Are we missing a Golden opportunity?

BUNTING strung between the houses, balloons on every lamppost and the street filled with tables, themselves laden with jellies, trifles and cakes - an entire community was brought together for one giant party. And it was an event which has lived long in Anita Atkinson's memory.

"It was a great day. We had jelly and ice cream, and everyone really enjoyed themselves," she says. "I was 20 then, and me and a friend organised our street party, and organised sack races and stuff like that, and raised money to give the kids memorabilia.

"A lot of the mothers in the street baked cakes and did things. Some of the kids didn't even know who the Queen was, but they were enjoying a party where everyone got together and we did something for the community."

That street party in the County Durham town of Crook was repeated up and down the country - repeated an estimated 12,000 times in fact - as the nation turned out to mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee. But, 25 years on, it looks as though the Golden Jubilee could be a different story. Instead of trestle tables, this time the only thing filling the streets could be tumbleweed.

There may be five months to go before the official celebrations, but it seems there is some anxiety that the Golden Jubilee has not exactly caught the public's imagination. Out of six local authorities contacted by The Northern Echo yesterday, just two had received applications for street parties, and those had just one each. The official Golden Jubilee committee says planning for street parties should have begun last September.

In public, the official approach is still bullish. Lord Sterling, chairman of the Parliamentary committee in charge of co-ordinating public events over the first weekend in June, yesterday dismissed fears that it could be a flop, and claimed there was "immense" interest in the event.

But for Anita Atkinson, in the Guinness Book of Records for having the largest collection of Royal memorabilia, the omens are less promising.

"I'm hoping it will improve as it gets nearer, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in it now," she says. "It does worry me, but I don't think we're a nation of republicans."

Anita, who now lives at Harperley, near Crook, says she is planning to stage her own party, but efforts to organise a community event have been met with widespread apathy. "I don't know whether it is because of what has happened with the Royal Family over the last decade, but there was almost total opposition," she says. "I think there is a feeling that communities don't exist anymore - people don't know their neighbours, kids don't go out and play with each other, they don't get together now."

And the prospect of the jubilee passing almost unnoticed would be not just a missed opportunity of a lifetime, she says. "There isn't a person alive who remembers a Golden Jubilee. It isn't once in a lifetime, it's once in several lifetimes.

"I've been waiting for this for ten years, for all the memorabilia to add to my collection. The Golden Jubilee will be celebrated abroad, in countries where the Queen is head of state, but it doesn't look like it will be as fervent here."

And one of the reasons for the lack of interest could be that the jubilee celebrations are facing competition for our attention this summer, according to Dr Leslie Gofton, sociology lecturer at Newcastle University. But the Royal Family has also done its fair share to turn the public off the idea.

"There is the World Cup, where England will be involved, and the Test matches, so it will be very crowded," he says. "But, obviously we are more sensitive to issues surrounding the monarchy now. A lot of things have happened that have been very damaging to the image of the monarchy, right down to Prince Harry recently.

"Just going on the opinion polls, there does seem to be evidence to suggest there is a high level of disappointment. And traditionally, support for the Royal Family tends to be concentrated in the older generation, and people who celebrated the Silver Jubilee are 25 years older now, and a lot of them are dead.

'A new generation has come through, and they're much less enthusiastic about the monarchy, and that may be part of a lack of faith in what used to be the major institutions, like the Church and Parliament. People are less likely to take for granted the authority of traditional institutions."

Revelations over the private life of the Royal Family, from adulterous affairs to late-night drinking, have touched most of its leading players, with perhaps just the Queen and Queen Mother unscathed.

"If they were a pop group or a corporate body, they would have been very badly damaged. They haven't been very good at defending themselves, and when people see them do some pretty silly things, they wonder to what extent they are worthy of our respect." But, whereas the anti-monarchist group Stuff the Jubilee tried its best to disrupt the 1977 celebrations, indifference towards the Golden Jubilee is not a sign of a groundswell of opposition, although this should not necessarily be a comfort to the Royal Family's supporters, Dr Gofton says. "I don't think it translates into active republicanism. There is not a sense of positive antipathy towards these institutions, so much as a general inertia.

"But the monarchy rests on public support, and if it fails to take account of what the public wants then there is no justification for it. If there is a feeling of disenchantment with the monarchy, and a feeling that they don't represent anything, then how can they go on?"

He says growing indifference might see our Royal Family move towards the lower-profile approach of some of the Continental monarchies, with bicycles replacing Rolls Royces, but it might still end up disappointing committed republicans.

"It is gradually becoming less relevant, and people don't have the same kind of deference to these institutions any more. But there is a reservoir of inertia related to tradition and the monarchy, and it is very much tied together with the idea of what it is to be British.

"They're already downplaying the jubilee, although I suspect that, whatever happens, it will be regarded as an affirmation of the affection in which the Queen is held. The Silver Jubilee didn't seem to have generated much enthusiasm at this stage, but I'm inclined to think that the Golden celebrations won't capture the imagination."

But, while much of the nation seems unconcerned over where they will be come the first weekend in June, Anita Atkinson has already got it worked out. "I'm going to have a party at home, and do a bonfire, but the weekend gives me the perfect opportunity to go to London to take part in the celebrations," she says. "I'm going to be in the Mall, waving my flag, cheering the Queen."