Would one super festival be a better stage for Lincoln's talents?

The Lincoln year is punctuated by festivals of one kind or another; my question is whether we might be better served were they brought together in one - say - two week period in the summer? This could be put another way, would a single Lincoln Festival be a greater attraction for our visitors?

The Festivals in the Lincoln calendar, for example the Book Festival, The Chamber Music Festival and Frequency, are well supported, of good quality and greatly enjoyed. This year a number of different events are being brought together around the Magna Carta weekend and the Magna Carta celebrations more generally. These embrace film and beer as well as street entertainment and offerings for big outdoor audiences at the Castle.

The Drill Hall plays its part in the existing festivals and also in the Magna Carta events. For the weekend itself, we act as ‘book ends’ with dance at the beginning and music at the end, and quite a bit in the middle as well. The Dance, a piece entitled Refugees of the Septic Heart from Tom Dale productions, is a great example of how to offer an alternative view. In the early discussion about the commemorations of the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, I became worried that it might focus too much on the historical event or just attract ‘establishment’ celebrations.

Tom Dale’s piece is distinctly alternative, it questions established values, in many ways it does what the founding fathers of America believed Magna Carta did; it stands up to those who seek to exercise power. Specifically it explores how the power of money is abused. It does this with dance but also with digital imagery and music. It is a first for Lincoln and one to be proud of since, having been a hit at the Edinburgh fringe, the production will next be performed in Hong Kong.

The music at the end of the Magna Carta weekend is quite different and will be the result of Sinfonia Viva working with local schools and the creative efforts of the children.

These two events demonstrate something of what the Drill Hall is about, giving space to new and adventurous work and being a place where Lincoln people can participate in performance. Of course the Drill Hall is about more than this; its role is to be there for a whole range of Lincoln communities and offer, perhaps not something for everyone, but certainly a variety of performance  that will be enjoyed by most.

So, back to the question of the Festival, do we want a big Lincoln Festival? It would give audiences the chance to experience a number of different forms of performance: theatre, film, dance, music and literature. It could be built round a theme, as the Magna Carta weekend is. It could say something about what is special about Lincoln: a vibrant modern city in an historical setting. Importantly, it could give space for home grown talent to perform.

Well, perhaps the Magna Carta weekend will be a good taster. My instinct is that we will want a bit of both. Certainly something big that brings the city together and offers a broad spectrum of events, but also focussed festivals at other times of the year. We could take a leaf from Cheltenham’s book and drawn them together as The Lincoln Festivals.

Published in the Lincolnshire Echo of 4 June 2015

What is Magna Carta?

It could so easily have been lost.

For ten short weeks in the summer of 1215, a charter carrying King John’s seal tied his hands. He hated it with a passion; it was outrageous that the King’s power should be limited, that he should be answerable to his barons. The hate was so strong that he went cap in hand to the Pope to have it annulled, to be as if it had never happened. 
The charter, on a single sheet of parchment which now sits in Lincoln Castle, was probably written out by the clerk to the Bishop of Lincoln, an office, the modern equivalent of which, I held from 1996 to 2003. In September 1215 the charter had become worthless and so I guess many Bishops’ clerks, for copies of the charter had been made for all Bishops, would just have discarded them. The clerk to the Bishop of Lincoln didn’t. 

Why?

The charter would have taken a great deal of careful writing out - some 3,500 perfectly crafted words. The clerk, though, may well have studied at the medieval ‘University’ of Lincoln, then based at Lincoln Cathedral and by many accounts as well regarded as Oxford or Cambridge. He would have been following in the footsteps of another clerk, Stephen Langton, who there studied books about the power of Kings and who later, as Archbishop of Canterbury, had a big influence over the drafting of the charter. In the 12th century power was the hot topic; people from all parts of Europe were asking questions about power: how to stop it being abused, how to limit it, how to make the powerful accountable. The books Langton may have studied are still in the Cathedral Library.
So the clerk to the Bishop of Lincoln would have known that the annulled charter was truly important and must at all costs be kept. 

How right he was. 

Only two years later after John’s death at Newark, his infant son, then King Henry III, re-issued the charter alongside a smaller charter limiting his powers over the great forests of England. The 1215 charter, because it was bigger, became known as Magna Carta, and the smaller as The Charter of the Forest. Lincoln Castle is the only place where they can be seen together.
Magna Carta was re-issued in 1225 and then in 1297. It became the foundation of limits on the power of the King. 
The short film you will see at Lincoln Castle traces the influence of Magna Carta through the Peasants Revolt of 1381, to King James I who asserted that he was King by Divine Right, to the Bill of Rights of 1689 when William and Mary came to the throne at Parliament’s invitation, right through to the growth of parliamentary democracy. In America and elsewhere Magna Carta was taken into the heart of their constitutions as standing up to the power of Kings. It is still quoted in American courts. 

You will see Magna Carta in a darkened room; there is a sense of awe. Absolutely right!  

This piece can also be found on the Visit Lincoln Blog

Phil Hamlyn Williams is a writer and his blog may be found at  www.philwilliamswriter.co.uk

 

Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington USA

We need to get out more!

The Lincolnshire Echo of 30 April 2015 published the following piece I wrote for them.

Is it just me, or is it really difficult to extract myself from my armchair and the evening’s television and actually go out?

A year ago, as I write this, I was Chief Executive at Lincoln Cathedral, a job not without its demands and certainly, if I did go out, it wouldn’t be often and would probably be to the big cathedral concerts. I shall probably never forget the standing ovation that met the cathedral choir’s performance of Messiah in 2012, or indeed The Halle and Vaughan Williams Pastoral Symphony. What I didn’t realise was how much else there was around, how different it was and how brilliant it is.

Last summer as I was beginning work on my book, a friend showed me an advertisement sent out by the Drill Hall for a new chair of trustees. I didn’t think too much about it. Over the weeks ideas would come into my mind and I began to think, ‘I could do that!’ So, I applied, was interviewed and then appointed about six months ago.

In the meantime I had been to two quite different performances. Literature at Lunchtime with Dr Jane Mackay, and Hamlet. I knew Dr Mackay from my time working in Leicester. It was familiar, rich in content and thoroughly enjoyable. Then Hamlet. One of my favourite plays, but one I had only seen at the Old Vic with top line actors. What would it be like? It was billed as ‘abbreviated’ and ‘different’. Not many people were there. Had I made a mistake? Not at all, this was a production of great energy that got to the heart of Shakespeare’s play. I was taken by surprise.

I then attended The Last Post, surely Lincoln at its best: a true community effort that told a Lincoln story well and to great effect. A great deal of hard work, I know, but I hope for more.

My granddaughters’ faces at the pantomime said it all. But then came the question, ‘but is it art?’ Of course, it’s art; it takes immense skill in writing and acting to keep children, and adults, engaged for that length of time.

So far, so good. There were then three performances that I would never have gone to had I not ‘been on duty’. Broke, a play about the burden of debt; Circus Geeks, a show by jugglers and Sinfonia Viva with a programme of well known music.

You will by now have guessed that I enjoyed them, my question is, ‘why?’

One of the joys of live performance is that you are in the same space. There can be eye contact. It won’t and indeed can’t be the same each time. The audience may applaud at the wrong time, a piece may find a whole new energy; things may go wrong. I think that more than anything the energy of performance is contagious, perhaps especially in a relatively small space. This energy doesn’t evaporate, I come away with a bounce in my walk and a brain positively buzzing.

Lincoln is greatly blessed by live performance. Of course, it isn’t just the Drill Hall. LPAC has a great programme. It is working with the Drill Hall over Easter with the Eastival Festival for families with young children. The cathedral puts on large concerts with great professionalism. The newly opened Castle has an exciting programme over the summer. The Collection offers much; for me the Book Festival in September will be the highlight. The Lincolnshire One Venues offer programmes of professional work alongside that locally produced, and a great deal for children and young people right across the county. The Magna Carta weekend in June will see the Lincoln based venues coming together for a weekend of huge variety.

I’m going to get out more, how about you?

Published by the Lincolnshire Echo on 30 April 2015

Good Friday and the abuse of power

Magna Carta has been taken to the heart of freedom loving people across the globe. Most recently the UK Supreme Court decided in favour of the publication of letters by Prince Charles written to ministers. Whatever the merits of the letters themselves, it was a timely reminder that no one is above the law. This is the essence of what Magna Carta has come to be about. It seeks to control the way in which power is exercised by those who hold it.

I recently read a wonderful little book by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on St Mark’s gospel in which he argues that Jesus was the victim of abused power. Good Friday is the day the Christian Church remembers the execution of Jesus at the hands of the Roman authorities.  He was a man who could have so easily stirred up trouble and so history sees Pilate, the Roman governor, as pragmatically justified in what he did.

Take a step back though, and power is there abused time after time. A man is ratted on by one of his mates who had been put up to it by envious men in authority. Once in the hands of these men, it is the world gone mad. The accusers can’t even lie consistently. The man is caught in a nightmare; the judge is the accuser and so the only certainty is that  he will be condemned.

I remember a TV play some years ago with the wonderful Richard Griffiths playing William Beausire a British stockbroker with dual British and Chilean nationality, abducted while in transit in Buenos Aires airport in November 1974. He is taken to a torture centre in Chile and never seen since. He was among the list of people deemed disappeared under the Pinochet regime. He was an innocent bystander. Today this is the pattern of life for many powerless people in countries like Mexico; they are at the mercy of the gangs who weald power.

Back to the events in Jerusalem two millennia ago, the religious authorities hand the man over to the secular governor who finds himself caught in the erie space between right and wrong. He seems to know that the man is innocent of any offence, but he is equally clear that forces are bubbling way underneath the surface sufficiently vigorously for him to be certain of trouble. He is desperate to be let of the hook, to be saved from choosing between right and chaos. He hands the man, or rather his destiny, to the crowd who are up for anything having be whipped into a frenzy by the religious men. The crowd demands crucifixion. The man is doomed. The crowd disperse.

False accusation, men giving way to pressure, the innocent caught in a world of madness where right has been blown out of the window; is this an inevitable part of being human? It works its way up from a seemingly unimportant abuse perhaps in the workplace to those falsely accused and executed. It matters.

Security Services flawed tactics

The Guardian on 28 February 2015 published an article by David Davis MP, former shadow Home Secretary and champion of freedom. His critique was of the security services and their unwillingness to bring to justice those who threaten our democracy through terror. This struck a chord with the comments on Mr Davis made by historian Dr David Starkey in his excellent one hour TV programme on Magna Carta broadcast on the BBC in February 2015. Dr Starkey reminded the viewer that Davis has resigned over the issue of detention without trial. Davis sets a brave and difficult challenge. We want to be safe from terror, but this must be within the rule of law and not outside it.

In the same edition of the Guardian, Polly Toynbee invites readers to become Members of the Guardian to safeguard its independence. This has to be right. It is vital that a newspaper like the Guardian should be free to give space to a Conservative like Davis. I hope that an influential membership will never have power to call the shots over and against the editor.

Broke

Broke is a play by the very talented Paper Birds. It was very well received at the Edinburgh Fringe, I was lucky enough to see it at Lincoln Drill Hall.

It explores debt, how it builds and then its legacy. The writers saw a point of origin in the 1980's with Mrs Thatcher's attack on working communities and her encouragement to everyone to become middle class. It is middle class aspiration where the driver for ever increasing borrowing can be found.

They explore individual and government debt side by side.

It is frightening just how easy it is for someone, making their way through life, to gather around them the millstone of debt, and even more chilling to see just how hard it is to get out.

Perhaps more scary is their analysis of government and how a consumer economy can only function with ever increasing debt. It is the emperor's new clothes, it only works until some is brave enough to blow the whistle.

For me, the play brought back ideas contained in my blogs from 2009 when I was writing Broken Bonds, a novel about the banking crisis and its impact. My more recent blogs are about Magna Carta and the abuse of power. I wonder, was Mrs Thatcher's push for deregulation, which I still see as the heart of the problem, an almighty abuse of power?

Magna Carta and why we should all vote in May 2015

The Reform Bill was introduced to Parliament in 1831, the year my grandfather, Alfred Hamlyn Williams, was born. When the Bill became an Act of Parliament it began the process of injecting a note of realism into parliamentary democracy which has continued through the emancipation of women to the universal franchise we enjoy, or are supposed to enjoy, today. In May of 2015 there will be another test of this enjoyment when we will see just how many of those eligible actually vote in the general election. There is a disconnect between the paper and the practice.

Disconnection can be traced back to the document which many assert is the bedrock of democracy, Magna Carta. In 2015 we celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing by King John of this charter of some 3,500 words written in medieval Latin, which, but for the serendipity of history, may have been forgotten.  

Claire Brey, the curator of the forthcoming Magna Carta exhibition at the British Library, told Dr David Starkey, in his excellent TV programme on Magna Carta, about the phone calls she receives on a fairly regular basis from members of the public who think they have been treated unfairly, asking how they might quote Magna Carta in the particular argument they are having. Of course she has to reply that it probably can’t help, nevertheless the complainants are right in seeing this ancient document representing fairness in the face of oppression.

The story of the big charter, as opposed to the smaller charter of the forrest, was all about English Barons seeking to temper the excessive demands, mainly for money, of their king, John. The story continues that, no sooner had it been sealed, King John ran to the Pope to have it annulled. 

On 5 February 2015 the House of Lords staged an exhibition of the four remaining engrossments of Magna Carta which they placed alongside the Reform Act and the 1629 Petition of Right. I was lucky enough to be invited to the exhibition and I was struck in a number of quite different ways. 

The four engrossments look different, but David Carpenter, in his new book Magna Carta, assures us that their wording is almost identical. The manuscripts are written in tiny neat letters and I couldn't help thinking of the painstaking care that the clerks must have taken in producing their art, for art it is. I was then drawn to the thinking by Archbishop Langton and others, painstakingly built over many years, which arrived at the view of kingship and the exercise of power that Magna Carta expresses. These ideas were hedged in by a great deal of detail about the particular arguments of the Barons, but at its heart there was a delicate green shoot of how societies should function. My wonder is how it survived.

Magna Carta was reissued and revised many times in the thirteenth century and finally ‘became law’ in 1297, although some will argue that, with legal ‘time’ beginning only in 1189, Magna Carta was itself an iteration of Common Law. 

The Parliament exhibition of the Petition of Right was the next stop on the journey. This was again an argument about kingship. The Stuarts sought to assert that they were kings by divine right. The Petition of Right, challenged this and it was further and significantly tempered by the Bill of Rights of 1689 under which William and Mary came to the British throne. 

With the work of the great seventeenth the century lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, we move across the Atlantic and see Magna Carta quoted in the foundation documents of many States and indeed in the US Constitution itself. I was lucky enough to attend the academic symposium run alongside the exhibition of Magna Carta at the Library of Congress in Washington. The exhibition pointed with great clarity to the way Magna Carta has been viewed in the US over two centuries rather than getting bogged down too much in its origins. For the founding fathers, there was no doubt that bad King John was then bad King George. 

In the USA, the power of the President is tempered by the Constitution; in Britain the power of the Government is tempered by Parliament. This is where disconnection comes, since in reality President Obama has his power tempered, not by the Constitution, but  by Congress with the effect of stalemate. Prime Minister Cameron has his power tempered, not by Parliament, by his fear of non re-election by a minority of electors. But it is more than this, as David Starkey pointed out, both governments ignore the core principles of Magna Carta with their assertion of the right to imprison terrorist suspects without trial. In her insightful short radio programme, Helena Kennedy took a slightly tangential view and saw governmental power tempered by corporations which outmuscle most nation states, principally the massive financial institutions and internet providers. 

So, where does this leave us? In this country, with an urgent need for all electors to use their vote in putting pressure on government to adhere to Magna Carta but as importantly stand up to the shadowy corporate King Johns of the 21st century.

St Albans Cathedral where the Magna Carta tour began in 2014