Backward legacy

Make no mistake, the EU has largely been an economic free-trade project, and so claims that that being anti-Europe is a default right-wing position are tinged with more than a little irony. With that economic project, however, have also come certain notions of solidarity and expanded horizons that have proved to be valuable.

The 1979 UK was a far more insular, parochial place than the UK we see today. The idea of a nation not just cut off from Europe, but happily cut off, was a powerful vein that ran through the popular imagination. It fueled the fires of both British Exceptionalism and national individualism. The idea would sometimes morph into the palpable. “The Continent” (as many in Britain liked to call Europe) felt much further away than the mere 21 miles of water separating English Dover from French Calais.

We need to remember that 1979 UK was still nine years away from the start of the construction of the Channel Tunnel, and 15 years away from its opening. For someone from the UK to get to even the closest point on continental Europe took some effort. A boat. A plane. And this was before low-cost airlines. The psychological impact of that separation – again, a separation that was not always lamented, and often celebrated – can’t be underestimated.

In 1979 UK, most young people didn’t define themselves as “European”. To call someone that was a mild insult. It carried with it the distinct whiff of Otherness. European-ness was about strikes, laziness, odd food, strong cigarettes, weird languages and strange customs. It was also about outright xenophobia, crystallized in the representations of southern Europe and southern Europeans.

Europe in the late 70s also carried the after-shocks of war. When I moved to the UK in the 1979, there were people walking around in the cities, towns and villages who had fought in World War II. And some of these people were still only in their mid-50s. Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t Mention The War” line wasn’t some arcane joke. It was still very much real. This was also residual animosity between formerly competing colonial empires.

Then, things began to change.

The dour 70s and brutal Thatcherite 80s gave way to a vision of the UK as a nation not separated from, but a part of, Europe. This change was not seismic, but gradual. The opposition to Europe was slowly-but-clearly eroding with the winds of history. As time passed, younger UK citizens embraced what it meant to be European. The London of 1999 was a long way from the London of 1979. Europe was now part of the future, not the past.

Excerpted from: ‘Brexit’s Backward Legacy: The Past Swallowing The Future’.

Commondreams.org