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The Cenotaph incident is a feast for anyone interested in national symbolism. It is rare for a national monument to be desecrated in this way, during a political demonstration in peacetime (they often have a military guard). The politicians responses have also been textbook examples. I especially liked the irony of Tony Blair's on-the-scene outrage at this disrespect for British soldiers. He then went back, to continue his talks with Martin McGuiness and Gerry Adams. Cynicism is a precondition for any study of national symbolism. In this case, the politcal context links the national symbolism to the general foundational mythology of liberal democracy. More about that in another mail. First the nationalist aspect. 1. Most nations rely on some 'sacred memory' as a defining feature of their national identity. These memories are not fixed: new ones can replace old. For many years the State of Israel had no national Holocaust commemoration: it is only in the last 10-15 years, that it adopted the Holocaust as a binding national memory. Tomorrow, May 4, there is the national 2 minutes silence here in the Netherlands: it is probably the most intensely observed national commemoration in western Europe. Yet obviously the Netherlands before 1940 did not use the German occupation as a symbol: the present 'sacred memory' is post-war. 2. Rejecting the sacred memory is considered taboo - taboos still exist in liberal societies. The Cenotaph incident was exactly the kind of desecration, with exactly the kind of outrage, that theory would predict. 3. The sacred memory defines the limits of political debate. As one reaction on this list put it, criticism is OK, but this is going too far. This is the standard reaction to attempts to politically question the sacred memory. (Although I am not British, the limit is applied to me also). 4. The sacred memory unites society. Mentally, the nation can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack Straw in horror. If the national monument in Amsterdam was desecrated in this way, there would be a similar wave of national unity. So politically the incident is revealing. It shows that the term "loyal opposition" is accurate: it is a British expression which has passed into poliitcal theory, as a defining characteristic of democracies. Millions of people in Britain can still feel that they share the same basic values as the members of the government. The 'disloyal opposition' has no common values with the government. Politically that implies they are no longer members of the nation: they are 'enemies of the people', 'the enemy within'. -- Paul Treanor Memory as ideology http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/memory.tp.html %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%