Political rituals, ceremony and the symbolic representation of power and government have played a prominent role in the history of the United Kingdom. While many Britons take pride in the longstanding traditions of political institutions like the House of Parliament or the monarchy, most foreign observers would probably agree on the exceptional prominence of traditional forms and rituals in Britain's political culture. However, in 1983 we were told that many of Britain's (and other countries') traditions were not quite as longstanding as some would expect and that historians were to follow the history of their inventions in order to understand their meanings and their contexts. Twenty years after Eric Hobsbawm's and Terence Ranger's The Invention of Tradition, the history of political rituals in Britains still remains to be written. How are historians and political scientists to account for phenomena as different as the wide range of urban and civic ritual in the 17th and 18th century, the meaning of changing election rituals in the 19th century and the evolution and development of parliamentary traditions? How do we understand recent events like the funerals of Lady Di and Queen mother in the context of the history of political rituals in the United Kingdom?

These observations are the point of departure for a conference organized by the Arbeitskreis Deutsche England-Forschung on the role of political ritual in the United Kingdom, 1700-2000. Especially it aims to address the following questions: Which part did political ritual play in the formation of a collective memory of the nation and in the shaping of regional identities? How did the media influence and change the performance and meaning of rituals? Did political rituals open or close the possibility of political participation or which rituals did and which did not?