Divorce down, boozing and DIY up, but did 11 September truly change us?

Back in August, as the holiday season was at its peak, I wrote in the NS: "We don't want style politics, we want to get angry again . . . people like me who wanted more documentaries, more serious news, proper foreign news . . . used to be described as 'sad bastards' or 'anoraks'. No longer, it seems."

At the time, the globalisation protests gave me a nugget of hope that we had turned the corner after the complacent, consumerist 1990s. Then came the terrible events of 11 September and many people asked: has it become safe to be serious?

Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, says that, before 11 September, "the lives of Liz Hurley and Madonna became more important because it's frankly all we had to talk about". Now, the hijackings have "restored my generation back to a real meaning of life that perhaps we haven't experienced since we were born". For a one-time showbiz reporter, this seems a conversion of Damascene proportions.

In interviews I conducted for Radio 4's Analysis programme, there was no shortage of such optimism. Clare Short was confident that the "ugly era of celebration of materialism and sneering at people who showed any concern for the weak or the poor" was over. "I think we're near a shift, I really do," she added, suggesting that some of her fellow ministers might have been a bit slow off the mark. "I think most of the political class haven't quite cottoned on in a way that the public is beginning to. But I think 11 September might have speeded up the journey."

Others are disappointed. "11 September is now yesterday's news," the film-maker Ken Loach said. "I don't see a big shift in consciousness at all. I wouldn't say that our politicians are more serious than they were before, or that the mainstream commentators are more serious. They might be more pompous, but they're not more serious."

Tony Blair's promises to reorder the world have remained, as they started, rich in rhetoric but, beyond Afghanistan, light on action. As for the media, it depends on your expectations. More current affairs on television and radio, sure. But also too many journalists rushing around breathlessly telling us not very much. Game shows are alive and well. Even at the height of the crisis, the broadsheets still talked about Liz Hurley's pregnancy and Nigella Lawson's change of hair colour. As for the Mirror, the same paper that has restored Paul Foot and John Pilger to the odd front page still carries a spread on Lara Logan, GMTV's war correspondent, in her bikini.

What about the economy? Or rather, what about Britain's favourite pastime - shopping? Retail spending figures are strikingly robust. For clues, you have to look at individual sectors: we're spending more on booze and fags (to calm our nerves?) and more on DIY (the nesting phenomenon?) while new car registrations are rising more quickly than ever (for UK holidays instead of trips abroad?). But Douglas McWilliams, of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, has noted a change at the gauche end of the market. "There is a sense that it's not terribly tasteful to be going out and enjoying yourselves too much and spending money on a £3,000 bottle of wine."

Much of the belief that 11 September is leading to sweeping change comes from those who, in any case, were hoping for a reordering of our priorities. According to Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, who is tipped for the top job at Canterbury, the initial increase in church attendance has continued. He also cites a month-on-month decrease in the divorce rate as evidence of a less hedonistic approach. And he points to a potentially more fundamental shift - a sense of people defining their own identity, and that of others, more readily through religion. By including incitement to religious hatred in its catch-all anti-terrorist legislation, the government is admitting the new public nature of faith.

Professor Eric Hobsbawm, who chronicled and witnessed many of the 20th century's great events, believes 11 September has altered our perception of the role and powers of the state. "One of the problems is . . . how to get used to a . . . fringe of disorder at the bottom of states," he says. "The idea of eliminating terrorism will have to be dropped just as much as, for instance, the idea of eliminating prostitution or crime. We shall all have to learn in the 21st century to live in a less ordered society." Individuals, he says, will be in greater danger, but not states. "If another 6,000 people were killed in the US it wouldn't destabilise the country in the slightest degree, because it's too stable and too strong."

Thus, 11 September may have speeded up certain trends, but it has not created anything new. The economy was going downhill anyway, albeit less quickly in the UK than elsewhere. Certain groups were already complaining about the iniquities of the global economic system; perhaps now their voices will be heard just a bit more. We are asking a few more questions about our society and its priorities. And while our media may be paying more attention to foreign affairs, much of what we read, watch and listen to is still lifestyle bilge.

John Kampfner presents Safe to Be Serious, Analysis, BBC Radio 4, on 6 December, 8.30pm, and 9 December, 9.30pm

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website