For centuries, urban communities have used ritual and ceremony to mark collectively specific moments in time deemed worthy of celebration and commemoration.Footnote 1 Whether to forge communal bonds, acknowledge shared identity, honour an individual or mark a specific development in local life, civic ritual has proven an effective way of physically expressing ideas. In relation to nineteenth-century Britain, as will be discussed, such occasions of civic ritual have often been rightly identified by historians as used to demonstrate power and convey hierarchical structures to wider urban communities. However, towards the end of the century, civic ritual underwent a gradual process of change which democratized ceremonial and celebratory events, through the embracement of recreation and public festivity.
This article focuses on two case-studies, relating to the towns of Darlington and Middlesbrough, in north-eastern England. The staging of civic ritual in these locations in the period under discussion epitomized the manner in which it was transformed. For Middlesbrough, the successful incorporation of communal entertainment as a central component of urban ceremonial events ensured that such occasions were publicly relevant for longer than current historiography reflects. However, for Darlington, less effective management reduced the public appreciation for civic ritual.
While Darlington has existed in some fashion since the eleventh century, Middlesbrough was developed, in 1830, as a direct result of industrialization. However, neither received municipal charters of incorporation until 1853 (Middlesbrough) and 1867 (Darlington), and therefore lacked many of the trappings of municipal pageantry associated with civic ritual until the mid-century. Additionally, whereas an established middle-class culture has been identified by many historians as being an integral part of nineteenth-century civic ritual,Footnote 2 a smaller midde-class population in the two towns reduced the influence of such a culture. This was paritcularly true of Middlesbrough, due to unskilled migration to the town.Footnote 3 The town was governed by a core group of industrialists, who were later replaced by the ‘shopocracy’, key retail magnates. The business interests of these two groups encouraged an outward-looking perspective in terms of place promotion.Footnote 4 In contrast, Darlington was dominated by Quaker landowners, financiers and industrialists, the Pease family. They had controlled the Darlington Board of Health, the precursor to the town council, and once incorporation had taken place, four of the first eight mayors were Peases.Footnote 5 However, their use of civic ceremony remained marginal.
The examples of the two towns are used here to highlight the need for a revised definition of civic ritual, to suit the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The definition of civic ritual adopted for the purposes of this study relates to celebratory, commemorative and ceremonial events, taking place in the public arena, or under the direct auspices of the local authority. This definition is intended to be as inclusive as possible, incorporating a wide variety of occasions, to permit an appreciation of the ways civic ritual was reformed. Although visually appealing, ‘traditional’ civic ritual, linked to elite citizens and civic hierarchy, rendered the civic majority, particularly the working class, passive observers to a theatrical performance. However, this also encouraged working-class observance, as it was essentially a free form of entertainment. Despite this, it has been argued that the appeal of civic ritual was waning by the 1870s.
The explanation for this is often linked to changes in the social composition of urban Britain which reduced the unifying appeal of such occasions, competition from an ever-growing mass leisure industry which reduced the entertainment value of civic pageantry and finally widespread reform of local governance.Footnote 6 However, rather than being a causal factor in the decline of civic ritual, public recreation and entertainment were used by local authorities, including those in Darlington and Middlesbrough, to stage urban ceremonial events in the twentieth century. This was achieved by drawing on the precedent of previous public events in order to assess success and failure of modes of ceremony and commemoration. By approaching event planning through comparison of even seemingly disparate occasions, those responsible were able to take appropriate action regarding what could be repeated, what required adaptation and what needed to be abandoned. Entertainment also became a central theme of civic event planning, transitioning the individual from a passive viewer of rigid Victorian pageantry and ceremony, to an active participant in the event.
Civic ritual: the historiographical and methodological position
There has been general recognition that ‘invention’ and remodelling were central to many long-established traditions incorporating civic ritual. David Cannadine's consideration of the Colchester Oyster Feast acknowledged that the meaning of such events was never static, while identifying the years 1880 to 1914 as a period when civic, national and imperial leaders used ceremonial events as a means of promotion and glorification.Footnote 7 Most tellingly, Cannadine acknowledged that civic ritual was ‘the product and embodiment of changing circumstances’, while playing a role ‘in the creation of these contexts and cultural systems’.Footnote 8 This made its complexity and significance as a historical marker clear, but overlooked the need to approach these events comparatively.
Comparison between different commemorative, ceremonial and celebratory events, as will be demonstrated, is essential in order to interpret the changes to which civic ritual was subject.Footnote 9 This approach identifies the ways in which the social composition of communities altered, while showcasing the relationship between civic ritual and contemporary cultural trends – something that was contemporaneously clear to the planners of civic events. Cannadine and Elizabeth Hammerton's study of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in Cambridge, for example, demonstrated the necessity to examine the planning stages of the civic celebration in order to assess critically the whole event.Footnote 10 Methodologically, this ensures that analysis of both ‘production and reception’ remains balanced.Footnote 11 Planning records are frequently more informative than post-event reports, as they often highlight rejected or cancelled elements of an occasion, revealing any associated message which the organizers wished to convey – or perhaps more tellingly, avoid.
In recent years, historians have made significant strides to re-evaluate the use of urban ritual and space, particularly concerning the early to mid-twentieth century.Footnote 12 Specifically, Dion Georgiou's work on carnivals showcased the manner in which entertainment and spectacle could be melded to act as a prism of civic culture.Footnote 13 The work of Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme and Charlotte Wildman has also highlighted municipal government's utilization of civic ceremony and historical pageants for boosterism and to encourage civic pride in the local population.Footnote 14 This builds on the work of Marie Dickie, who identified similar motivations by political parties in relation to the use of civic ritual in the inter-war period.Footnote 15 Clearly, then, much work has already been undertaken in relation to civic ritual into the twentieth century. Indeed, all of these studies share commonalities. Yet, while there is growing realization that urban ritual and ceremony is an important cultural construct, there is still a need to recognize the role of precedent in relation to event planning. It is only by bringing together seemingly disparate urban rituals to extrapolate their shared facets that civic ceremony can truly be understood.
In addition to the need for comparison between events, previous studies have also frequently focused on cities, rather than towns. Simon Gunn's research concerning the use of pageantry and ceremony in nineteenth-century cities suggested that by the 1870s, the staging of city-based civic ritual had gone into decline, in no small part due to the effects of consumerism.Footnote 16 Given the focus of Gunn's work, it is easy to understand why this assessment was made, as the years after 1870 witnessed unprecedented social change, which irrevocably altered the structure of civic culture and governance.Footnote 17 However, Gunn also stated that studies of civic ritual focusing on towns rather than ‘larger provincial cities’ might not appreciate ‘the urban context’ and ‘anonymity’ a city presented, as the larger setting witnessed ‘problems of order, authority and identity’, which civic ritual attempted to address.Footnote 18 Towns undeniably faced different problems and challenges from those experienced in a larger city or conurbation. Yet, consideration of smaller communities, particularly those with a dominant industrial base, allows a broader understanding of civic ceremony, celebration and commemoration. Both Gunn and Cannadine acknowledge that civic ritual reached its zenith in the 1880s through to 1914 in smaller communities.Footnote 19
What has been less acknowledged was the increasing public call to participate directly in occasions utilizing urban ceremony, together with the demand for recreation and entertainment at moments when ritual was enacted. As will be shown, in Darlington and Middlesbrough, it was awareness of this, together with changes in the planning process, which enabled the continuation of civic ritual. Crucially, this was a period when the individual had become a consumer of recreation, rather than just a participant. Therefore, urban ceremony was designed to be appealing, in order to maintain public interest at a time when the diversification of the leisure industry was capturing the attention of the public.Footnote 20 Ultimately, this was only challenged by the leisure industry's growth in the inter-war period.Footnote 21 This reveals the importance of viewing the spectator or participant in civic ritual as a consumer, eager for entertainment.Footnote 22 Being present at or participating in such an occasion could, after all, be dependent on something as minor as personal mood and attitude, rather than engagement with the broader themes of an event.Footnote 23 The separation between endorsing ritual with specific meaning and merely viewing it in terms of recreation is, as Émile Durkheim acknowledged, marginal at best.Footnote 24 Consequently, with the entertainment value of traditional civic ritual being challenged by an ever-ebullient leisure industry, the need for local authorities to make increased use of recreation in a ritualistic manner in order to reinforce the appeal of pageantry and ceremony is clear.
The transition from traditional to recreational civic ritual, 1860–97
Soon after municipal incorporation, Middlesbrough Council began to draw successfully upon civic ritual to promulgate an emergent local identity in a population of industrial migrants, while externally promoting the infant industrial powerhouse as a flourishing urban centre. This was achieved through various means between the 1850s and 1880s, including the annual staging of mayoral Sunday pageantry, regular use of ‘urban development ceremonies’ (including foundation stone laying and the opening of public buildings), royal visits and the staging in 1881 of a local jubilee to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the town's establishment.Footnote 25 In this sense, the approach taken correlated with the staging of Victorian civic ritual throughout Britain,Footnote 26 thanks to robust municipal leadership, with a solid understanding of the benefits of urban ceremony. In contrast, Darlington's local government consistently failed to understand the potential of civic ritual, largely due to the political dominance of the Pease family. Under their influence, use of urban ceremony in Darlington was decidedly piecemeal. For example, instead of utilizing royal visits (and associated national press attention) to showcase urban development, a Pease family member would frequently officiate, if a ceremony was staged at all. When pageantry was utilized, such as for the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the Stockton–Darlington passenger railway line in 1875, the spotlight was firmly fixed on the family and their industrial and paternalistic prominence.Footnote 27
The transition to recreational civic ritual and the importance of using the precedent of previous occasions in event planning was not automatic. Instead, there was a transitionary period, with increased municipal awareness that civic ritual was strongly linked to public attitude and taste. For example, the celebration of Middlesbrough's 1881 jubilee included two processions – one for local officials and one for children.Footnote 28 This presented an opportunity for the youth of the town to be linked to its future through the active promotion of citizenship and permitted the participation of a significant portion of the population. Additionally, several of the associated ceremonial events were staged in the local park, increasing spectator opportunities.Footnote 29 The public mood was indicative of general festivity. A report by The Times described Middlesbrough as ‘en-fete’, with the townscape transformed under a sea of decorations.Footnote 30 In total, an estimated 120,000 assembled for the occasion – well over double the town's population – emphasizing the extent to which this was also a major tourist event.Footnote 31 There was also a degree of surprise regarding the occasion's success. As one local newspaper acknowledged, Middlesbrough was still largely unfamiliar with large-scale pageantry and therefore ‘everything had to be improvised’.Footnote 32 Clearly, the lack of a suitable precedent, which would later become so vital to the adaptation of civic ritual, was viewed as a potential hindrance.
Efforts to be more inclusive in the staging of civic ritual were likely driven by a desire to avoid the singularity of Darlington's 1875 railway (Pease) jubilee. Instead, Middlesbrough Council's staging of urban ceremony focused on the promotion and celebration of the wider community. Two years later, when the laying of the foundation stone of Middlesbrough's new town hall was planned, local officials decided against incorporating masonic ritual into the occasion, as had been done 23 years earlier, for the laying of the North Riding Infirmary's foundation stone.Footnote 33 On that occasion, such a move had been a prudent measure, as the young town did not yet possess a strong municipal identity. Yet, by 1883, a shift in public attitudes in the town regarding Freemasonry left councillors feeling that local people ‘no longer approved’ of masonic ritual.Footnote 34
Despite apparent awareness that it was important to consider public opinion when planning a ceremonial event, the occasion, witnessed by thousands of spectators, still largely followed the example set by similar occasions in larger cities.Footnote 35 These examples suggest an early effort to adapt the planning of civic events in the 1880s. Yet, an 1887 Whitehall directive that Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee should be observed in some fashion caused considerable confusion for civic authorities throughout Britain. As no specific recommendations were issued, it was up to individual councils to determine the form of celebration most suitable for their particular community.Footnote 36 The difficulty came with the absence of precedent; the Silver Jubilee of the reign had not been observed and the Golden Jubilee of the Queen's grandfather, George III, in 1810 had taken place before widespread urbanization, making it a poor example. Modes of urban ritual and ceremony that had been popular in the early nineteenth century had given way to the forces of rational recreation and regulations linked to public order.Footnote 37
For the first time, the importance of precedent in event planning became obvious in Darlington and Middlesbrough, with their respective local jubilees assisting in the planning process. In Darlington, a significant advance was made in terms of incorporating the public into the event by including celebrations for approximately 11,000 local residents, with a focus on schoolchildren and the elderly.Footnote 38 However, in Middlesbrough, initial unwillingness to engage with a royal event on the part of the Liberal-controlled town council complicated the planning process.Footnote 39 After much internal wrangling, the town's observance of the jubilee was more representative of traditional civic ritual than continued adaptation. A large-scale procession was staged, terminating in the local park, where a public thanksgiving service was held, along with some public entertainments. The principal focus, however, remained on the glorification of the monarch, simultaneously promoting and celebrating the primacy of the local authority as the immediate representatives of authority – despite their political position.Footnote 40 On the whole, 1887 functioned as an important learning curve for municipal councils regarding the future shape of public ceremony, celebration and commemoration.
While the precedent of local jubilees had served both towns well, the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations established a structure which could be rolled out (with timely adaptation) for future events. The transition to recreational civic ritual was not yet complete, but occasions which excluded the public were becoming increasingly rare. In 1889, when Middlesbrough welcomed the prince and princess of Wales to open a new town hall, there was public anger that local councillors were allocated 20 tickets for their friends and family, reducing the number available for public consumption.Footnote 41 The availability of any public tickets was a considerable development concerning access to moments of high ceremony, but more crucial was the reaction of the public. In a major departure from the framework of civic ritual for the majority of the Victorian period, widespread involvement in such occasions was becoming automatically expected.
The provincial response to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897 was the catalyst for broader change. The precedent of the 1887 celebrations was used in both towns and accompanied a broader acceptance that society could no longer be represented by modes of civic ritual which, at best, represented a simpler time and, at worst, came from a pre-industrial age, unreflective of contemporary reality. There would no longer be any question whether the public would be included in such occasions; the difficulty came from the manner in which involvement would be guaranteed. Ceremonial roles, central to traditional civic ritual, could only be allocated to so many. Even a large, inclusive procession could only include a small percentage of the local community without becoming unmanageable. The embracement of forms of entertainment at moments of widespread celebration was therefore largely unavoidable and continued the pattern observed in communities such as Darlington in 1887. Consequently, 1897 can justifiably be seen as inaugurating a new definition of civic ritual, firmly linked to recreation.
Entertainment as public ritual, 1897–1914
The 1897 jubilee celebrations were approached with revived confidence by municipal planners. With the precedent of earlier celebrations in place, local authorities became increasingly inventive with the content of their event programmes, paving the way for reconsideration of what constituted civic ritual. Gone were overt demonstrations of local hierarchy as a singular conveyance of sentiment. Instead, municipal processions operated alongside more democratic and simultaneously frivolous forms of public ceremony. Under the auspices of Middlesbrough Mayor Samuel Sadler, three civic processions were planned, alongside an unprecedented amount of variety entertainments, bands, games, contests, sports and a balloon to carry people ‘100 ft into the air’. Proceedings were concluded by a ‘display of fireworks on a magnificent scale’.Footnote 42 Personally funding the celebrations, Sadler intended that the day be the ‘maddest merriest day of all of the glad year…a great al fresco fête’ to include ‘old and young, rich and poor, indeed, everybody of every class’, to celebrate ‘in such a way as had never been [done so] in Middlesbrough before and probably never would again’.Footnote 43
Personality politics played a role in defining how individual local authorities approached such events. Whereas Middlesbrough had been governed by a Liberal mayor in 1887, Sadler's Conservatism made him more naturally attuned to overt demonstrations of patriotism. His apparent munificence correlated with a national pattern of local elites linking civic identities to ‘national and imperial narratives’.Footnote 44 Yet, the decision also afforded Sadler a degree of political capital. He was a career politician and in 1878 had been accused of ‘buying votes’ through public generosity.Footnote 45 Local commemorations allowed municipal leaders to demonstrate the ‘quality of their leadership’Footnote 46 through their generosity (of spirit as well as money) and also the extent to which they ‘spoke’ for the people. This could be interpreted as a revised version of power demonstration, through recreational civic ritual rather than traditional urban ritual. If Sadler's munificence was part of a deliberate strategy, it worked; three years later, he was elected as the town's member of parliament. Despite this, the provision of recreational festivity was indicative of a change of approach in relation to civic ritual.
The three Middlesbrough processions were a case in point. A civic parade, demonstrating the perceived hierarchy of local authority, was combined with local military personnel, symbolizing the relationship between local government and the broader nation. This followed the unusual combination of 20,000 children and several hundred cyclists and preceded a ‘fancy and historic parade’.Footnote 47 The difference from the 1887 jubilee was striking; while some components of traditional civic celebrations were maintained (the civic procession and a service of thanksgiving), frivolity had become primary. Hailing the day as a complete success, the local press, demonstrating unashamed partiality, proclaimed the celebrations to be first after London in the ‘fullness and variety of the popular rejoicings’.Footnote 48 While the scale of the Middlesbrough programme was noteworthy, the town actually followed a pattern witnessed throughout the country.Footnote 49 In 1887, celebrations in Darlington only catered for the very young and old. By 1897, entertainment was provided for the entire population, with a week-long programme to reflect changing working patterns.Footnote 50 The core of the occasion still celebrated the longevity of the monarch, but the process of doing so was undoubtedly driven by recreation, placing the public at the heart of festivities. Municipal politicians essentially became merely figureheads or characters in a theatrical production designed to entertain, in the guise of a dignified commemoration.
The 1897 jubilee programme was repeated in both towns for the coronations of Edward VII in 1902 and George V in 1911, attesting to the success of the model which had been adopted. This use of precedent also minimized complications linked to limited event-planning experience as a result of changes in local government, or the job roles of municipal personnel. Where adaptation was made, it kept pace with the ebb and flow of popular culture in the particular locale, further demonstrating the link between urban ritual and recreation. For instance, in 1911, Middlesbrough Council arranged a ‘grand water carnival’ on the Albert Park lake, to include rowing, swimming and other aquatic sports. This intersected with the general popularity of water-based sports in the area,Footnote 51 particularly connected with local swimmer Jack Hatfield, who, a year later, won two silvers and a bronze at the Stockholm Olympic Games. Access to official swimming facilities and membership of local clubs could be costly,Footnote 52 making occasions of free participation extremely beneficial. Provincial royal event commemoration was therefore driven by public mood to maintain local interest. This raises the question of whether communities would have been as willing to participate in a royal event if it had not provided entertainment. Ongoing political and industrial unrest made the future of monarchy and engagement with royal celebrations by no means certain in the early twentieth century.Footnote 53
The period was testing for many long-established modes of urban custom and ceremony. The urban development ceremony, for example, was increasingly superfluous. Newspaper reports provided all necessary information to promote a new building or facility, reducing the need for a ceremony, which the majority of the general public would only passively witness.Footnote 54 In response, local authorities attempted to make public opening ceremonies more inventive – with mixed results. The 1889 opening of Darlington Municipal Baths saw the mayor drop coins into the pool, which leading members of the local diving club retrieved, much to the scorn of the local press.Footnote 55 The opening of a children's unit at Middlesbrough's North Riding Infirmary in 1900 was marked by the mayor and mayoress carrying children through the main doors onto the ward. Following the occasion, the North Eastern Daily Gazette heavily criticized its absurdity, while recognizing that elaborate civic ceremony was becoming rare.Footnote 56 The most irrational development ceremony came in 1921, when the inauguration of a new bus service between Middlesbrough and nearby Seaton Carew saw members of both councils board buses to meet halfway for a picnic.Footnote 57 Clearly, this was intended to serve as a symbolic act. However, the event attracted no public interest, as it took place on an empty road halfway between the two towns and was not reported by the local press.
When pageantry was still utilized for opening ceremonies, it was linked to individual political figures with a taste for spectacle. In 1901, under the direction of ostentation-loving Mayor Samuel Sadler, the opening ceremony of Victoria Square gardens was undertaken with high decoration, public entertainments and concerts.Footnote 58 Similarly, the opening of the town's Dorman Memorial Museum in 1904 was marked with a ritualized handing-over of the deeds.Footnote 59 Both events were representative of change in relation to urban ceremony. Public interest in Victoria Square was heightened by press reporting, describing the Square's creation and giving statistics of its size and design. In essence, this was a press release – something that became progressively common and also played a significant role in promoting the Dorman Museum's official opening. As the working-class community was now more informed and politically active, reports focused less on civic ritual and more on the positive public benefits of the new building or institution. This acted as a form of advertisement and reduced the importance of ceremonial events. The museum's opening ceremony was, however, enriched by associated sentiment. The building was a memorial to the son of local industrialist and politician Arthur Dorman, who was killed in the South African War.Footnote 60 This fact was extensively reported, adding an emotional and human dimension to the occasion beyond the standard parameters of a traditional urban development ceremony.
The first decade of the twentieth century saw the formal nature of nineteenth-century urban ceremony give way to the more relaxed and participatory nature of twentieth-century civic ritual. Yet, commercialized entertainments and popular culture had, by 1914, diluted the entertainment value of traditional civic ritual, making it comparable to a passing novelty. Indeed, in the wake of World War I, the supremacy of the local authority as the primary organizer of public ritual – recreational or otherwise – was challenged.
Street celebration, sensorial civic ritual and public relations
Following an understandable reduction in civic ceremony during hostilities, the gradual breakdown of the pre-war social hierarchy and reduction of deference had a noticeable effect on public attitudes to celebratory, commemorative and ceremonial events in peace time. The national Peace Day celebrations of June 1919 were intended to blend traditional solemnity with recreational entertainments in a similar manner to earlier royal celebrations.Footnote 61 Appropriate additions were made to the event programme in Middlesbrough, including the unveiling of a tank, as a war trophy, from the National War Savings Committee.Footnote 62 This visibly represented the brutality of warfare alongside the symbolism of victory. Similarly, the personal face of war was personified by the presence of disabled and demobilized and other servicemen in the larger civic procession.Footnote 63 On paper, a suitable balance was struck, with dignified processions and a service of thanksgiving demonstrating tradition and gravity, while variety entertainments ensured the inclusion of (now expected) recreation associated with public events. Yet, in both towns, the civic experience of a national celebration was partially rejected.
For Darlington, where the local authority had a history of demonstrating a lack of dynamism in relation to urban ceremony, there was a growing perception that the public mood was misunderstood. First, a disagreement between the council and the Head Teachers’ Committee regarding procession-marshalling duties resulted in a children's parade being cancelled.Footnote 64 It was also announced that the mayor and three of his predecessors were to receive the Honorary Freedom of the Borough on Peace Day.Footnote 65 At a hastily convened public meeting, it was claimed that the men could not claim to have earned the title, on an occasion which should have been focused on ‘old people, the children and the boys from the front’. The following day, the four men publicly declined the honours, with a carefully worded statement suggesting that ‘the greatest reward’ was the ‘joy’ of public service.Footnote 66 Finally, a planned military procession was cancelled after local servicemen objected to the exclusion of widows and orphans. Instead, a protest event was held in Darlington Market Place, attended by ‘thousands of people who were out to enjoy the holiday’.Footnote 67 This event in particular represented a clear difference in attitude between the two towns. Middlesbrough Council had, since the 1880s, taken public opinion into account when planning civic ritual. Clearly, a less cautious approach was taken in Darlington, having a negative effect on public engagement.
Yet, in both towns, the municipal Peace Day celebration also faced competition from the new social phenomenon of the ‘street party’, which the local press described as ‘plebeian celebrations in their most original form’.Footnote 68 The street party permitted a more individual connection to be made to specific events. This was particularly reflective of the feeling of relief linked to the end of war, which was better expressed in personal surroundings than was possible through the prism of civic or national identity. Street parties appear to have been a natural development following the breakdown of previous societal authority structures. Contemporary press reports, concerning events in London, suggested that these innovative ‘street teas’ were staged by mothers who felt that their children were too young to attend the larger civic or national ceremonies.Footnote 69 However, the basic structure of street celebrations was strikingly similar to pre-industrial rural recreations, celebrations and customs, due to their informality, the subversion of order and their focus on individual social groups, rather than a broader municipal community.Footnote 70 In essence, they rejected the civic experience. The emotional grounding of the street party was also more prominent. Local newspaper reports acknowledged that the streets were more representative of ‘the mood of the moment. . .[as] the accompanying music of the piano and the cheerful voices of the children made the atmosphere ring with the true stimulating echoes of Peace Day’.Footnote 71
The successful embracement of recreational civic ritual enabled the continued transmission of notions of civic paternalism and identity, while recognizing the growing inclusivity of urban society. However, recreational civic ritual had also been too successful, making clear the essential components of an effective communal gathering in the urban setting, paving the way for the public to create their own. More than anything, it was the individual staging of events which led to the decline of civic ritual. Royal celebrations in the 1930s (the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935 and coronation of George VI in 1937) demonstrated the popularity of street-based celebrations, to the rejection of the civic gala. In addition to providing food and drink, sports and games were organized by street-party committees, with local residents undertaking individual fundraising. One Middlesbrough woman, describing her own street's efforts in 1937, explained that she had made hot soup every night to sell to ‘men too old to find jobs…help[ed] mothers with their weekly washing or whitewashed doorsteps, while young lads took babies for walks to give their mothers a rest’.Footnote 72 Community-wide participation in event planning generated considerable pride, beyond mere participation. In this sense, the entire process of urban ritual, from organization through to stage-management and participation, had been both claimed and reinterpreted by the public.
For the municipal authority's part, this required a degree of readjustment. In 1937, Darlington Council recognized the supremacy of the smaller event by stating that it was ‘impressed with individual street festivities in 1935’ and did not want to discourage them.Footnote 73 In response, municipal ritual began to be scaled back. Local residents noted with irritation that processional routes for mayoral Sunday parades were getting progressively shorter.Footnote 74 This was largely due to the declining public interest in such occasions, though it gave the impression that the local authority was similarly uninterested, which exacerbated the problem. Additionally, the continued expansion of popular leisure provided an endless list of alternatives to occasions utilizing civic ritual.Footnote 75 Alongside the prevailing popularity of home-based leisure, commercial entertainments held considerable appeal on celebration days. In particular, radio technology and the cinema were transforming the sensory experience of everyday life, reducing the basic wonder associated with ceremony and ritual. The cinema, for example, was relatively affordable for most, with the camaraderie and entertainment provided being similar in nature to the appeal of civic ritual.Footnote 76
In an effort to keep pace with technological (and social) innovation, civic ritual, organized by local authorities, again underwent reformation. The recreational theme was continued, with increasing emphasis on modernity, basic entertainment and informality. The one constant of both nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban pageantry was visual appeal. Therefore, civic decoration and illumination schemes for such occasions became increasingly grandiose to attract the public back to the civic event. Similarly, technology was embraced; when the prince of Wales visited Middlesbrough in 1930, a radio transmitter was set up and events were relayed to five different locations around the town, along with dance music to encourage public revelry.Footnote 77 The principal streets were described as ‘one dense seething mass of humanity’ during the visit,Footnote 78 though this was probably due to interest in the visitor himself, rather than the council's innovations. A similar approach was taken in 1935 and 1937, with jubilee and coronation broadcasts from Buckingham Palace being transmitted live around the urban centre.Footnote 79 Such broadcasts could, of course, be listened to in domestic privacy. However, promoting a civic link to the occasion validated such events as representations of civic and national community, symbolically located at the heart of the urban landscape.
Civic ritual had become sensorial in nature. Municipal traditions and entertainments enriched the overall experience of urban ceremony and ritual by embracing the carnivalesque. They were increasingly physical events, ensnaring the entire human sensualistic range, in an attempt to accompany, rather than be subsumed by, the development of consumerist leisure. Yet, public enthusiasm was waning and this blend of recreational and sensorial appeal was merely a tourniquet for civic ritual. Whereas an estimated 100,000 had gathered in Middlesbrough for the 1897 Diamond Jubilee, the 1935 Silver Jubilee was estimated to have appealed to 30,000.Footnote 80 While some were no doubt simply uninterested in the occasion, the growth of street and private celebrations played a significant role in this clear rejection of recreational civic ritual. The celebration of an individual street (or even house) created an emotive response through familiarity, intimacy and the involvement of personal relationships – all of which were marginalized by larger-scale public events.
Even local charity carnivals occasionally witnessed the staging of street parties.Footnote 81 Events which previously were exclusively public were becoming semi-private following appropriation and translation into more personal terms. The degree to which smaller events such as the street party had become the primary manner in which widely celebrated or commemorated occasions were marked was noticeable on VE Day 1945 in Middlesbrough, when rather than being the central figure in a civic celebration attended by the public, the mayor toured the borough to witness the various street parties.Footnote 82 There is no recorded indication that he was invited to participate in any of these events and, similarly, no reports discussing how the public felt about his presence. The tone struck by the press placed this ‘tour’ as almost a sideshow to the central event – the street party.
The reforms of the Atlee government also impacted the staging of civic ritual. The establishment of a welfare state and the National Health Service removed many of the regular ritualistic events from British streets, such as ‘Hospital Saturday [or] Sunday’, which had been a regular fundraising event in many towns and cities to raise funds for local funds.Footnote 83 Similarly, with the abolition of workhouses and centralization of other public services, processional culture was no longer as effective in demonstrating local hierarchies. By 1953, many local authorities outside of the major cities had significantly curtailed their event planning in recognition of how much public enthusiasm had declined. The coronation of that year witnessed no civic procession in Middlesbrough, with the ‘official’ event programme being spread over the full summer to include pre-existing functions such as local cricket matches and dances.Footnote 84 In Darlington, criticism of the Corporation's planning of civic ceremony for decades continued, with accusations of a lack of imagination. A correspondent to the Northern Echo stated:
Sir, I am overwhelmed with excitement at the report of Darlington's coronation celebrations…We are to have two trees planted and a bit of skating on the old rink… I am eagerly looking forward to being one of the thousands gathered to witness the planting of the trees. Perhaps a few other ratepayers would offer to help dig the holes.Footnote 85
While clearly some still expected local authorities to provide entertainments, for others, the problem was broader. Disparagement was even levelled at the municipal decoration scheme, which was said to be too chaotic.Footnote 86 Another correspondent suggested that ‘this sort of bungling happen[ed] on every occasion and yet no note of reference to past errors’, was ever made’.Footnote 87 Rather than using the precedent of earlier events to ensure success, over the course of the twentieth century, Darlington Council failed to understand public attitudes concerning ceremonial occasions. Yet, even if a more cautious and considered approach had been adopted, such as had been the case in Middlesbrough, civic ritual would still have been challenged.
By 1953, urban ceremonial events faced another rival in the shape of television, allowing the public to bypass the civic sphere of influence completely to engage with national commemorations without leaving their homes.Footnote 88 Essentially, the television-based national event again compartmentalized the individual and returned them to the passive observer of nineteenth-century ritual. The growth in the popularity of television has been frequently linked to the suburbanization of Britain, creating a contested space in which urban and suburban ideas were intertwined in the domestic setting.Footnote 89 It cannot be denied that engaging with ceremony and pageantry through television created an entirely new sensory experience. Local authorities attempted to compete, by staging their own civic viewings of the coronation, usually in a town hall or other public place. Had this been successful, it would have generated a new mode of civic ritual, which not only embraced modernity but also paved the way for engagement with a national event through the local prism. Unfortunately, these municipal viewings rarely attracted more than a handful of participants.Footnote 90 The primacy of civic ritual – be it traditional, recreational, sensorial or otherwise – had passed.
Conclusions
The evidence from Darlington and Middlesbrough highlights the adaptive nature of civic ritual. Undeniably, many of the mainstays of Victorian urban ceremony, celebration and commemoration had either been lost or completely transformed; yet, there were obvious continuities. The civic procession has a legacy in British (particularly English) urban culture, stretching back to the medieval period.Footnote 91 While the central motivations of civic processions shifted between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they were largely recognizable. Certainly, processional culture was less-widely employed in the mid-twentieth century, but still also had its uses. The mayoral Sunday processions continued in Middlesbrough until the late 1970s. Similarly, the town hosted one of northern England's largest annual Corpus Christi processions until the late 1960s.Footnote 92 Remembrance Sunday processions became the mainstay of annual civic ritual throughout the twentieth century.Footnote 93
The difference in the late twentieth century was that, increasingly, urban processional culture was less the reserve of the municipal authority and more linked to individual groups or communities, continuing a tradition first established in the nineteenth century by friendly societies and trade unions.Footnote 94 Annual processional culture began to be employed to reassert faith,Footnote 95 or to demonstrate gay pride or ethnic diversity. It can be argued that this continued the tradition of the civic community taking control of civic ritual, ironically making the local authority a bystander to the celebration of individual identities within the urban centre, in complete reversal of the Victorian position.
Civic ritual did not, therefore, disappear in the 1950s, just as it did not start to decline in the 1870s; it merely changed. As has been shown, no mode of urban ceremony can be studied in isolation. The form of one occasion invariably shaped the next, even if the two were seemingly unrelated in purpose and form. Civic ritual underwent periods of profound reformation, reconstitution and redefinition. It became more representational of community, meritocracy and shared concepts of belonging, group identity and tradition. The embracement of recreation, leisure and sensorial entertainments reconnected local communities with the urban experience, which lay at the heart of all civic ceremony. At the same time, the difference in attitude between the two municipal bodies considered in this article suggests that keeping pace with public opinion was essential. Time and again, Darlington Council misjudged the mood in the town, leading to criticism of its actions in relation to civic ritual. In contrast, Middlesbrough Council's broader awareness of local feeling ensured that its ceremonial events avoided widespread criticism, even if they progressively declined in popularity. Overall, the evidence suggests that successive generations of municipal officials were aware of the importance of adaptation and modernization, while borrowing from time-honoured urban traditions. This is something that historians have not fully appreciated, which has led to interpretations of ‘decline’. Our definition of what constitutes civic ritual therefore needs to be updated.
Undoubtedly, certain ceremonial events could not be reinvented. The urban development ceremony, for instance, would never see a repeat of Victorian extravagance. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, local engagement with royal occasions was reduced by the simultaneous effects of declining interest, the continued growth of television and municipal cost-cutting. In contrast with the 100,000-strong crowd of 1897, an estimated 50 people gathered in Middlesbrough's Centre Square, to partake in a ‘big jubilee lunch’ for Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee in 2012.Footnote 96 Yet, this was still, undoubtedly, a civic ritual.
Using the approach of this study, a broader assessment of urban life in the late twentieth century may well reveal other adaptations and reformations which strengthened or reinvented public ceremony for a new generation. The vital task for historians is to recognize that civic ritual was (and still is) a fluid part of urban life. Identifying it can be complex due to the ability of those who create it to learn from the precedent of previous events, keep pace with culture and adapt. It is, however, a valuable, analytical concept which gives us insight into not only contemporary reality but also perceptions of urban continuity and change.
