Things we Forgot to Remember

 

 

Some notes from the "Things we Forgot to Remember" Radio 4 series.

 

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World War One

We rightly remember the Somme in 1916 as a bloody metaphor for the seemingly senseless slaughter of World War One – but why is it the only thing we remember? The Battle of the Somme, especially its first day (July 1st 1916), seems to take precedence in our collective memory. Lines of British troops killed by German machine guns. Tactical ineptitude and useless sacrifice, with Douglas Haig as the chief 'Donkey'.

But two questions arise: if it was all like that, then how come the British won the war in the end? And given that the British did win, how come we forgot about it, and instead commemorate something that looks like a defeat?

We have forgotten to remember that we learnt lessons, and ultimately won the war. The reasons for that tell us as much about the political agenda of those who came after the war as it does about those who fought hard for victory.

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Jack the Ripper

We remember Jack the Ripper - the top-hatted, knife-wielding psychopath - but what has our fascination with the man made us forget about the time in which he plied his diabolical craft? We forget Bloody Sunday in November 1887, we forget the riots, the moral panic and the talk of revolution from the East End that accompanied the stories of the Ripper murders.

The real fear in London in the later years of the 1880s wasn't a man with a knife, it was a socialist revolution and a moral contagion that threatened the Empire – and in the Queen's Jubilee season too! But slum clearance, popular journalism and a brigade of the Grenadier Guards succeeded in removing one fear, whilst popular prurience ensured immortality for another.

 

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Magna Carta

We venerate the Magna Carta as the foundation rock of English political development. But the sort of law that it enshrined was not as important as that which was put into practice by another charter passed two years later: the Forest Charter.

Forest Law - and the customary rights to a material life which it enshrined – set out the terrain over which English men and women would struggle for 500 years, arguing about the simple right to make a living.

Michael Portillo reinvigorates this lost charter and discovers the shady political expediencies that made Magna Carta worth remembering.