Craig Fees | Dear Mr. Thoms # 17, 1990

Craig Fees
Church Lane
Toddington
GL54 SDQ

Dear Mr Thoms…

One of the consequences of Britain’s membership of the EC—especially the establishment of the Internal Market in 1992—is what, to an outsider like myself, would appear to be the transformation of British Folk culture but which to the British appears in the guise of “changes to the way we live”.

In my PhD thesis (Christmas Mumming in a North Cotswold Town, University of Leeds, 1988, copies of which are in the Folklore Society and Vaughan Williams Memorial libraries). I discussed in depth the kinds of changes experienced in a single English town over the course of the last hundred years, demonstrating their logical and (so it feels in looking at things in retrospect) their inevitable development in a certain direction which envelopes all aspects of life and culture, a development and logic which enmeshes Britain more closely into continental Europe and which has a number of predictable consequences of vital interest to folklorists. Well, potentially: folklorists find interesting what they find interesting, which is not always what is happening in the world to which they have no choice but to belong. That, by the way, is the sort of statement which would normally lead me to tear up a letter and begin again – too much to say. and not enough time to say it in. which leads to something which almost has to be misunderstood.

The fact is, of course, that in England folklorists for the most part study not what needs to be studied but what takes their fancy, which is not so much their own culture – the culture which they must live- – but the culture of others, primarily Those Who have Gone Before. Consequently, for the most part – and there is nothing wrong with this – they are subject to and agents of the kind of development which is altering the England which future generations will regard nostalgically and attempt to study and record. They will attempt to study and record it because it will all but have disappeared, and it will appear to them to have been an England which was England still, because the England in which they live will appear to them to be relatively without character, in which decisions are made which spring not from the Englishness of the English culture but from a New World – and so on. The cultural power of Europe will have moved out of the reach of the natives of England, and it will be centred (cultural power lending to follow economic power) on the mainland, perhaps in Berlin. The English will find themselves responding to cultural movements and tastes whose origin is elsewhere: they will find themselves defined by Outsiders. responding to the concerns of Outsiders, meeting the needs of Outsiders. and so on; “English” customs will be taken over by continentals who can fulfil them so much better, the best of England will pass into other hands and so on. Which is to say, the transformation of the rural community, which has passed from virtual autonomy from the cities to virtual possession by the urban-socially, politically and economically-with the sub-urbanisation of the English countryside-will continue with the City, in this case, being (perhaps; Berlin rather than Birmingham or London.

This will mean many things. As they awaken to their deprivation of Culture. the English will demand. invent. acquire, take over symbols of their Identity – they will want experiences which confirm their Englishness over against the European-ness which they will be imbibing on the one hand and fending off with the other. They will create an all new “English folk-culture”, based on what writers have written and pundits said. They will plunder archives and blind themselves to the fact that in their search for roots they are uprooting the authentic England of Others and burying it.

Or will they? Is the logic of development really inevitable? Or can folklorists in England care? Can they look forward as well as backward? Can they take a role as cultural commentators? Does the FLS, for example, have a position on the loss of full-game test match commentaries from the BBC – a public position?
Having read my thesis, you will realise. my Dear Mr Thoms. how poorly I am putting my own case for the need for British folklorists to discuss the meaning and nature of 1992 and all that. I apologise. Nevertheless, do you think we can look forward to a dedicated seminar? In haste and with great regards,

Craig