The politics of nostalgia

Nostalgia is a poison of the mind. All of us like to look back at happy memories. We are helped by photographs, diaries and even blog posts. These happy memories help us through difficult times, even bereavement. We come to forget the suffering and pain experienced by those we have loved, their gradual slide into dementia. Instead, we look back at our happy memories of being in their company, listening to their jokes and sharing their sense of fun.

But nostalgia is different. It is a desire not just to remember the past but to return to it. Some era in the past is imagined as a golden age, when the people of our land were all stronger and prouder, and were untroubled by the complex problems experienced today. The location of this golden age may vary from person to person, but it always involves selective history. Some aspects of the past are selected as symbolising the golden age and thus become objects of nostalgic desire. They may be Imperial weights and measures, double-decker buses with open platforms, blue covers on passports, grammar schools or red phone boxes with heavy doors. I suspect that few of the people who are nostalgic for the 1950s wish to return to maternal and infant mortality rates five times what they are today, a life expectancy ten years less than today, or a country in which most houses lack double-glazing and central heating.
 
The tendency to indulge in nostalgia may increase with age. As we get old, we remember wistfully when we were younger and fitter, slept soundly and woke up full of energy. We may struggle to understand new devices and the terminology associated with them. There is a sense that the world is marching past us while we stumble along. This has implications for politics. An increasing proportion of the electorate is elderly, and older people are more likely than the young to vote. This has led to a culture and politics of nostalgia, intensified by newspapers which depend on an elderly readership. The mean age for readers of the Daily Telegraph is 61 years, and that for the Daily Express is probably even higher. Even the Daily Mail, which targets younger women readers, has a readership with a mean age of 58 years.

The politics of nostalgia consists of evoking symbols of the past, such as grammar schools. No argument or evidence is needed for such policies - the fact that they are a lost part of a golden age is sufficient to convince. The politics of nostalgia can also involve opposition to things that symbolise unwelcome change. The two main targets in the mass media culture of nostalgia are the European Union and the Human Rights Act. There are sound reasons for opposing (and supporting) the European Union, but newspapers instead printed a parade of scare stories of how the EU was prepared to impose straight bananas and decimal egg boxes. These were all intended to show how the everyday and familiar life of old people is threatened by distant agents of change. As with the proposed re-introduction of grammar schools, there was no attempt to rationally discuss evidence or alternatives. This has left us with a government which has no policy for what leaving the EU should involve, or when and how this should take place. Perhaps politics is too important to be left to the elderly.

Touring Mont Blanc on foot

One day in 1981 - half a lifetime away - I began my walk around Mont Blanc. My companion was Bob Kyte, a man both taller and calmer than me. Our aim was to complete the Tour du Mont Blanc - a circular walk of 170 kilometres, through the outermost reaches of France, Italy and Switzerland. Our walk started in the village of Les Houches, at a railway station on the line to Chamonix, and then headed via mountain trails and cols to Courmayeur in Italy, Canton Valais in Switzerland, and then back into France and Les Houches. The hardest part of the walk involved plodding up the zig-zag paths which led from one valley to another. I discovered that Bob, with his long legs, could do this much faster than me. However, my shorter legs triumphed on the downhill stretches. The finest stretches of walking were along ridges and hillsides, such as those leading from France into Italy, and the high walk along and above the Chamonix valley. There were splendid views of the great mountain and its glaciers. Across the valley, you could hear the gunshot-sound of the ice cracking.

We slept in small hotels and hotel dormitories, barns and mountain refuges. The most Spartan was the refuge at the Col de la Croix du Bonhomme at just under 2500 metres above sea level. This rose like a gaunt ruin through the mist. Sleeping was in bunk beds in a mixed dormitory. Everybody slept in their clothing. The toilet was a shed a little down the hill, with a hole in the rock. But there was a hot meal of vermicelli soup, and I slept well. The next day we slept in the best accommodation: the far more luxurious Rifugio Elizabetta Soldini, across the border in Italy. This was warm, had comfortable bunk beds, civilised toilets, good food, and stupendous views.

On the way, we met the people of Europe: two Basque lads in a shelter above a gully of snow; a middle-aged Swiss couple with a rather camp son; and numerous jolly Belgians. Before we began the walk, Bob and I took a bus into Chamonix. Our fellow-passengers included a group of German walkers, dressed in a sort of walking uniform. As they looked with delight at the mountains around them, they began an enthusiastic song. The rest of us in the bus looked on with embarrassment. But with hindsight, I believe the German were right - the beauty of the Alps can not be described with words, only with poetry and song. I do, however, have some photos taken by Bob.