Re-imagining the national community in urban public place : Trafalgar Square, 1906 - 2010

Abstract

This thesis examines the contribution of urban public place to narratives of national identity. In doing so, it responds to existing scholarship within nationalism studies concerning the processes by which national identity is constructed, reproduced and transformed. First, it argues that urban public place plays an important role in making the national community visible. Second, an analysis of place reveals the multiple intertwining narratives that contribute to national identities. Third, it demonstrates that the use of urban public place creates valuable opportunities for challenges or changes to national narratives, including those from less powerful social groups.

Underpinning these central arguments is a conceptualisation of national identity as an ongoing discursive process. This is combined with an understanding of place that stresses its flexibility of meaning and use despite the apparently fixed frame of a built environment rich in historical symbolism. Additionally, this project draws together top-down and from-below perspectives on the construction of national identity, foregrounding the possibilities that place offers for the expression of counter-hegemonic national narratives.

The empirical materialis drawn from three sets of events in London's Trafalgar Square. These are: the use of the Square for Suffragette rallies from 1906 to 1913; the celebrations in the Square on Victory in Europe Day in 1945; and the celebration of the winning Olympic Games host city bid and memorial vigil for the victims of the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Official, media and first-hand accounts of these events are used to analyse how and whether national identity has been understood as central to these events by various participants or observers. Through this analysis, I demonstrate that Trafalgar Square provides an important environment in which national narratives can be made evident to a wider national audience, and that this has provided a possibility for the transformation of these narratives through reactions to and the reinterpretation of the Square's built environment.