Published: 6 October, 2011
by GERLAD ISAAMAN

THERE is nothing quite like history repeating itself, especially in your own lifetime, to make you feel wonderfully – and nervously – nostalgic about the past.

That was my mixed emotion last month when battered Britain attempted to rebrand itself, in the wake of the summer riots, with our government producing proud posters of red white and blue, in a bid to boost next year’s Olympic Games.

“Come to beautiful Britain,” they cried, while the country remains in fear and uproar over the global economy, rising unemployment and plummeting High Street sales.

Thanks to Barry Turner’s enthralling saga about the 1951 Festival of Britain, I was hurtled back 60 years to my first year as a messenger boy cum trainee reporter wandering around London’s South Bank, looking in awe at the futuristic, cigar-shaped Skylon and delving into the 365-feet wide Dome of Discovery.

These were the blatant uplifting symbols of the then pioneering Labour government’s attempt to boost the morale of a weary and worried population, a stimulating event described as “a tonic for the nation” – though critics claimed the £8million expenditure should have gone on housing and Winston Churchill later ordered the site to be cleared.

We were still living in post-war austerity – complete with ration books, our cities ravaged by the Blitz – and victory over Hitler had left a sour taste in the mouths of many who suffered the loss of their homes and the grief of bereavement.

By giving them a glimpse of the wonders of the future, a world of enterprising new design and prosperity, from concrete tower blocks to modern furniture, the festival expressed the best of Britishness.

Gerald Barry, newspaper-editor-turned-entrepreneur, was the inspiration for it all, alongside Herbert Morrison, Mr LCC himself, and a young architect named Hugh Casson, the festival’s director of architecture.

“I want to see the people happy,” insisted Morrison.

Together they transformed what was once a huge Thames wasteland of Victorian buildings and acres of mud, stretching from Waterloo to Battersea, into a playground of dazzling exhibitions and entertainment.

Bus loads of visitors went on evening excursions, to the funfair in particular. More importantly, the festival laid down the style for a generation of young architects building new schools, housing estates and hospitals.

One truly significant building remains on the South Bank, the iconic and Grade-I listed Royal Festival Hall, created for the LCC by three of its own architects, Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Robert Matthew.

Other festival buildings enabled aspiring architects such as Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew and Basil Spence to display their talents.

The festival also gave opportunities to Britain’s artists – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jacob Epstein and Reg Butler among them – its symbol created by graphic designer Abram Games, the national flags with which he draped Britannia taken from the washing fluttering in his Golders Green garden.

The triumph of this remarkable and ambitious enterprise – there were smaller satellite festivals around the country – was proved by the eight and half million visitors who poured in, all wanting to celebrate Britain’s drive to raise standards and give birth to a new and exciting better life.

“For the first time since the war, ordinary citizens were given a vision of the future which took them beyond everyday concerns of keeping body and soul together,” Turner explains.

“They might not have liked everything they saw but they were made aware that design was for living, that the arts need not be elitist and that technology was stronger in promise than in threat.

“The festival was a beacon for change. The light might have flickered over the years, but for those five glorious months in 1951 it was bright and strong.”

Labour politicians in Liverpool last week, all searching for new solutions to the greed, abuse and plunder that has surrounded us in economic gloom, might look over their shoulder and declare: “This was indeed our finest hour.”

What a shame that the festival’s beacon has been doused by the doom of the 21st century.

• Beacon For Change: How the 1951 Festival of Britain Helped to Shape a New Age. By Barry Turner. Aurum, £16.99