Milton Keynes is often derided as a new town nightmare of
roundabouts and uniformity, a soulless battery farm for those who service
Mammon. Rather than white van man, this is the territory of upwardly mobile
Mondeo man. As MK gets more prosperous and I drive round my fifteenth
roundabout just to pop out where I can came in, I would say it is now home to
Audi man with the ubiquitous, sleek, usually black, power machines now the saloon
of choice. I’m reminded of Betjeman’s paean to Slough, ‘come friendly bombs and
fall on Slough, it is not fit for humans now.’ However, I am not here to jump
on the MK bashing train as it gets enough of that and definitely has its merits,
not least its location, which makes it such a handy hub for any UK industry. It
is also the only town to buy and import a football team wholesale. The MK stadium is impressive and functional,
surrounded by all the main chain stores and outlets, creating a Mecca of modern
living. There is little need for a town centre in this urban model. The success
of this franchise heaven would suggest that the population of these areas spend
their leisure time shopping and entertaining; eating in generic restaurants,
watching multiplex cinema, going for a long walk around IKEA. A lifestyle many of us favour but for how
long will people still patronise this American model? Is Toys R Us the tip of an iceberg, the ship
fatally holed by the internet age.
I have time to
consider these thoughts as I see the stadium for the third time from a
different angle. The football team is perhaps an indication of a fly in the
ointment of utopia. Bought from the over-achieving Wimbledon FC in 2004 it was
simply moved lock, stock and barrel up the M1 to Milton Keynes. Outraged fans
were lost but they gained a much larger catchment area and a place in the upper
divisions of English football. Football fans saw this as an embodiment of all
that was wrong with the modern game as the fans were squeezed out and had no
say in the loss of their beloved team. However, there is no room for sentimentality
when there are Premier League riches on offer and since the noughties we have
really seen how money can shape the fate of football teams. Much to the
pleasure of original supporters the plan never really worked as they are now in
Division Two, the fourth tier of English football after a disastrous season.
Hope springs eternal and no one dwells too much on the past in a place as
transitory and fast moving as MK. The club has huge roots in the community and
is clearly aware of its responsibilities and the need to create a fan-base. England
star, Delle Alli, is one product of this investment in grass roots football. In
contrast to Premier league teams who often just buy a team off the peg, at MK
youth development is a priority. They
have a fine stadium, which is comfortable and modern, and if you don’t like the
football you can nip to Nando’s next door. I have a grudging respect for towns
like MK as they are idealistic utopias with lots of lakes, space and cycle
routes. The sense of progress, even if it has not been fully realised, shows
the promise of humanity to at least try to make things better. Social improvement was surely the initial
goal, which the needs of industry and commerce have shaped, so that MK is
bursting with a work force that can service any part of the country with ease.
Once roundabouts had been negotiated I reached my goal which
was a place which put all the promise of a new town in perspective. In the
shadow of this social utopia lies a reminder that humanity is capable of far
worse, a reminder of the reason we have European co-operation. An aide memoire
that there are some short memories of a war that we hope is never to be repeated
as we hear murmurings and political posturing
of a return to cold war detente in response to external threats like the
rise of fanaticism. This place contains the echoes of a darker and not so
distant past.
Bletchley Park has become a well supported attraction
boosted by recent films such as ‘The Imitation Game’ about code-breaking geniuses
such as Alan Turing. These heroes of Mathematics not only foiled Hitler and
possibly won WW2 they also invented the modern computer. It is an eerie campus with echoes of
surveillance and secrecy and is a short walk from Bletchley rail station so
less than an hour form London making a day trip possible. The £18 entry fee did
not seem to be deterring people. By calling it a season pass it seemed less
extortionate but once is probably enough. How many huts can a visitor explore?
My initial thoughts were confused by the odd behaviour of my
fellow visitors. I thought it may be to do with the Maths and Science bent of
visitors and the radio enthusiasts which my prejudices told me were not always
the people with the best social skills. Then I worked out it was the headphones
everyone was wearing. A ‘multi-media’
headset guided people around the site blissfully unaware of each other, numbed
and sedated. There was a lot of bumping into each other. One guy wandered into my path so many times I
was wondering if he was playing the role of an undercover spy.
When these
contraptions are worn communally by a coachload its like being amidst a
plague of zombies. Maybe genius is manifested in strange ways and
odd behaviour. The average IQ of visitors here was higher
than at the Safari Park nearby but perhaps the interpersonal skills were more
akin to the sloth zone. It made for a good place to people watch as the science
can get a bit torturous for the lay person. Well, you try and explain the
mathematical equations behind a Bombe machine. It is hard to criticise this ambitious
approach to build a major attraction from a volunteer force of friends of
Bletchley. The web-site is excellent and there is more information than you would
ever need, provided in ever more interactive ways.
To enhance the day out a series of exhibitions and lectures
are on offer. A series of paintings
,inspired by the 14 ‘James Bond’ novels
written by Ian Fleming, provided diversion from shuffling round the heavily
signed buildings with the walking dead. Just
as the author ,Anthony Horowitz, has been inspired to add to the Bond series
with his new novel ‘Forever and a Day’, a range of artists were asked to
produce works inspired by one of Fleming’s 14 novels. I liked the use of oils
with a palette knife in the two portraits by Paul Wright of Bond and Blofeld
and the use of skulls which figure in striking works by Gjoen and Jess
Wilson.
Bond is an icon of post war sophistication, a time when men
were men and did things that needed to be done for Queen and country. He inspires
a range of emotions today but provides a good insight into the British post-war
psyche. His lot has shifted since
Connery and recent incarnations have presented Bond as more of a tragic product
of the horror of war. Daniel Craig and his legion of imitators such as Bourne
are dislocated, emotionless killers stripped of all human empathy by some
buried traumatic stress such as a public school upbringing. Allow them exposure
to the dispassionate murder of war and their psychological profile is more
understandable. Are these figures heroes or aspirational figures or to be
pitied for their dysfunctionality? Connery’s treatment of women is symptomatic
of this reduction in emotion to the point where early Bond is also a shadow of
a man.
Lack of empathy seems to be an essential cornerstone of a cold blooded
killer. It is this sense of buttoned up, secretive uptight England that is
reflected in Bletchley Park. Those who had seen the horror of war often refuse
to reflect upon their experiences and Bletchley offers a reason why. Each day at work their decisions and
proficiency decided the fate of thousands of lives. The trauma of war cast a
cloud over the UK that has yet to fully lift and may explain the British
reserve and stiff upper lip in response to traumatic events. Only now are we keen to explore what happened
and the success of Bletchley shows there is a huge audience waiting to hear
these stories at home and abroad.
It was in Hut 8 that Alan Turing worked de-coding Enigma
ciphers, particularly during the Battle of the Atlantic, allowing British
warships to evade the destruction of the U boats that left the island high and
dry wondering how it would feed itself. Turing
was helped by a chess grand master and the ubiquitous Wrens who seemed to do
the work while the men did the blue sky thinking. The huts are full of
memorabilia, smelling authentic and redolent with memories. They are littered
with war paraphernalia; typex machines, flags, discarded coats and cardigans
and those forgotten heroes of war in Europe; pigeons. One of these gallant
souls ‘GI Joe’ was awarded a medal at the Tower of London and has been stuffed
for posterity and sits in a war museum in New Jersey.
Efforts to provide audio snippets from actors playing war
time roles are sometimes overbearing as the huts speak for themselves. It is the sense of history that Bletchley
Park evokes that is its strength and somehow the desire to tell isn’t necessary
when all you need to do is show and allow reflection. In contemplating its
place in history the visitor understands and pauses to wonder. There is a lot
of information and some of it is quite complex; hence the bored children who
don’t quite seem to connect with the historical importance. We are so used to
narrative that the presentations that work best are the stories of individuals
such as double agents and the lives of workers who could never speak about
their job. Well into the 1970’s workers were not allowed to discuss Bletchley
Park as they had signed the Official Secrets Act. You would never know if the
person next to you in the factory was a war hero. It partly explains the cruel
treatment of Alan Turing which sits amongst many other unsettling legacies of
the war. Not willing to deny his
homosexuality he was first chemically castrated then ostracised, leading to his
suicide less than a decade after his work which had possibly saved up to 14 million
lives by shortening the war by two years. Posthumously pardoned by the Queen
and apologised to by the Prime Minster his legacy lives on in the biopic where
Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing. The success of ‘the Imitation Game’ has been
a real shot in the arm for Bletchley Park. His death remains a counterpoint to
the idea of the good old days and rose tinted glasses surrounding the salad
days of post war England. At 42 the
man who was responsible for developing the first computer was to be effectively
destroyed and euthanised by the state he had served. His homosexuality meant that he was a
possible target for blackmail so he lost his clearances and some even suggest
that his death was suspicious or state sponsored in the climate of the Cold War.
The horror of the war was brought to mind in conversation
with a custodian of the Tourist Office in nearby Woburn. Surely they could not
be right in saying, ‘Of course they couldn’t warn Coventry that it was about to
be bombed or it would have given Bletchley away.’ Well, what is the point of
intercepting communiques if they are not going to act upon them? Surely they
did all they could unless Coventry was deemed expendable. I would not be
surprised at the twisted logic that a ship is more important than a city but
truth is the first casualty of war.
Churchill sacrificed the city for the ‘greater good’ in 1940 to avoid
letting Hitler know that their enigma code had been cracked. Opinions differ
about a conspiracy but facts remain that there was little defence on the night the
Luftwaffe annihilated the city and evidence suggests that Churchill did have
advance warning from Bletchley. Much like Churchill’s questionable decisions in
Gallipoli his legacy is still clouded in the fog of war after nearly 80
years.
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