Sundays and Mondays, Maundy Thursdays and Good Fridays

I was never asked to play a trumpet...or bang a drum. But I was always delighted to be taking part in the annual Whitsuntide Parade.     Whitsuntide was always very special in Sheffield and pretty much everywhere in Northern England.   It was more than just a nod towards Christianity and the Calendar of the New Testament, it was the start of summer, a time for new clothes, a time for large open air parties and games in a new-mown field. 

Yes, it was also a time for stout Wesleyan hymns  and preaching to the crowds. And for my Methodist grandparents a time to visit the Methodist College at Calver in Derbyshire and pledge a renewal of Faith. 

The weather always seemed kinder to Whitsuntide than it did to the twin Bank Holidays with which Harold Wilson's Red Flag-flying did away with a huge slice of our English Heritage. May Day and Spring Bank Holiday always seemed to be colder, wetter, more thundery. 

But the damage was done and not even the staunchest of Conservatives has ever moved to reverse it. 

Then came Sunday opening when people could lawfully spend just a few hours shopping. And, later, a few hours more. 

Suddenly people stopped going to Church. Children were neither taken to nor sent to Sunday School.   Boys Brigades and Scouts no longer paraded through the streets on the first Sunday of the month, or whenever the local church or chapel celebrated a saint's day or anniversary. 

And as one skittle falls so it knocks over another....and before much longer, as we moved into the 70s and 80s, shops also opened on Good Friday and Boxing Day.

Maundy Thursday had long lost its place in the school curriculum when children, still in school, because the holidays did not begin until that evening, would sit on the floor cross legged and listen to the wireless as a commentator related the Queen's visit to a Cathedral to hand out Maundy Money. 

As the proud owner of four sets of Maundy Money, given to me by The Royal Almoner for the work I did on producing such broadcasts in the early 90s, I witnessed the demise of such broadcasts when a senior manager at the BBC deemed them  "old-fashioned and unwanted".The BBC, that arbiter of taste and decency....and just one manager has the power to change a Nation's lifestyle at the stroke of a pen. And so another skittle fell. 

But one of the less formal Easter traditions had already fallen victim to malign, spreading commercialism. Hot Cross Buns were no longer confined to Easter.  Instead they went on sale in January, as soon as the Christmas cakes were stale. And Easter Eggs competed in size and content even as the Country lay under a mantle of snow and fog. 

Now, Easter Holidays are so discrete from the Last Supper and The Crucifixion that it is a time to "Get Away" and fly to a far off ski resort, or grab some Winter sunshine in Tenerife. Palm Sunday is just another opening day at B & Q and Sainsbury's and Heathrow's queues grow longer by the hour. 

Boxing Day....formerly a day of family togetherness, is a feast of frenzied bargain hunting or a boozy afternoon on the terraces. Already, Christmas Day is simply a feast of television entertainment and the Carols we learned and sang are piped at us from a million muzak makers in stores and malls for an interminable month or more, unrecognisable amongst a welter of Christmas Hits from Slade and Cliff Richard.

In less than a lifetime three cherished Festivals have been reduced to acts of commerce. 

And are we richer for these changes? Are we spiritually better off?    Were we asked whether we wanted to lose our cultural identity?  The answer is on your lips. The question yours for the asking.

A little bit of discipline...

There is a generation of men now going into their old age who will have, somewhere in their possessions, a photograph or maybe several, showing him in uniform. He may sometimes be found in the bars of the local British Legion Club where, in extremis, he will be wearing a regimental tie or sporting a badge. And around about the beginning of November he will start getting quite agitated about the dwindling number of people "wearing their Poppy with Pride". 

It's not that he fought in a War, although quite a number in the Fifties saw service in Malaya or Suez. It's simply that he did National Service, giving up two or more years of his life - maybe putting off University - to leave home and spend time compulsorily imprisoned in a barracks or a warship before returning to civvy street and picking up where he'd left off.

Most of these gallants would have raised no objection whatsoever. Their fathers, uncles, cousins, even, had all gone through a War and primed the up coming male generation with stories about life in Barracks, about RSMs and NCOs. 

But as life continued to return to normal there was less of a need to burden the National budget with the cost of his enormous stand-by Army, Air Force and Navy. It was decided that National Service would end and in 1958 the last lads from our street to have to take up the sword picked up their kit-bags and headed off. 

After that, service in the Armed Forces became a choice, a career, even. One with good prospects and pay....even finding young couples a home albeit on vast estates of Married Quarters.  

But away from the Armed Forces, society began to notice a change. In the decadent 1960s which were to follow, young men "enlisted" for their own kind of "conscription".  They became attached to groups or gangs even, such as Mods or Rockers. They equipped themselves with "uniforms" of style so that they could be easily identified.   And they made life pretty unpleasant for the rest of us.

So it wasn't long before people pointed to the rising incidence of public disorder, whether it be football matches or seaside proms that became the focus, and said the inevitable: "They shouldn't have done away with National Service". 

Comparisons were made with other European countries which hadn't been so quick to disband their conscription requirement. But there was to be no going back. The Alpha Male had energy and hormones to dispose of. The knives were out, quite literally, and it was to be three decades later before rampaging gangs were no longer a constant threat to the streets of England. 

It is debatable, of course, whether the ending of national service was in itself a point at which England went wrong. But it is interesting to speculate how different life would have been if it had not been abolished. Or if it had been extended to young women. One thing seems to be evident. That in the same way that old men are now heard saying "a good smack didn't do me any harm" those who went and served their country playing The Army Game are united in saying "It made a man of me". 

In my next edition I will be looking to men in a different kind of uniform and the way they played a part in What Went Wrong With England.