{"id":231,"date":"2013-12-23T20:19:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-23T19:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hilarymoriarty.com\/blog\/?p=231"},"modified":"2013-12-23T20:19:19","modified_gmt":"2013-12-23T19:19:19","slug":"the-ties-that-bind-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=231","title":{"rendered":"The ties that bind us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nWhether your child loves it or hates it, school uniform can bring a sense of allegiance and be a source of pride.
\n
\nAh, you know where you are with a good uniform. More precisely, you know who you are. Because whoever you are, a uniform makes you part of something else, something bigger than you, and possibly possessed of more clout \u2013 think Hitler’s Blackshirts.
\nWell no, that’s a bit of a negative vision, though there’s something about a military uniform worn by a large number of men, marching to an insistent beat, faces inscrutable, to strike fear in many a heart. For women, I think, a uniform is less sinister.
\nUniform seems to have played a huge part in my life. My mother fell for my father, she told me, because of his dashing Naval uniform. She had known him before the war, growing up in Londonderry \u2013 spotty youth, brother of a school friend, not impressed. Then he turned up at her door in the London blitz, all Navy great coat and bright buttons, and no doubt a twinkle in his brown eyes, and that was it. Hence my very existence. And let’s not even think about the impact on the women of wartime Britain of the American Forces’ uniform. It must have been \u2013 indeed, in many cases was \u2013 irresistible.
\nMy village primary school had no uniform \u2013 they did not, back in the Dark Ages \u2013 but the move to the grammar school meant serious clothes, in particular a navy blue beret with the school badge, including motto in Welsh, on the front. Or the back, which was where irreverent Sandra always wore it, jauntily defiant and daring prefects to catch her, which they seldom did because none travelled on the train in which Sandra and her mates regularly nicked my beret, rolling it into an impromptu rugby ball to chuck around the carriage all the way home.
\nI was so proud of my beret and all the rest of the uniform that I could not understand Sandra’s attitude \u2013 which rather marked me out as a total conformist and future head girl. But Sandra seemed to have escaped from a different clan; her attitude to uniform was completely in accord with that of friends from primary school who had gone to the local secondary modern school. Both uniforms were navy blue, but there the similarities ended: the grammar school uniform, with its white shirt, was worn in good order most of the time, while the secondary mod children wore blue shirts, their uniform mostly in no particular order at all. They felt, and looked, like a different breed, or clan, or even gang, and wearing the uniform with a kind of casual contempt was almost a badge of honour in itself.
\nToday, it seems introducing a uniform, even for tiny children, is the first response of a new head taking up post in a new school, particularly if the school has been in difficulties. It is so common it’s hard to argue with the logic: it must be seen as a force for unity, welding all these children from different homes and different ethnic backgrounds into one happy breed of brothers and sisters. A united front with which to face the world happily.
\nIt’s a pity, then, that a national newspaper’s recent picture of five girls in a very distinctive school uniform should show them looking almost glum. In all fairness, the scarlet cloaks and Victorian straw bonnets, to modern eyes suggesting Jane Eyre, are on the extreme edge of school uniforms, even in independent schools. But it’s a shame not to be seen head held high and smiling, proud of the uniform of the Red Maids’ School in Bristol, because the story of that uniform is, in its own way, inspiring.
\nThe school was founded in 1634, five years after the death of its founder, John Whitson. In his will, he bequeathed money to found a school \u201cfor forty poor women of this parish, their parents being deceased or decay’d\u201d. A school for girls was then unusual, and no one knows why he chose to provide for at least some of the orphan girls of the Bristol streets. Perhaps it was because he had three daughters, one dying as a baby, one aged 12, one aged 21 in childbirth. A rich man \u2013 merchant, mayor of Bristol, MP \u2013 with no sons, he left the money to found the school, and decreed that the girls should \u201cgo and be apparelled in red cloth\u201d. They still do, and they still are.
\nOn Founder’s Day in November, the almost-ceremonial uniform of cloaks and straw bonnets comes out and the girls process through the streets of Bristol, with mounted police escort, from the founder’s tomb in one church to the cathedral for a service of thanksgiving and celebration for his life and generosity.
\nOn such a day, it is a source of great pride to be a Red Maid and lead the parade \u2013 the traffic stops! It is a very big deal. The trouble is that there may just be some girls, teenagers as most of them are, who would rather curl up and hide than wear a Victorian bonnet in public, no matter whose life is being celebrated.
\nSome of our oldest schools still sport uniforms from similarly different times, to the point where a visitor from Mars or Massachusetts might be baffled by the quirks of these schools’ kit, compared with the clothes worn by other children. Eton’s ties and tails, the yellow stockings and clerical gear of Christ’s Hospital and Harrow’s famous boaters come to mind. It’s as if they have become more than a uniform: they are a positive badge of distinction, a reminder of a different age and of their school’s long history and heritage. These schools pre-date Shakespeare: \u201cOf course we look antique!\u201d
\nPerhaps the value of any uniform is to signal above all that the wearer belongs: \u201cI was just me, but now I am one of them \u2013 look!\u201d To come across someone wearing your old school tie in a far-off airport is to feel an immediate connection, a familiarity.
\n\u201cI wonder, was he in my year?\u201d
\n\u201cHe’s far too old!\u201d
\n\u201cWell, I might have known his brother \u2013 or his son!\u201d
\nThe tie \u2013 just the tie! \u2013 links the wearer to the school and declares his allegiance to it and those who also attended it forever. And it makes him a member of that society \u2013 I almost said \u201cclub\u201d \u2013 as long as he wears it. You may even find the fine sub-grouping of the particular house tie or team tie, so you can say, not just \u201cDid you go to school X?\u201d, but also \u201cI see you were on the rugby\/fencing\/tennis team \u2013 do you still play?\u201d
\nA Red Maid is unlikely to be sporting a Victorian bonnet when she enjoys Ladies’ Day at Ascot in her adult life, but her partner may well wear his school or regimental tie, and, come to think of it, maybe this is one of the reasons women lag behind men in the whole game of social connections which we are told helps you to get on in life: women do not wear ties.
\nMaybe there’s a lesson there.
\nHilary Moriarty is national director of the Boarding Schools’ Association.\u00a0 This post originally appeared on the Independent Education Today website at http:\/\/ie-today.co.uk\/News\/the_ties_that_bind_us<\/a>
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