History of England 1-6

1996 seemed to bring with it some reprieve, or at least some welcome distraction. In an education debate, it was remarked that both Harriet Harman and Tony Blair, supporters of comprehensive education, had sent their children to selective and grant-maintained schools. Though this was not without precedent, it reminded the House, and the nation, of the sharply bourgeois direction taken by the party of the workers.

In February, the Scott Report was published. Set up to investigate the Arms-to-Iraq affair, it was the most extensive of its kind. There had been no need, and certainly no reason, for parliament to remain in ignorance of high-quality weaponry being sold to Iraq. In mitigation, Iraq had become the greater enemy since its days as perceived bulwark against Iranian extremism. The selling of arms to a rogue nation with which Britain had so recently been at war would have raised eyebrows but little else. As it was, the government seemed intent on obstructing the judiciary at every turn. At last, though with fierce criticism of the government’s conduct, the report established that no British arms had reached either Iraq or Iran ‘during the conflict in question’. However, the government was perceived as at once bullying and pusillanimous, and it could ill afford such a reputation.

The IRA called off its ceasefire with a bombing in London’s Docklands in which two people were killed. More bombing attempts followed, some of which were stillborn. On 15 and 18 February 1996, two other bombs were discovered. The first was defused and the second went off by accident. A hit list was subsequently discovered, including members of the royal family. In a fine display of bluster, Mitchell McLaughlin blamed the UK for ‘procrastination’ in its negotiations. Naturally enough, Gerry Adams said he knew nothing of the attack. On 5 April, the largest explosive device ever found on the mainland was discovered on Hammersmith Bridge. The IRA claimed responsibility for this, too, as it began a campaign of disruption targeting motorways and rail services as well as London’s transport system. The IRA had by no means finished with the ancient enemy.

Over the twilight of the Major years, a shooting star appeared, barely noticeable at first. It was a book, but of the sort usually read with hunched shoulders and furtive glances to the side, for it was not ‘proper’ or ‘real’ literature. Yet somehow it caught the imagination of the pensioner, the secretary, the tea lady, the manager, the magnate and the shop girl as surely as that of the pre-teens for whom it was written. Its author’s path was not smoothed by mercies. As J. K. Rowling recalled, ‘I knew nobody in the publishing world. I didn’t even know anybody who knew anybody.’

What followed had no precedent. The book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, became a phenomenon so striking that for some it altered how books were read and even understood. The plot of the saga may be swiftly summarized. Harry Potter, the half-blood son of wizards, must overcome Lord Voldemort, his parents’ killer and the would-be conqueror of the wizard realm. This realm exists adjacent to our own, but may be entered through ‘Platform nine and three-quarters’ at King’s Cross station. The plots of the individual books amount to a system of arches, with any weakness or ambiguity handed over for the next section to carry. The result is that the eyes of the reader are always straining ahead. We see elements of Cinderella, the Ugly Duckling, the schoolboy tales of Jennings, The Lord of the Rings and even Christian myth. Some beasts or characters, such as boggarts, unicorns, spectres and trolls, are familiar from folklore; others could only spring from the anxieties of the late twentieth century. Thus, we meet ‘dementors’, spirits who plunge the sufferer into a state eerily evocative of manic depression.

Critics, commentators and scholars have puzzled over the unparalleled success of the series. At one level, the cause seems clear enough: the appeal of myth does not distinguish the child from the adult. But that in itself would not account for it. Rather, in these books, an ancient theme met a still more ancient motif. There is a secret heir, whose royalty must be concealed from the world and even from himself. A uniquely English sensibility made the translation possible. Perhaps most pertinently, Harry Potter united two previously disparate strands in children’s fiction, the naturalistic and the fantastic. The first tends to show the child’s struggle for ‘self-realization’, while the fantastic depicts the child taking part in a great, even cosmic, struggle. Uncertain, idealistic and orphaned, Harry Potter is a bespectacled everyman with only the urge to do right sustaining him. The age, too, was ready. In exciting without offending, the books were impeccably Blairite. They were fun, endlessly inventive and a generation was raised with them.