When we were
younger, agitating for civil rights and against the Vietnam War,
we used to have 'love it or leave it' thrown at us as a discussion
closer. As it turned out, I did leave it, though not for lack of
love for my country, and eventually I settled in Britain, where I
have lived for forty years, and am a citizen (or, until recently, a
'subject') of the United Kingdom. The latter title seems more
appropriate today, as we face an election to confirm, indeed, if the
media are to be believed, rubber-stamp by acclimation, a minority
government which asks for its minority of voters to give it an even
larger majority of seats in the House of Commons.
Today's arguments
are conducted in the more hermetic setting of social media, but they
have grown almost as fierce as they were back in the Sixties. Which
was confirmed to me the other day on facebook, when I was shocked to
find a friend, with whom I've had the same arguments during the 2015
general election and the 2016 Brexit vote, but intensifying each time
he wraps himself in the Union Jack, finally calling quits to
discussion by saying 'and yet you choose to live here'.
Which admittedly is
a little less excluding, albeit less catchy, than 'love it or leave it'.
But I wouldn't let it lie, pointing out that indeed I had chosen to
live here, unlike his own lucky self, fortunate to have been born a
citizen of the country he loves so blindly. That was a riposte, not a
reply, and I found myself wondering why I feel such despair
in the face of this election, and why that translates into such
disparagement of the country in which I chose to live. Was I creating
the flag-waving antagonism I now felt? or was it the Union
Jack-wrapped myopia itself that inevitably generated such antagonism?
My friend challenged
me: “name me a country that values talent and ability more -- we
may be far from perfect, but the days of the posh twit are
significantly on the wane.” Well, I started naming countries of
which I have some experience or some very good idea of their societal
structure, which seem to value ability more. Canada, Australia, NZ,
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Germany, Netherlands,
probably France, even my native USA. Then I realised such information
was useless. His challenge was built on Little England false modesty
and faux self-deprecation, distilled perfectly to a Mrs. T. I summed up
his English world view that brought us Brexit: "we are far from
perfect but it is a truth universally acknowledged that no one else
in the entire world is better."
When I came here in
1977, following my English girlfriend who'd refused to spend a second
winter in Montreal, I found Britain still endearingly backward in
many ways, and I discovered George Mikes' loving dissections of the
English, in particular the telling and still accurate perception that
there is nothing an Englishman loves more than 'enduring hardship',
and the kind of hardship that gives him the most satisfaction
enduring is 'unnecessary hardship'.
The Britain I came
to was civilised and caring in its bumbling ways, but this was also a
Britain whose National Front was bleating hate, backed by one in
seven English voters in the 1978 local elections. The rise of Mrs.
Thatcher subsumed the NF at that time, but now, after 40 years of
Thatcherism from both major parties, their descendants have been
assimilated into our mainstream, skinheads replaced by Faragistas, and
Britain has become a meaner country, rallying around xenophobic calls of fear
and hatred, in pursuit of recreating a fantasy vision of Rule Brittania.
Its caring side has
also been tossed into a giant rubbish bin of greed, where need has
been subordinated to profit. Everything has its price and nothing has
value unless it hands the apparatchiks a dividend. Avarice promotes
division, and a society where people's basic welfare takes the very
last seat on the privatised bus service, is not a society at all. That was, after all, Margaret Thatcher's point, 'there is no society' and it was the
point of Offshore David Cameron, whose 'Big Society' was the
next-best thing to no society. When Cameron said 'we are all in this
together', by 'we' he meant 'they' and by 'this' he meant 'that
mess I am leaving them'.
Every facet of life
is poisoned by this. I came here and stayed here by choice, and I've
lived here long enough to maybe adjust to enduring unnecessary
hardship. But my son, who was born here, and considers himself
English, didn't grow up with that old-time ethos of tug your cap and
endure. He's been told there's a brighter future, but at the same
time constantly being asked, literally in the case of his primary school, to trim his expectations.
Ten years ago,
when my mother died, I found the letters I had written her from London
in 1972, when I visited Britain for the first time. 'I could live
here' I said more than once, little thinking that five years later
that would be a real possibility. In fact, I moved to Montreal in
1975 and was considering that my adopted home when female
circumstances intervened.
When I became a
British citizen, I felt pleasure that it had come to pass. I watched
the portrait of the Queen, whose eyes seemed to follow you as you
took the oath. I was, according to the mayor, the only new citizen who
sang the national anthem without looking at the lyric-sheets which had been
provided. 'It's not the most complicated song in the world,' I told
him, though I probably should have added for safety's sake, not to be
thought a subversive, of course it is a fact universally acknowledged that it is the best national anthem in the
world. I was happy that as a UK citizen all of Europe was now
open to me, as well as to my young son. Now, when I look at the
possibilities that will be taken away by Brexit, when I look at
Britain snowballing downhill into American-style pay for play
education and health systems, both of which used to be free here and
both of which are hugely expensive over there, I despair. With the
likelihood that our twisted electoral system will fail yet again to
reflect the need of the electorate for change, I wonder if it's time
to go home. Then Donald Trump comes on the news. This would be
enduring unnecessary hardship indeed, and born an American, I am not
genetically predisposed to it. But I fear even the British are going
to find their endurance tested should the election polls be correct.
The problem is assuming Brexit is the only issue, when social policy played a big part. 
The problem is assuming Brexit is the only issue, when social policy played a big part. 
