Don't make fun of the Festival

2026 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Festival of Britain, a cultural celebration that aimed to lift the British people out of the post-war doldrums and instil feelings of joy and positivity after long years of struggle to recovery.

Although a nationwide event, its focal point was the 27 acre (11 hectare) site on the South Bank of the Thames in London beside County Hall in what is now Jubilee Gardens. The only remaining physical legacy of the Festival, which originally included attractions such as the Dome of Discovery, the Skylon, the Telekinema and much more, is the Festival Hall, a world-class concert hall and arts complex designed by Robert Matthew and Leslie Martin in bravura mid-century style.

The Festival was highly controversial at the time and was criticised by detractors as a socialist extravaganza and a shocking waste of public money. It was even mocked in song by Noel Coward. But it was also a huge popular success, attracting 8.5 million attendees during its brief five months' existence. Critics felt it was a frivolous distraction from the vital job of rebuilding a war-ravaged country and economy. 

On the other hand, supporters, chief among them Herbert Morrison in Clement Attlee's cabinet, intended the event, and its many fringe events around the country, to lift the spirits of a war-weary populace and demonstrate what British industry and ingenuity was still capable of producing on the centenary of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Where that event had been an ostentatious display of Britain's industrial and imperial might the Festival of Britain was intended to showcase a more egalitarian country and one that embraced modernity in design and technology in a post-imperial world. As such it was detested by the wartime leader and Conservative politician, Winston Churchill. 

Unfortunately for Clement Attlee and his socialist government, Churchill won the snap general election called by Labour in October 1951 in the hope of capitalising on the success of the Festival and a recovering economy. With a parliamentary majority of only five seats it was a risky strategy - and it failed catastrophically.

Churchill was quick to exact his revenge for what he clearly saw as an act of ingratitude by the British people for voting him out of office at the end of the war in the 1945 general election. His distaste for the socialist propaganda he felt the Festival site exemplified, just across the river from the Houses of Parliament, was evidenced by his order to have it torn down immediately, sparing only the Festival Hall. (Margaret Thatcher was later to emulate his fit of pique by abolishing the Labour-run Greater London Authority at County Hall in similar circumstances.)

It was a monumentally philistine act of spite which saw the £10 million (approximately £421 million in today's value) of public investment in its infrastructure trashed. The Dome of Discovery and the iconic soaring aluminium-clad vertical feature, the Skylon, were sold off to a scrap metal merchant in Stratford, East London, with the site remaining a featureless lawn to this day.

So here we are, seventy-three years later, after fourteen years of Conservative rule, on the brink of a Labour electoral victory, with a nation not war-weary but sick-to-death after years of Tory-inspired austerity. An incoming Labour government will have a monumental task to stabilise and rebuild a hollowed-out nation so its appetite for a Festival of Britain-style celebration might be minimal but it is worth considering nevertheless. 

If the Attlee goverment could do it after a five-year global conflict and massive national debt, and after creating the NHS, surely a Starmer government could do it now? As an investment in lifting the spirits of a tired people, celebrating their endurance and creativity while encouraging an outpouring of national joy and a sense of wellbeing, it would be money well spent.

Start planning now and we could be celebrating again in 2026.

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