10:00pm Friday 19th March 2010
By Peter Inson
ESSEX: What counts as the county’s culture? On Wednesday evening, a panel discussion in Chelmsford considered this question as part of the Essex Book Festival.
Dave Monk, of BBC Essex, chaired the meeting which listened to two well-known writers and broadcasters, Germaine Greer and Sarfraz Manzoor, as well as Colin Riordan, vice-chancellor of Essex University.
We heard about their initial impressions of the county: Germaine Greer compared our capacity to welcome newcomers with the stuffiness of Cambridge and its academic community; Colin Riordan had imagined the whole of the county resembled Thurrock; while Sarfraz Manzoor had watched Birds of a Feather on television.
It was good to be reminded our three panellists were all immigrants of a sort, coming to Essex from Australia, British Army postings in Germany and Pakistan. Now they watch others moving to the county and trying to fit in.
Germaine Greer spoke of the travellers she had befriended in the north-west of the county and Colin Riordan spoke of the excitement of welcoming students from all over the world at the university.
Sarfraz explained how he no longer blended in, when his freckled, English girlfriend accompanied him to his native country.
It was Germaine Greer who spoke of an eastward tide across the county and I was reminded that when Ilford hosts a cricket week, it is always Ilford, Essex; whereas murder only seems to occur in Ilford, East London.
Two years ago, I asked the Army if I could research their recruitment methods.
I was sent to their recruitment office in Ilford, one of the best in the country, where many local youngsters realise at 16 that life for them on their local streets would lead to trouble.
They realise some time away in the Army would keep them usefully occupied until they had grown beyond the reaches of street culture.
I suppose the question is: What is it that has reached Ilford and beyond?
Earlier immigrants to Essex, Scots farmers after the First World War, Jewish families in the 1930s and teachers from Wales after the Second World War, all seemed to have a sense of purpose and adapted to life here, without abandoning the culture they brought with them.
If there is a fault-line in Essex culture, a threat to something special, where is it?
Do we see it in rural areas where rubbish is dumped from passing cars, or the new towns, which are no longer new, where troubled hospitals are in the news?
Do we find it in what passes for country areas, where broken-down buildings and abandoned enterprises form rural squalor and where once-productive land becomes an eyesore? Or is it buried under concrete around Stansted? Does it lie in over-developed holiday resorts next to a wonderful coastline?
Germaine Greer enjoys a part of Essex that is clearly on one side of this line, wherever it may be.
She spoke of local kindness in Saffron Walden and a willingness to involve her in the community.
I first encountered this culture, this capacity for good-natured nosiness, when my parents moved in the early Sixties, from Romford to a village near Dunmow.
Mother got on well with her new neighbour, a local character of long-standing, who had a very sharp eye for the way things were going in neighbours’ gardens.
Mother had to remember to speak very sharply before going on holiday. “Mrs X,” she would say, “you can pick rhubarb from my garden if you want, but you must leave the blackcurrants strictly alone.” And there they would be upon her return.
In 1940, our parents’ generation built gun emplacements here in brick and concrete.
I think the panellists would have approved of my favourite Essex icon, Dudley Moore – at Dagenham County High School he insisted on playing jazz for school assemblies.
Perhaps it is the friendly directness and determination that Germaine Greer seems to appreciate which enables us to welcome people here, despite difficulties in the past. After 19 years away from the county I have found the same warmth.
* Dunno, Peter’s first novel about a troubled teenager, is widely available.
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