On the Eve of the Millennium by Conor Cruise O’Brien

Author:Conor Cruise O’Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Martin Kessler Books
Published: 1994-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

IV T HE MILLENNIUM COMMISSION

OUR PRESENT PERIOD —nearing the halfway mark of the final decade of the twentieth century—might be described as the dawn of the eve of the millennium. Few people seem, as yet, to be preoccupied with the impending epochal date. Australia is an exception, but that is because the Olympic Games are scheduled for Sydney in the year 2000.

Still, in some quarters there is already an urge to do something about the coming event, in a more general sort of way. The British government, in February 1994, set up a ten-member body with the portentous title “The Millennium Commission.” The terms of reference of this body seem to be remarkably vague. All I know about it—and I should imagine about all that most people in Britain know about it—is contained in an article by Marianne Macdonald which appeared in the London Independent on Sunday on 18 September 1994. According to Ms. Macdonald, Peter Brooke, the secretary of state for national heritage, who set up the commission, said that the commission is looking for “exceptionally distinctive proposals that are ‘of the millennium.’”

“Of the millennium” has a fine ring to it. But what does it mean? What Brooke, personally, may have meant by it might possibly have become clear in practice, for when he coined the phrase, he expected to be presiding over the Millennium Commission in his governmental capacity. However, he personally ceased to be “of the millennium” as a result of being fired by John Major in a cabinet reshuffle shortly after he set up the commission. Brooke’s successor, Stephen Dorrell, also succeeded him as chairman of the commission. If the present chairman of the commission knows what is meant by “of the millennium,” he is not telling us. Marianne Macdonald writes:

The commission has been told to approve projects which are “of the millennium,” but members admitted last week to being unable to define the phrase; and on Friday, the Secretary of State for National Heritage, Stephen Dorrell, who chairs the commission, said he had no plans to clarify it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.