Being British

My earliest memory of a history lesson was in primary school learning about the ancient Celts, and their brave resistance against the Roman (read European) invaders. Caractacus and Boudicca were the heroes. That set the pattern for my learning of British history and developing a British identity.

The history I read, and was taught, was glorious – King Alfred the Great, Henry V at Agincourt, Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada, Nelson and Wellington, Chaucer and Shakespeare, Newton and Darwin, practical British reform rather than excitable continental revolutions, The Industrial Revolution, Parliament and the Empire, and of course Winston Churchill and the Battle of Britain.

Becoming British was cultural as well as historical. Thus: queueing up for everything, saying sorry a lot, hopping on the bus to go to market, the shops closing on Sundays and half days Tuesdays, tea – gallons of tea, Butlins holidays at the seaside (in the rain), camping in north Wales (in the rain), fish and chips, and for the adults the local pub. Supporting Man U (and getting in scraps with Man City fans), and getting crushed every four years watching England lose on penalties in the quarter finals of the world cup. There was much, much more.

We did modernize and Europeanize. In short order at the beginning of the 70s we went from the old medieval currency to decimal coinage, rearranged the medieval counties and added new urban counties (we went from living in Cheshire to Greater Manchester), and joined the Common Market (the future EU).

Then my family emigrated to the United States. I found they had their own history and culture. Their own heroes and villains. Sometimes the villains were the British (harrumph to that). The culture involved huge cars and big shopping malls, hamburgers and fries coca cola, holidays on sunny beaches or in vast mountains, and strange sports ranging from the misnamed American football to baseball. We adapted, and learned to love our adopted culture and country, but never entirely lost our Britishness.

One thing which stood out was how belligerent nationalism can be. The mean spirited jokes still occur – we beat you in this war, we saved you in that war, why do you have bad teeth / bad food? I learned there is an unpleasant one-upmanship in nationalism. It was something I didn’t notice in myself until seeing it in others.

All that nationalism, the good and the ugly, is dismissed at peril. Especially when people feel threatened.

During my adult life I watched as the USA beginning with Reagan through Clinton to Obama embraced a globalized capitalist economy which ruthlessly separated the winners from the losers. The parallel happened in Britain with Thatcher through Blair to Cameron. More and more of the bottom 50% of these countries lost ground economically. Outsourcing of jobs, insourcing of cheap immigrant labor, and deregulated economies leaving more and more people struggling just to survive. These people became angry.

Even I succumb to the anger. When I see women in burqas in my native city, when everything seems to be made in China or Mexico while factories crumble into ruin here, when coal is shipped from environmentally devastating and practically slave labor mines in Colombia while mines here are shut down, I become viscerally angry. There is a reason people with nothing left to lose vote for their beloved Britain to get the hell out of the EU, or for proud Americans to want to build a wall and put up barriers. Everything has been taken away already, their history is questioned, their culture globalized, their jobs outsourced, all that is left is an angry, desperate nationalism. I feel it.

Those who vote for EU membership, or vote in support of the US establishment are the privileged. They are the ones who can travel. These are the people who had the privileged background to get sufficient education or training to at least hold their own in the global economy. Their identity or culture is not threatened for they have the privilege to choose, while smugly sneering in contempt at the values of the bottom half.

I’ll be in England in July. I’m looking forward to going home. I hope to catch up with my cousins, many of whom voted Leave. We’ll drink a toast in the pub, or with a cuppa tea, and I’ll wish them all my support as they continue to strive to get their livelihoods and their country back. Hopefully, I won’t see another bloody burqa while I’m there.

Caractacus lives on!