An American/United KingdomTale

August 29^th – So, history, historical buildings what to do with them, huh? In the UK (that place that was called Great Britain until those fuckwits in that blasphemy of a government that Blair ran got hold of it and turned it into that UKPLC – We’re open for business 24/7 wank). This bullshit label they landed us with (we are a country made up of individuals that have a history that goes back thousands of years, we’re not a company and you should resist anyone who says we are) ranks alongside that other government get-out clause, stakeholder; I’d like to state right here and now, I have never been, am not, and never will be a stakeholder in my country and its services; OK? I live here, was born here, go back ten generations here, work here, pay my taxes here, care for it, love it’s idiosyncrasies, love its eccentricities and its countryside, it is my home, part of me and my psyche…and that makes me a what, a stakeholder? Bollocks. Business-speak dressed up as street to make politicians and conglomerate leaders; people so far removed from the street as a limousine is capable of removing them, seem. Hep and Down widda kids. Almost as sickening as hearing our present leader, the son of an Oxford millionaire educated in Oxford and a member of The Bullingdon Society, use the word, chillaxing. Next time you hear someone from the privileged classes use any of these phrases, slap them across the face and tell them to grow up!...haze clears, whooshy music fades and screen folds to black….Oh, erm…where am I…? Oh, yeah; history…right.

The social and political backbone of any nation is formed from the DNA of its history. Through this time laws are made (good and bad) systems agreed (good and bad) social order is laid in place (oftentimes bad and bad) and the distribution of wealth and land is worked out (more often than not bad and really bad) and from this grows the dream of an egalitarian society; now, I know you are going to take issue with this, I can hear pencils being sharpened as I write, not in order to write a reply but probably to stab me in the eye with. Can I just say the key words used here are the dream.

One of the reasons I believe we British are so big on fair-play and calling stupid ideas to account (and by these descriptive words I’m not including the power-brokers of our land, they’re just in it for the cash and pussy; I refer to the regular citizen) the reasons we are so big on fair-play and calling stupid ideas to account is that the bedrock we have based our ideas of egalitarianism on are still part of our core. It’s what drew us together into social groups in order to hunt and protect. The other side of this coin, the metamorphosis of this strived-for social order in reference to the individual as an integral part of the group, is the physical way-markers which have accompanied our growth; I refer to the landscapes and buildings placed in and on them. Consider this for a moment (and remember the timescales):

The Ankerwycke Yew tree is 2,000 years old. The Knap of Howar, a farmstead, was constructed in 3,700 BC. The oldest tombs, found in the New Forest, are 6,000 years old. St. Martin’s Church near Canterbury was built in 597.

All these remarkable notes come from the history of Great Britain; they are what go into making us the people we are, their sense of permanence, unspoken inclusion in our heritage and background, an underlining of longevity…of history.

Now, let’s swim over to the other side of ‘the pond’ and lay another, even more impressive heritage alongside the one above.

The North American Indian was a race developed from the original settlers to the Americas who arrived there via a land bridge from Eurasia, via the spot where the Bering Strait is now about 12,000 years ago. 11,000 years ago there was a well developed hunting culture and homes constructed by these peoples from 3,500 years ago have been found in Louisiana. These various hunting tribes (Paleoindian cultures) continued to work and develop the land in the fashion of their culture and understanding of the land they knew, grew alongside and lived in; this was the backbone of the indigenous peoples of the Americas; their core if you will.

The first outside settlements into the land of the Indian (yes, from and including the UK) began in the 10^th century (1,100 years ago) with what could be classed as extensive settlement taking off from around 1492 (700 years ago) and reaching a climax in the 16^th century (500 years ago). After the decimation of the Indian population by disease (smallpox – imported – killed over 30% of the Indians on the northwest coast as well as a significant number of the Plains Indians) by the introduction of alien animals, wars, the greedy squabbles for furs and gold-bearing land, the pursuit of owning huge herds of domestic stock in direct competition with the native wildlife together with annexing huge tracts of land to feed them on, and the deliberate starvation and containment of the indigenous Indians into inhospitable, diseased areas of the country that could in no way be seen as capable of sustaining life (how right that is) what was the dominant peoples of North America were reduced to a few thousand by the late 19^th century thereby decimating a civilisation that had taken 12,000 years to develop in just 700 short years.

In 1871 Congress ended recognition of independent nations and the education act controlled the intellectual development of Indians, forbade them to speak their own language and denied them the right to practice their native religions, teaching them instead the religion of Christianity and effectively forcing them to abandon their native identity and destroying the country’s rich history.

With the indigenous people suitably stultified, what now took centre-stage was a mongrel race of pseudo-European peoples drawn from twenty or more countries that began to rebuild a country they considered had been neglected by the local savages who once inhabited it; to carve out a history of their own making. How this society began as well as the landscape and buildings these interlopers created figure heavily in the foundation stones of modern America’s present-day national psyche, as well as the prime mover in that nation’s identity.

Pretty-well all of the USA’s oldest building stock dates from the 16^th century, and I believe their oldest church was built in 1680-ish, so they are a little challenged when it comes to finding physical indicators for their outlook on the rest of the world, so-much-so that one almost feels their desperation when they are trying to describe what it means to be American. In Great Britain we have put in place a way of managing our historical properties; it’s far from ideal, is run by retired brigadiers and only works up to point but it does help build a link to our preserved past and our nation’s lineage; in the USA they are still searching for connections to a broken through-line, a through-line they themselves fractured, which, like the once available land bridge of the Bering Strait and Macbeth’s own personal journey into hell, is now flooded with a liquid of their greed’s own making that is impossible to wade o’er.

But, they have given us rock ‘n’ roll.

On this day in 1986 the studio where American Bandstand was recorded is registered into the National Register of Historic Places (the US equivalent of The National Trust). This building, the foundation stone for the skyscraper that rock ‘n’ roll became, was last used in 1964…so 40 years ago…so much in such a short time.