by Mark Easton
Shortly after taking office in 2010, the Conservative Home Secretary Theresa May announced that, in her view, the mission of the police was ‘to cut crime: no more and no less’. But within three months she was saying she wanted more bobbies on the beat to tackle antisocial behaviour rather than simply criminal activity. Like almost every occupant of her post before, Mrs May appeared to be evoking the ghost of old Dixon, who knew how to deal with nuisance and mischief. ‘Let’s get them out from behind desks filling forms and out on the street where people want them and they want to be.’
There is a longing for a return to some mythical bygone age where cheerful constables kept neighbourhoods safe and secure. But what we really want is a return to a time when neighbourhoods kept neighbourhoods safe and secure, a time when locals would regularly stroll their own streets and offer a cheery ‘Good evenin’’ to all.
C is for Cheese
The ancient village of Crudgington in Shropshire has a name and a history that ring true. But don’t be fooled, all is not always what it seems. The Old English and Celtic roots of the settlement’s original name, Crugelton, translate as the hill-hill hamlet: it is as though the locals were determined to stress their neighbourhood’s aerial aspect with a double emphasis of its hilliness. Crudgington, however, is not on a hill. The village can trace its history back to 1231; it is listed in the Domesday Book. In the search for the authentic English village, you cannot find a more reliable provenance than that. But if you sniff the air in Crudgington you might still detect the faint whiff of falsehood. This is where they dreamed up Lymeswold cheese.
In telling the story of Britain’s glorious cheese industry, one encounters contradictions that still shape the national conversation: heritage versus modernity; local versus global; authenticity versus artifice. It is a journey through many ancient battlegrounds but, you may be glad to know, it has a happy ending.
Once upon a time, thousands of farmwives across Britain took paddle and churn to the fresh milk that was not consumed by the local villagers. On thousands of kitchen tables, thousands of cheeses were prepared. This was the method of preserving the protein goodness of the cowshed so the ploughman might have his lunch. But then, as the second half of the nineteeth century steamed and clanged into view, all that changed.
The arrival of the railways transformed rural life, the engine of empire dragging the local village to the global market. Crudgington was among the hundreds of places that got its own station. Instead of farmers selling fresh milk only to the community around the herd or flock, crates could be despatched far beyond, even into the hearts of rapidly expanding cities. A network of milk trains and doorstep deliverymen brought farm-fresh milk to every corner of the nation. And we lapped it up.
Farmers could scarcely cope with demand from a growing population. The need to preserve the leftovers all but disappeared. Instead, new industrial technology allowed producers to centralise cheese-making, mopping up any excess milk from across their region. To brand their product, cheeses increasingly took on the name of the area from which they hailed. But more than that, the search for consistent quality meant recipe, shape and size were controlled. From this process emerged the reputations of some of the truly great cheeses of Britain, but it also rang the death knell for small, local cheese-makers. Hundreds of varieties were lost forever; individuality did not fit with the times.
It was to get worse. Rationing in the Second World War saw the Ministry of Food stipulate that only one type could be manufactured — the National Cheese. A form of rubbery cheddar, this abomination came to define cheese in the nation’s mind. To this day there are many who still think of cheese as a lump of orange sweaty fat, grated onto a slice of white.
By the 1970s, bland, processed, homogenised factory-made gunk was routinely skewered on cocktail sticks and accompanied by a chunk of tinned pineapple, a pitiful display of what amounted to British gastronomic refinement. Our plates reflected an unshakeable faith in mass production and technological advance, the qualities that had spawned an empire two centuries before.
The country was pinning its hopes on arresting economic and industrial decline through the appliance of science. Food was predicted to become space-age rocket fuel. ‘Much of the food available will be based on protein substitutes,’ the presenters of BBC TV’s Tomorrow’s World promised, ‘delivered once a month in disposable vacuum packs.’ Meanwhile on ITV, the commercial break saw robotic aliens chortling at the suggestion that people might peel a potato rather than simply add water to freeze-dried powdered mash.
Despite all this, the big cheeses in the UK’s dairy industry were casting envious glances at our continental cousins with their fancy Brie and Camembert, products oozing with authenticity and sophistication. It was noted how British high-street shoppers were being sold symmetrical slices of globo-gloop in airtight plastic pouches while French fromageries offered consumers dozens of local artisanal cheeses, beautifully prepared and perfectly stored.
There was anxiety in the air. Membership of the European Economic Commuity (EEC) and the introduction of European-style decimalisation had led to disquiet over an apparent loss of British national identity. Some feared that obsession with an antiseptic future had led us to forget our rich heritage. In May 1982, at a dinner in Edinburgh for the French Prime Minister François Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher quoted from a recently published book that had compared France and Britain and suggested it was no longer at all clear who has what, as nations copy each other so quickly. Her speech posed the question as to whether a nation’s essential genius will be lost in the process of unification. Mrs Thatcher thought not. ‘The nation of Racine, Voltaire, Debussy and Brie will persist,’ she concluded. ‘The nation of Shakespeare, Adam Smith, Elgar and Cheddar is also alive and strong.’
But within months the nation of Cheddar was attempting to copy the nation of Brie. It involved the forced marriage of cutting-edge science and traditional craft, the ceremony taking place in a shed in Shropshire. Following a two-year gestation at the cheese laboratory in Crudgington, on 27 September 1982, Lymeswold was born.
The cheese was the brainchild of Sir Stephen Roberts, an entrepreneurial farmer who ran the Milk Marketing Board. At the time, Britain’s dairy industry was tormented by what it regarded as unfair distribution of European agricultural subsidies. French farmers got the curds, it was felt, while the Brits were left with the whey. Sir Stephen decided to take the French on at their own game, and lab-coated food technicians were briefed to construct a new English soft cheese, with a white mould rind but without the runny, pungent characteristics of Camembert or Brie. These properties, it was felt, would give the product the broadest appeal. From Crudgington, he hoped, a cheese would emerge to restore British pride and mount a challenge to the global dairy market.
His invention needed a name — something that would evoke the tradition and local provenance of great English cheeses. Marketing experts tested many ideas, but the one which scored best in research was Wymeswold, the name of a small Leicestershire village that had been considered as a production site at one point. Trademark considerations ruled that one out. After further discussion, the cheese was christened Lymeswold.
It was a huge success. In the House of Commons, politicians hailed it as a potential boost to Britain’s balance of payments; the Agriculture Minister Peter Walker revealed that even his dog enjoyed the new cheese. Domestic demand was so great that there were soon shortages in the shops, but it was its popularity that would prove to be Lymeswold’s downfall. To foodies, the cheese reeked of slick marketing, its mask of authenticity as thin as its white rind; when under-matured stocks were released to increase supply, critics were happy to encourage a reputation for poor quality. Demand quickly fell off, and ten years after its launch, Lymeswold was quietly buried. Few mourned its passing.
These were, though, desperate days for Britain’s dairy farmers. The price of milk had plummeted so low it was impossible to make money from it. Resilience and imagination were all
that stood between them and the collapse of their industry. What happened next is the uplifting story of how localism triumphed over centralised control; how the joyless yoke of homogenisation and industrialisation was lifted from the creativity and diversity of the British Isles. It was the moment when we realised that big wasn’t always beautiful, that new wasn’t always better than old, that science didn’t always trump art. It was the time when we rediscovered the true meaning of authenticity.
The sharp-suited marketing men spotted it first. ‘TREND: People are choosing authenticity as a backlash to aspects of modern life,’ one agency’s analysis reported. ‘TREND: Consumers are seeking to “reconnect with the real”.’ The food industry could almost taste the opportunity. Farmers were advised that products should have a ‘compelling brand narrative based on traditions, heritage and passion’.
Suddenly, everybody wanted authenticity liberally sprinkled on meatballs, melted on cauliflower and placed in great chunks between doorsteps of wholemeal. In the spring of 1997, amid the opulence of the luxury Lanesborough Hotel on London’s Hyde Park Corner, the British Cheese Board was launched to the world. A celebrity chef was on hand to remind people of the versatility of cheese, and a survey revealed that 98 per cent of the UK population enjoyed eating the stuff. It was a self-confident affair. Supermarkets began to talk about ‘provenance’, with agents scouring the country for products that would allow their customers to ‘reconnect with the real’. The European Union also announced a ‘renaissance of Atlantic food authenticity’ and bunged a bit of cash to British dairy farmers previously isolated by geography and indifference.
On the island of Anglesey, Margaret Davies was given EU help in turning milk from her 120 pedigree Friesian cows into Gorau Glas cheese. Humming with authenticity, Margaret’s soft blue-veined Welsh variety was soon selling at £27 a kilo, one of the most expensive cheeses in the world. In the Somerset village of Cricket St Thomas, farmers promoted their Capricorn Goats Cheese with pictures of the individual goats. Beryl, Eva, Flo, Ethel and Dot were allegedly responsible for what was described as ‘a noble and distinctive’ product. This wasn’t ordinary cheese, this was cheese crafted and ripened in the lush dairy pastures of a West Country valley. The man from Marks & Spencer was among the first supermarket reps to don his wellies and beat a path to the farmer’s door. Britain was rejecting the global and virtual in favour of the local and real. And reality meant getting your hands dirty and your feet wet. One brand consultancy told prospective clients: ‘Imperfection carries a story in a way that perfection can only dream about.’
The affluent middle classes entered the new millennium demanding real ale, slow food, organic turnips and unbranded vintage fashion. They went to Glastonbury to dance in primeval mud, stopping off at the deli on the way home for a sourdough loaf, a bag of Egremont Russets and a chunk of dairy heritage. Urban chic sported clods of rural earth as farmers’ markets and organic boxes headed to town. Localism became the mantra of politicians, bankers and grocers. From off-the-peg to bespoke, Britain lost confidence in corporate giants and turned to the little guy. Searching for distinctiveness and individuality, the country eschewed the globalising instincts associated with empire, peering further back in our history for an answer to the identity crisis of the twenty-first century.
Britain went to Crudgington. Past the aluminium and concrete shed that had incubated that impostor Lymeswold, they headed for the old stone farmhouse. On the distressed oak table in the kitchen they discovered cheesecloth and press. It was here that the country found the recipe for authenticity — a handful of heritage, a pinch of creativity and a dollop of craft. So the story has a happy ending. A lost art has been rediscovered, a tradition has been revived and a smile is being put back on the face of a nation that had almost forgotten how to say ‘cheese’.
D is for Dogs
In the run-up to his landslide election victory in 1997, Tony Blair’s pollsters warned him that his New Labour project risked being ‘outflanked on patriotism’. So, on the evening of 15 April, television viewers were shown a party election broadcast entitled British Spirit. Its star was a dog: Fitz the bulldog.
It was an audacious piece of casting. I met Fitz briefly as he was taken for ‘walkies’ in front of assembled photographers and TV cameras opposite the entrance to the Houses of Parliament during that campaign. The media was fascinated by the sheer nerve of Labour’s propaganda machine, brazenly commandeering the British bulldog for its own purposes.
Britain is fluent in dog. Each breed is imbued with characteristics of class and politics that are widely understood. The bulldog growls with Churchillian patriotism: pugnacious, loyal, courageous and determined. It is a dog of the traditional working-class right and, as pure-bred Fitz cocked his leg on a Westminster lamppost, we all knew Tony Blair was employing canine shorthand. The broadcast went down badly with some ethnic minorities who accused Labour of adopting a symbol of the British National Party, a tactic described in Australian political slang as ‘dog-whistling’ to racists. But the party’s senior spin doctor Peter Mandelson knew Fitz had done his job. ‘He is a completely New Labour dog,’ he told reporters.
If Tony Blair had turned up at an event with a Labradoodle at his side, it would have been translated as a worrying tendency towards Euro-federalism; a Golden retriever — a concession to Middle England; a Manchester terrier — an appeal to Labour’s industrial heartlands. Practical or sentimental, urban or rural, bourgeois or proletarian, gay or straight, conservative or progressive — all of these characteristics may be revealed by the breed at the end of the lead. Research suggests dogs really do look like their owners — one study found people able successfully to match pictures of owner and pet 64 per cent of the time. But in this country, a dog is also an expression of personality and lifestyle. It is a statement of identity.
To understand how Britain has become so adept at ‘reading’ dogs, one must follow the scent through history. In the Middle Ages, the breeding of a dog reflected the breeding of the master. Hunting with hounds was the pursuit of the ruling elite, an exclusive pastime that required large numbers of dogs bred for specific roles. Greyhounds and mastiffs, terriers and spaniels, the forerunners of foxhounds and bloodhounds: these prized possessions were often housed in purpose-built kennels with oak beds and staff to care for their needs. A nobleman’s dogs would probably be treated better than his servants. Indeed, being sent to the doghouse might have been regarded as a luxury break by some peasants.
The pure-bred animals were valuable status symbols and the nobility would go to great lengths to ensure peasant dogs didn’t dip a proletarian paw into the aristocratic gene pool. Local mongrels would sometimes be fitted with wooden contraptions designed to prevent cross-breeding, a practical form of eugenics maintaining the feudal divide.
Dogs had the cachet of designer labels, advertising the superior taste and pedigree of the owner. The most exclusive and expensive animals became both ostentatious displays of wealth and intimate companions, some invited into the home as pampered pets. The reputation of Britain as a nation of dog lovers, rather than simply dog owners, can be traced to the private chambers of the Tudor court. At one time, Mary Queen of Scots had twenty-two lapdogs, each dressed in blue velvet, dotted around her rooms. An eyewitness to her beheading recorded how ‘one of the executioners, pulling off her garters, espied her little dog which was crept under her cloths.’ The condemned woman had smuggled her favourite pet to the scaffold in her underwear, the lonely and terrifying walk to the block, one assumes, made marginally easier by the presence of a beloved puppy in her petticoat.
For centuries, dogs emphasised the feudal fault lines within British society: on one side, a peasant’s ferocious ratter; on the other, the squire’s thoroughbred hunter. Man and dog both had their place in the recognised hierarchy, but just to make sure neither the lower orders nor the growing middle classes developed ideas above their station, the Game Act of 1671 made it a criminal offence to keep hunting dogs for all bu
t those who had inherited valuable estates or were heir apparent to the nobility. The landed gentry convinced Parliament to create a distinct canine class divide which, if crossed could result in a hefty fine or imprisonment. What kind of working dog you were allowed to own was not a matter of need nor even wealth, it was a question of land ownership.
The Game Act was justified as a measure to prevent poaching, but it was really about power and class. The aristocracy wanted to stop new money upsetting the old order and, by including petty rules about dog ownership, hoped to ensure the aspirational industrialists could only aspire so far. It didn’t last, of course. Money spoke. Rich cotton barons and ironmasters began buying up the estates and pumped millions into packs of foxhounds and gun dogs, determined to confer the ancient social status of hunting upon themselves. The aristocracy’s vain attempt to oust the arrivistes finally ended in 1831 with the passing of the Game Reform Act, which did away with many of the class-ridden regulations, including those relating to dog ownership.
There was some blue-blooded fury at how the new law would damage Britain’s traditional class structures now that ‘the blacksmith, the butcher, the hog jobber, the fisherman and the cadger… all have certificates’. A letter in New Sporting Magazine that winter despaired at a law which meant ‘all men shall be equally qualified to keep and use dogs’. This class battle, however, had been decided.
The wealthy middle classes had made their money in town but strove to be accepted in the countryside. They yearned to demonstrate they had mastered rural ways, that they had what it took to be fully fledged members of the landed gentry. An understanding of dogs and their breeding was a pre-requisite for such aristocratic pretensions, and so an industry developed to teach the bourgeoisie the secrets of the kennels. The Field magazine saw the new rich as its target market and one of its early editors, John Henry Walsh, used its pages to develop the association between well-bred people and well-bred pooches.