Tradition and heritage
By Emma.
This weekend, I visited the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. I rode on a steam train from Grosmont to Pickering. It’s a wonderful day out and a great project and I urge you to visit it if you get the chance.
It led me to thinking about the difference between heritage and tradition. These words have – in some ways – become politically loaded.
In recent years, Labour has been very much about modernity, often at the expense of being about our heritage. Where I differ from Blue Labour, is in my differentiating between valuing heritage, understand where we cone from and what makes us who we are, and the wish to return to traditional values, imposing who we were then on who we are now.
Labour’s roots are important. If we forget we are a party rooted in the working class, we forget why we need power. But we must also be the party that fights the more modern fights against discrimination. We can’t let an understanding and valuing of our past, cloud the mission of our present.
Thursday, June 23rd 2011 at 21:05
Lovely blog-post, Emma!
Heart-warming to read, and sensible in message.
I hope I *get* what you’re saying
- that we should value our heritage and respect our traditions, without being a slave to the past.
The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is one place which I have not yet visited, but it’s one I would like to see some day.
Sadly, there are a few heritage sites in the North of England which the Tories wish to see closed, by starving them of funds (as part of the Arts cuts – as if culture and heritage are unimportant!). Yet those heritage centres were created to celebrate the history and achievements of the working-class.
Thursday, June 23rd 2011 at 21:10
Yes. Valuing heritage, while also celebrating modern values of tolerance (see today’s Labour List post).