Bring-backery

The term bring-backery is attributed to Lord David Willetts, the former Tory MP. It describes a nostalgic inclination to resurrect selected practices from a somewhat rose-tinted past. As a principle of government, it is not a good idea. Things have been jettisoned for a reason. I prefer to keep faith with the optimistic notion that mankind gradually makes changes which turn out to be for the better.

I recall that the birch, capital punishment, fox hunting and grammar schools have all come into this category in my life time. As a boy, I was formally hit with a stick more than once - a bamboo cane rather than birch – and although it may be tempting to add that it “never did me any harm” in that stereo-typical response that some proponents often unthinkingly resort to, it was actually part of a violent culture that was actually very damaging overall, and which as far as domestic abuse is concerned, has by no means been fully consigned to the dustbin of history. That is where all of these examples belong.

Grammar schools perpetuated and entrenched the advantages already established by the middle class, in spite of the fact that they had often initially been set up as charitable institutions. Far from encouraging social mobility, they ended up hindering it. All the evidence points that way. The current flag-bearers are the successful products of that system but they got there at the expense of the majority who received a second class education by definition and by intention. If you choose to select, you must also choose to reject at the same time.

Am I being a little hypocritical, therefore, in currently spending so much of my time advocating the attractions of a bygone age in the form of the steam railway? Not at all. Technology marches on. You can’t dis-invent things even if you might want to. Guard-less trains are on the way in - if it is indeed the case that there is no practical or safety requirement for one to be present. Technological progress is relentless.

You can, however, value the contributions to advances made by pioneers in the past and this is the crux of the preservation movement. We are flagging up past achievements, saving examples of artefacts that were seen as new-fangled in their time and remembering practices which were cutting edge in their day. Far from trying to impose out-dated modus operandi on contemporary situations, we are ensuring that we remember some glorious episodes in our past.

As the enthusiast waiting at Waverley station in Edinburgh for the Flying Scotsman to arrive in the documentary 4472 Flying Scotsman, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1968 [and still available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/steamtrains/7307.shtml] remarked “A nation that forgets its past has no future. Let’s leave it at that” Let us indeed.

Just 5 years after the triumphant film was made I photographed Flying Scotsman on Edge Hill sheds in Liverpool. She had just returned from her trip to America and was in a sorry state.