Were we always like this? What is it that makes so many of us ashamed of our country?
Perhaps the current riots are the last link in the chain we’ve had to drag through history – part of our psyche, some sense of bitter regret at not being who we fantasise we once were. That could mean the British Empire; or the dashing heroics of Elizabeth’s Tudor England; or perhaps further back, to Hastings. There is a longing among some for the Anglo-Saxon country they imagine we were before that ‘first’ invasion, by William in 1066. (Though of course you could blame invaders all the way back to the Romans, and no doubt some still do.)
In one of his earliest speeches in the Commons, on EU membership, Jacob Rees-Mogg excitedly quoted the full ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends’ speech from Henry V, then added, “That’s the way to deal with Europe!” And he was apparently serious.
Blood on the carpet
(That bit, ‘or close the wall up with our English dead’, is very English. We always prefer blood on the carpet to conciliation. We would much prefer the blood to be our opponent’s, but better our blood than no blood at all.)
No doubt we have to put much of it down to our being an island race. Readers will recall the tale of the people of Hartlepool hanging a monkey because they thought it was a French spy. It didn’t speak English, it looked funny, so therefore it should be attacked. How far have we come from there?
More pertinent though, is the war. It was understandable at the time to feel it was us against the bad guys. In fact, the British Empire counted for about 16% of the war dead. Russia accounted for 60%. The problem was, we picked ourselves up afterwards and decided we won it almost alone. But by the end of the war, we were a diminished country, and we needed to cling on to the tattered remnants of previous glory.
An attack on their finest hour
I grew up in the 1950s, and the war and memories of the war were everywhere. For the men, it was understandably their finest hour, and they lived on it for the rest of their lives. They had much to be proud of. But they were looking backwards, and when the 60s arrived and my generation wanted something new, they saw it as an attack on them and all their friends who had died. Things had changed: there were black faces on the streets, too, and economically and culturally, Britain was beginning to feel its age. Then, the ‘70s and further decline, and Britain having to face the ignominy, in many eyes, of joining Europe. It is not surprising many people put two and two together and decided, Black people and other foreigners and all these poncy new ideas were the cause.
They should be bloody grateful
Browsing through the old films on offer on TV will never fail to produce half a dozen war films, every single day. After all, at the time, and immediately afterwards, the war was the huge drama in everybody’s lives. So that’s what film makers portrayed. Ever since, if you’re looking for an old British film, you’d be hard pressed to find one that wasn’t khaki. So, the war and the part played by our brave lads has become our prevailing culture.
For the rest of Europe, the war had meant destruction and humiliation. Centuries of history and culture were wiped out. All of Europe had watched helplessly as enemy tanks rumbled down their streets.
We had our bomb sites, but we had survived. We were exceptional. Not to put too fine a point on it, they should all be bloody grateful to us for saving them.
Could Brexit be our nemesis?
It seemed to me this sense of British exceptionalism could only be eradicated when we suffered our own comparable humiliation, though I couldn’t guess what that might be. Then came Brexit, with all its hubris and delusion, and the nemesis which was surely awaiting us would be the equivalent of tanks rumbling down our streets.
But to suffer humiliation, you need self-awareness. If you’re not aware others are laughing at you, pitying you, thinking you deluded, then your world view will remain unchanged.
For 14 years we lived under a government which could only look backwards, since today’s reality wouldn’t countenance their ideology. So, the nation’s politics began to re-align itself. Change goes with education, careers, getting on. Suspicion of change is the counsellor of those who fear that change can only make bad things worse. So, those staunchly working-class bastions of Labour support were also often deeply suspicious of change, and they began to see the Conservatives as the party for them.
No Tory MP defended immigration
Meanwhile, the government skimped on education, since they had never really bought into the idea of progress for all. Education, anyway, was full of dangerous ideas of change, and should be kept to a minimum. Those working-class areas festered, knowing little change, and suspicious of what there was. Limited education offered them no reassurances regarding their growing unease at the arrival of immigrants, seen as rivals for increasingly scarce public services.
It was never in the interests of the Conservative Party to disabuse them of their suspicions and growing hatred. It would probably be impossible over the past decade to find any statement from a Tory politician defending immigration, however crucial it is to the economy and to the very services which these communities lacked. New ideas and different races only challenged their delusions of a new Camelot.
Can these rioters be patriots?
So, we find ourselves with pockets of an almost feral underclass, easy targets for those manipulators with cynical ends in mind. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” when ‘patriotism’ is not real patriotism, and does not represent the love of one’s country: ‘patriotism’ is on the rioters’ lips, but it isn’t a word which naturally looms in the homes where these people come from. It’s a word they have learned from politicians; and from their lips they have also realised that ‘patriotism’ is a word which can be used to camouflage all kinds of hate and destruction. The last refuge of a scoundrel indeed.
