I was lucky enough to go to Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia a few months after the “Velvet Revolution” that inspirational event that formed a part of the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was an extraordinary time and I was thrilled to be there when there was a palpable sense of excitement in the air.
I remember all the building works going up on so many streets with an energy that shouted new beginnings but  more than anything else I recall all those conversations with hopeful people genuinely anticipating a bright future for their freed nation.

I looked out some of the photographs I took at that time and felt a pang of regret that that trip didn’t mark the beginning of a brave new world. Of course nothing is ever as perfect as our dreams foretell and it wasn’t long before Czechoslovakia split into two different nations but only the most cynical of people would not rejoice in what happened in those days when it looked as if the world was going to become a peaceful place.

One day whilst I was walking through the spectacular Eighteenth Century palace complex at the top of the city where all the government offices were located, a car drew up outside one of the grandest houses and out came a rather scruffy middle aged man in a checked shirt, sleeves rolled up, hair tussled and unkept. He was holding an old leather brief case bulging with papers. He could have been a professor running late for a seminar but no, it was the new President of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, one of the heroes of the revolution.

After his recent death, he is being honoured around the World and rightly so. Whatever successes and failures can be attached to his political career, nothing can take away his reputation as one of the moving forces behind the new state or as a spokesman for a new type of Eastern European politics. He was a writer, an intellectual and, dare I say it, also a bit of a dreamer. The sad international incidents that have followed on that thrilling moment in history take nothing away from the optimism that could allow a nation to grasp its freedom and to make a man such as him the Head Of State.

Looking at our current petty-minded, historically-blind and quarrelsome leaders in economically-challenged Europe, I am doubly sad at Vaclav Havel’s passing as I remember that moment all those years ago when hope rested on the shoulders of such an unpretentious and idealistic man.

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In Britain, tomorrow’s vote doesn’t seem to be anything to do with Europe at all. No one in the main parties is talking about it and neither are the press – apart from Signor Berlusconi’s of course but that is a different kind of party.

We have the United Kingdom Independence Party – inelegantly known as UKIP – who want us to leave Europe altogether but that is about it and they are all silly people anyway. The others are either too busy worrying about their internal problems (Labour) or too frightened to mention Europe because it is an issue which divides them (Conservative). The Liberal Democrats have always been enthusiasts for the EU even, maybe, closing their eyes to the many inadequacies in its cumbersome and fat-bellied parliament.

It is a pity that we Brits don’t really have a chance to vote for anyone who might insist on the same sort of constitutional changes in the European Parliament which are, apparently, going to happen in our national one. We haven’t got anyone with any likelihood of getting elected who could represent Britain’s interests in the debate about the new European Constitution either. Some countries have voted against it and a majority of Europeans are also against it but our rulers and parliamentarians are going to force it through anyway. It would be such a breath of fresh air if democracy could enter the European system at this level but, sadly, I think, us the voters are seen as being much too stupid to have an opinion on this one.

With the pointlessness of it all, I was hoping that we might have had some showgirls or boys put up for election here too – at least that might have been more fun.

I suspect that the malaise about Europe in Britain is not reflected in those Eastern European countries that were formally inside the Soviet Union. They didn’t have the luxury of elections until they gained their freedoms.

You only have to walk through Wenceslas Square in Prague or its equivalent in Budapest to feel the malevolent tread of invading armies’ boots. First it was the German Third Reich and then, without even a pause, Stalin’s Russia.

As is now well-known, the former Czechoslovakia finally won its freedom in November 1989 with the so-called Velvet Revolution when the people took to the streets and their numbers forced a change of government.

I was lucky enough to go to Prague almost exactly a year later when I was able to witness first hand the excitement and expectation that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The World, pre-Al Queda, was going to be a peaceful planet, and, if Prague was anything to go by, a place where we would all love each other and celebrate the joys of life in the arms of benign Capitalism.

Well, we have had to revise our expectations but I for one will not be able to forget that surge of optimism that I saw on the streets of Prague in November 1990.

I was making a film with the Czech conductor Libor Pesek (see below) who was currently the musical director of Britain’s own Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The film was a musical tale of two cities and I was fortunate to see Prague through Mr. Pesek’s eyes.

I also had the chance to borrow a decent camera loaded with black and white film and I have recently found some of the photographs I took on that trip. I was nervous about using an unfamiliar format so there are not nearly as many pictures as I would now have liked to have taken but, here are some of them anyway.

First of all it should be said that Libor Pesek was the first classical music conductor that I had ever spent “down time” with. I had grown up with the prejudice that great musicians usually had foreign names and that they were almost certainly forbidding and remote geniuses.

Libor Pesek, who started his musical career as a trombonist in a jazz band, was not at all like my naive stereotype. Going to a jazz club with him was a revelation. He was the first conductor in my experience, to wear jeans and the only one who has ever queued up at a bar to buy me a drink.

He was still vibrant with the excitement of the Velvet Revolution and his animated tour of the city filled me with hope for the future both of the former Soviet Block countries and the democratization of classical music. We had a great time.

Filming some street scenes, we were often standing in the middle of the road, getting in people’s way, and, yes, probably, intruding at a nation’s party but we were greeted with real enthusiasm, well, at least according to the two dynamic young men who were acting as our interpreters and who also took us out on the town.

The warmest and also most embarrassing welcome was from an old woman who came up to me in the middle of the shoot and insisted that I went with her. She held my hand and walked me briskly into a local supermarket with our interpreter in tow.

Standing next to me, surrounded by morning shoppers, she raised her voice and started shouting in unfathomable Czech. Everyone clapped and I smiled and bowed feeling that that was what appropriate.

The interpreter told me afterwards that she had introduced me as an Englishman and she then went on to say that she wanted to thank me for what my nation had done to help them during the Second World War.

I had taken the praise for something that had nothing to do with me and that had happened long before my time I know but it was moving to be a part of that unexpected joining of hands and that meeting of smiles.

Change was happening wherever I went. Construction works, the erection of new buildings and the demolition of old Soviet ones seemed to be going on on every street corner. I felt as if streets would look entirely different even if I had only just walked around the block.

That sense of dynamic change also struck me when I wandered around the magnificent square that holds the government buildings and where the film Amadeus was made. It was a drizzly day, I was admiring the architecture and photographing the rookie soldiers on guard duty when a car drew up. Out came a man in corduroy trousers and a less that new pullover with an old leather bag under his arm. He made his way in through a door just as I recognised that he was the new president, Vaclav Havel. Just like Mr. Pesek, there was no time for pomposity and no thirst for it either. No time for a photo either, dammit.

I have been back to Prague since and I know that it has moved on in these years, not always I suspect for the better. Maybe some of the changes brought about by the subversive revolution of materialism have corrupted what seemed in that early period as a collective wish for equality and freedom.

On a later visit, I came across a group of drunken English lads on a raucously wild “stag night”. Prague is now an increasingly popular destination for English boozing and vomit. They were all happy enough but as they staggered blindly down the street, I remembered going to a ballroom in Prague in 1990 where young couples came to dance in a chaperoned environment where the boys were even made to wear gloves when dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Watching that generation of young lovers, all with that remarkable gift of beauty that Czech blood seems to carry with it, I was impressed by its erotic charge. It was like returning to the Nineteenth Century where subtleties between attracted parties often expressed much steamier thoughts.

I assume that such events are now a thing of the past, probably rightly so, and that the informality of Maestro Pesek and President Havel have won the day. I would love to think though that change for Prague doesn’t just have to be a vulgarisation of its culture. Let’s hope that Mirek Topolanek hasn’t converted too many of his supporters to the cynical pleasures of his friend, Silvio Berlusconi.

Let’s hope too that we, that impressive mix of cultures and talents, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the English and all the rest of us, could try to get a better parliament to represent us when we go out to vote tomorrow. It would be a terrible waste if the only ones talking about the European Union are the reactionaries, the nay-sayers, the fat cats and their fellow-travelers on the gravy train to Brussels. All of us deserve something better.

So, before you go, here is Libor Pesek conducting the sweetly sublime Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak’s Stabat Mater. Don’t be put off by Mr. Pesek’s white tie and tails.

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