there, on the internet and, even more importantly, in our hearts and minds.
Time Is Energy (And ‘Clocks Forward’ Daylight Uses Less)
‘Daylight saving’ is a strange notion. But ‘daylight energy saving’ is a very different consideration. How we arrange the hours of light and darkness across our working day has many impacts – which makes it all the more curious that so little high profile or current research has been focused on British Summer Time and rationales for why the clocks ‘go back’ in the Winter.
My recent piece on British Summer Time has drawn a lot of comment, both on and off this website.
There are people who seem simply not to mind whether / when it’s light or dark as they go about their daily business, but there are many others who have responded quite strongly in terms of their need for as much daylight as possible. It must be very helpful in some ways not to mind how dark it is, but it’s quite incomprehensible to others that there are folk who genuinely ‘don’t mind’. Perhaps it’s rather like being ‘colour blind’ – if you don’t perceive the difference between red and green you just accept (and may not even know about) it; or maybe some of us have physiologies which are more photo-sensitive than others.
Daylight saving is energy saving
The most important thing to come out of the discussions so far, however, is not that people may have different personal preferences, but that the terms of engagement in this debate are becoming clearer.
One striking aspect of so-called ‘daylight saving’ which is emerging, alongside the prime safety considerations, is its significance not only potentially for business efficiency, but also, even more crucially, for energy. It does begin to look very much as though more ‘summertime’ would keep energy consumption down.
Where’s the evidence?
A big surprise in all this is the paucity of serious publicly available evidence other than on safety (avoidance of accidents). It seems in some respects that the last substantial governmental research in this area was conducted in 1989.
That was now seventeen years ago. Since then, it need hardy be said, much has changed.
Business and technological practices are much different from those dismal years of two decades ago. Our consciousness of the energy crisis and of ecological issues is far better developed now than it was then. The public (electorate) is now far more aware of the issues of sustainability than they could possibly have been in the 1980s.
What’s the cost-benefit of ‘daylight saving’?
So where is the cost-benefit analysis of the different ways in wihich we might distribute the eternally pre-ordained number of daylight hours we have at our disposal, summer and winter? Common sense suggests that arranging things so there’s as much daylight as possible in the hours when most people can use it is a good start.
If anybody really knows the answer, please just let us know!
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled
BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
The Clocks Go Forward … But Why, Back Again?
British Summer Time is welcomed by almost all of us – more daylight when we can use it is much appreciated, as Lord Tanlaw’s proposed ‘Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill’ acknowledges, for reasons of health, safety, energy savings and business benefit. So why do we need to revert to the darkness next Autumn? The answer appears to be historical drag, a reluctance to be ‘European’, and an obdurate insistence by some of national identity over common well-being.
Like 99% of the rest of the UK population, I’m really looking forward to the extra hour of evening light which will be ours as of this weekend. We may lose an hour of sleep just one Sunday morning, but then we get months of beautiful daylight at hours when we can actually enjoy them. It can’t come too soon.
It was always a huge puzzle to me why the ‘experiment’ to keep British Summer Time all year seemed to go so badly wrong when it was tried in 1968 to 1971. Then I learned that it was nothing to do with sensible allocation of daylight hours for nearly all of us – it was essentially a sop to the Scottish Highlands, where apparently people demanded the right to dark evenings for us all, so that they had a bit more daylight in the morning.
Why Highlanders couldn’t just adjust their working day a bit if they so like first light, is beyond me.
Safety – and Health – take a back seat
Since the missed opportunity of thirty five years ago, things have moved on. We now know about SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and about the net increase in accidents – acknowledged in many countries – which wintry Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) brings in its wake – even for Scotland.
So there really is no excuse for any failure to support Lord Tanlaw’s current private Parliamentary Bill to adopt Single Double Summer Time (SDST) for an experimental three years from 29 October this year. The idea has the support of ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) and of PACTS (the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety) – who jointly last tried to effect such a change via Nigel Beard MP’s 10-minute bill in 2004. The previous time the change to all-year so-called ‘daylight saving’ was attempted before that was in 1994, with a Bill promoted by Nigel Waterson MP.
This debate has therefore now emerged as a matter of both safety and, equally importantly, health. The epidemiology of the proposed time shift suggests that it would not only reduce accidents, but also promote health; people would be more active in the winter, with beneficial effect to both physical and mental well-being.
My national identity before my health (and yours)?
The debate seems to boil down to two lines of argument:
Firstly, that it is the inalienable right of Scots people to conduct their morning farming activities in daylight – a ‘right’ which would be preserved in Lord Tanlaw’s bill, because it expressly accedes that the Scottish (and Ulster and Wales) Parliament/s could adopt current ‘winter time’ if they so determined; and
Secondly, that this is some sort of ‘European plot’, against farmers milkman and postal workers (…), foisting ‘non-British time’ on us – despite the additional difficulties which British ‘local’ winter time causes for companies seeking business across both Europe and wider afield. (It’s rather a surprise to learn in Hansard 8 Dec. 2004, Column 584W, that the Department of Trade and Industry has not conducted much research since 1989 (Cm 722) on potential economic and social effects of the ‘biannual time change’.)
Don’t play politics against common sense
Let us put aside the obvious issue that very few indeed of us live on farms (and that for many the sight of a postal worker before 10 a.m. – or a milkman at all – causes astonishment these days) and just focus on the facts.
Health and safety are what make our lives better. Not nationalities. And who wants his or her national identity to be seen as an obstacle to healthier and safer lives anyway?
~ ~ ~
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled
BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)….. Specific articles include:
Making The Most Of Daylight Saving: Research On British Summer Time
The Clocks Go Forward… And Back… And Forward…
SaveOurDaylight: Victor Keegan’s Pledge-Petition
British Summer Time Draws To A Close
Time Is Energy (And ‘Clocks Forward’ Daylight Uses Less)
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
Let’s Celebrate International Women’s Day, Today (8th March 2006)
International Women’s Day is not a huge occasion for most people; but maybe it could be if we all grasped this annual opportunity to examine and where possible to celebrate, on a year-on-year basis, what progress has been made in gender equality. A start could be made, Monday Women decided, by ensuring we learn Herstory alongside His.
How does one ‘celebrate’ International Women’s Day? And, indeed, should one? This was one of the topics discussed by Monday Women in Liverpool, today.
Given that women make up over 50% of the population of the UK, I suppose I shall be impressed when we are also invited to celebrate International Men’s Day… but I do know, really, that this misses the point at least for now.
Anyway, we all do what we can. One year we even managed to produce a chamber concert including previously unheard music by the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth (who probably wrote the music around the very time when first glimmers of the idea of IWD came into being, not that far from where she was studying in central Europe). And on many occasions there have been conferences, readings and much else to recognise the parts women play in contemporary society.
Not a big issue for women or men?
But generally people don’t get very excited about International Women’s Day, as far as I can see. I wish they would. It would be excellent if, on this day, we not only celebrated the contributions of many thousands of unseen, unheard women in our local communities, but also began to ask, really seriously, just why are they so unacknowledged?
There’s a lead story in The Independent today about how campaigners say that unless urgent action is taken on the status of women, the Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty, infant deaths and standards of education will not be met… but The Indy also reports that only one in four British women counts herself a feminist.
For those of us who have worked over many years to seek empowerment of women alongside men this is in some respects a truly puzzling and disappointing figure; but against it we need to ask what proportion of women in previous generations would taken this label. My guess, overall, is fewer than we imagine, despite Rosie the Riveter and all she taught us.
Herstory…
So let’s make a start by being a bit more realistic. If young people don’t know much about how things were (and how many young people actually want to look backwards at that point in their lives?) they will also not know about how things have changed. We more experienced feminists need to work from what is – i.e. an ahistoric perspective in which all that is wrong now actually seems to younger people to be ‘worse’ than what was before – and to find ways of challenging that strategically, not personally.
Rather than feeling upset that what we have worked for is not understood – upsetting though in my heart I must admit this is – those of us who champion gender equality need to find ways of ensuring that HERstory is told, to everyone, alongside HIStory. Then we shall be able to demonstrate what has already been achieved and, critically, to see more clearly where the obstacles to further progress lie.
Whose responsibility?
In curriculum terms, responsibility for herstory obviously lies with the schools and the government. But in other ways it lies with us all. I would like to see a focus on International Women’s Day 2007 on what each aspect of our daily lives has offered over the past year in terms of opportunities and life experience for women and men. Could this be a challenge for the media, and for us all? An agenda we could start to set now, for next year and all the years which follow?
In the meantime, Monday Women have said it already today on our e-group – have a great day!
How Will We Know That Liverpool 2007 & 2008 Were Successful?
The 800th Anniversary of Liverpool in 2007, and the Liverpool European Capital of Culture Year in 2008, are hugely important milestones for the city. So how are we, citizens of the city or of Europe and the world, going to measure the success of these years, once we reach 2009?
Your suggested responses and answers to this question are most welcome….
Much has already been written, on this weblog and elsewhere, about Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary in 2007, and the 2008 European Capital of Culture Year.
I don’t intend just now to extend that debate – it seems to be developing all on its own… and please do continue to add your contributions on this weblog. But I would like to ask one special question, to which I would also really appreciate answers (please use the Response space below):
By what criteria will, or should, we be able to evaluate the success of Liverpool 2007 / 8?
I’m sure many people will have many ideas on the criteria we should use – or perhaps are already using?
Indeed, it would be helpful to know whether there actually are already sol
Liverpool, Capital Of Culture 2008? Or Of Chaos 2006?
Liverpool as a city is claiming much for the forthcoming celebratory years of 2007 and 2008, but concerns exist on many fronts about the present. There is more to serious development of cultural involvement than simply ‘community programmes’, admirable though that is. So what sorts of models of citizen and ‘stakeholder’ integration are being developed, building on the experience of other cities which have managed to engage people at all levels? And will these work?
Oh dear. We don’t seem to have got off to a very good start in Liverpool this year.
The end of 2005 saw the demise of several large-scale Liverpool projects, such as the trams project, and before that, in 2004, the embarrassment of the so-called ‘Fourth Grace’ (possibly a vainglorious misnomer? nobody I know thought there were even three ‘Graces’ until someone made that name up, not long ago). And in the Summer we had the debacle of the Mersey River Festival, only now being reported…
Then, to round off 2005, there was the extraordinary fuss over the shifts at the top of our political and administrative power base.
Capital of Culture 2008 now under scrutiny
And now questions are being asked about our preparations for Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008. These have been becoming more urgent over the past few weeks – there were concerns expressed when Liam Fogarty decided to raise the issue of an elected mayor once more – but since the New Year the story hasn’t really been off the front page.
Well, that there are questions is unsurprising, both for particular reasons and because there is always a period before these huge events, as far as I can see, when Questions Are Asked. What is more worrying, however, is the difficulty some actual citizens and ‘stakeholders’ have experienced in learning what’s happening and / or in getting answers.
Who takes day-to-day responsibilty for ‘stakeholders’?
I leave it to others to pursue the specifics of this alarming situation; my own concerns are quite complex, though I do have to say it would be helpful if they were being addressed at the practical day-to-day level… one problem seems to be identifying anyone who can take on issues of normal operational accountability. But there you go.
For me, and I suspect numbers of others, the real issue is, where do we go from here? As a long-time resident of Liverpool with strong roots in the city I know it’s really important that we make a big success of 2007 and 2008, the 800th anniversary of our City Charter, and then our European Capital of Culture Year.
What some people haven’t the foggiest inkling about, however, even after serious attempts to find out, is how they can bring their ideas to bear to help this to happen. And that perhaps has occured also in other European Capital of Culture locations, which begs a question about what models of social and artistic inclusion work best, and where.
Dreaming Realist 