Annual Conference of the German Association for the Study of British History and Politics

30-31 May 2003

Katholische Akademie Wolfsburg/Mühlheim
Falkenweg 6
45478 Mühlheim/Ruhr
Germany

Political rituals, ceremony and the symbolic representation of power and government have played a prominent role in the history of the United Kingdom. While many Britons take pride in the longstanding traditions of political institutions like the House of Parliament or the monarchy, most foreign observers would probably agree on the exceptional prominence of traditional forms and rituals in Britain’s political culture. However, in 1983 we were told that many of Britain’s (and other countries’) traditions were not quite as longstanding as some would expect and that historians were to follow the history of their inventions in order to understand their meanings and their contexts. Twenty years after Eric Hobsbawm’s and Terence Ranger’s The Invention of Tradition, the history of political rituals in Britains still remains to be written. How are historians and political scientists to account for phenomena as different as the wide range of urban and civic ritual in the 17th and 18th century, the meaning of changing election rituals in the 19th century and the evolution and development of parliamentary traditions? How do we understand recent events like the funerals of Lady Di and Queen mother in the context of the history of political rituals in the United Kingdom?

These observations are the point of departure for a conference organized by the German Association for the Study of British History and Politics on the role of political ritual in the United Kingdom, 1700-2000. Especially it aims to address the following questions: Which part did political ritual play in the formation of a collective memory of the nation and in the shaping of regional identities? How did the media influence and change the performance and meaning of rituals? Did political rituals open or close the possibility of political participation or which rituals did and which did not?

Programme

Friday, 30th May, 2003

19:30 Opening Address Frank O’Gorman (Manchester)
Political Ritual in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Saturday, 31st May, 2003

9:00 Jörg Neuheiser (Köln)/Michael Schaich (London)
Welcome and Introduction

I. Civic Ritual

9:30 Rosemary Sweet (Leicester)
Urban Political Ritual in Eighteenth-Century Britain

10:00 Discussion

10: 30 Coffee Break

11:00 Andreas Fahrmeir (Frankfurt a.M.)
The Lord Mayor’s Show in Nineteenth-Century London

11:30 Discussion

12:00 Lunch

II. Ritual and Popular Politics

14:00 Detlev Mares (Darmstadt)
The Importance of Being Earnest: Rituals in Victorian Popular Radicalism

14:30 Matthias Reiß (London)
National Hunger Marches in 1920s and 1930s Britain

15:00 Discussion

15:30 Coffee Break

III. Commemorative Rituals

16:00 Dominic Bryan (Belfast)
Orange Order Parades in Northern Ireland, 1960-2000

16:30 Gerd Stratmann (Bochum)
The Golden Jubilee Celebrations

17:00 Discussion