September was People’s Month across the European Union, when the public were encouraged to go & look round (some) private or public buildings which are not usually open to them. Richard Morrison commented that he would like to see a permanent open house culture in which the norm is for public buildings to be permanently accessible
But this was the norm until 1971, when the IRA planted a bomb in the Post Office Tower, & rather shattered the idea that, since it was our government, its offices & officials should be open to all. I can remember as a student sometimes going with friends just to have a look round a few. The only one we used to believe was totally barred was a bleak building with steel framed windows on the unfashionable side of Shaftesbury Avenue, near Cambridge Circus, which was reputed to house MI5 (or was it MI6?)
Even though civil servants then generally had to start carrying passes, procedures for visitors were not onerous for buildings not deemed to be a particular target for terrorists – if you could give a name & a room number for the person you were visiting, you were generally allowed in unescorted. In one place I worked procedures were tightened up after a disgruntled husband came in to protest about ‘The Government’ (in fact a nice middle-aged lady social survey interviewer) coming round to ask questions about him while he was at work
In this we were more pusillanimous, showed less backbone, than Gathorne Hardy, who in 1867 was confronted in his Home Office one evening by a drunken group demanding the reprieve of the Manchester Martyrs. No one thought it necessary to block future access, though arrangements were made to improve the speed with which Scotland Yard could respond
I wonder when it was that we stopped believing that we had a right to go & poke our noses round grand houses, without having to pay for the privilege, as the Bennets went round Pemberley?
