The worsening fear and loathing in our country that I wrote about yesterday (‘Fear and loathing in the UK’) is worse than anything I have experienced in my lifetime. Of course, there have been other times when things, and people, almost got out of hand, but nothing like this. There were times when you felt you daren’t say anything to disagree with the angry majority for fear of, I don’t know, lots of abuse and perhaps violence.
I remember the Falklands War in 1982 when few dared to question why Britain was at war with Argentina over a couple of islands in the South Atlantic. I was no spring chicken at the time. I was consumed with politics and it quickly became obvious to me that the Argentine invasion was as a direct result of the failings of Margaret Thatcher’s government, without which no invasion would or could have taken place. Newspapers, which were more important back then, made it clear you must support ‘Maggie’ and ‘our boys’, or else. I did support our armed service personnel because they were, heroically at times, performing old style war fare in the nuclear age. I wanted the fascist Argentine junta booted out. To protest was to be a traitor. But Thatcher messed up. You just daren’t say so.
The death of Princess Diana in 1997 felt the same. To say I was shocked when I woke one August morning to find Diana had been killed in a car crash would be an exaggeration. I felt sorry for her family, especially her two young sons, but only in the same way as I would if this had happened to anyone else. However, the country went mad. Thousands grieved in the streets, millions turned out to her funeral or watched it on telly and, incredibly, the football was cancelled. I later discovered it wasn’t just me who felt that many people had lost their sense of perspective. If you were seen or heard to express a view that was – how shall I put it? – slightly distant from Di’s death, you soon found out about it. I chose to keep my head down. It was only later I felt confident enough to express a view that the national hysteria was more than slightly bonkers. Now, it’s worse.
It was not just the EU referendum that started the country on a dangerous new track but it certainly exacerbated it. The financial crash of 2008, together with the advent of the gig economy, zero hours contracts and the creation of millions of mainly low paid jobs has changed our country. If you lose a good job now, you are less likely to find an equally good one. British workers have fewer rights than anyone else in Europe. Hundreds of thousands are in so called self-employment and earn far less than the minimum wage. People are, in many instances, poorer. With the country changing in so many ways, it is natural to ask why. Sadly, the far right said they had the answer: it was all about foreigners.
It was EU workers taking our jobs, it was muslims changing our culture. All of them were driving down our living standards. Desperate refugees and asylum seekers – they were benefit spongers, trying to get something for nothing, getting far more than indigenous folk, getting all the best jobs and housing. This was true: Nigel Farage had said so. We could save all this money by leaving the EU to “take back control” and give the NHS a billion quid extra every three weeks ago. It would be so easy, “the easiest deal in history” said the disgraced former defence secretary Liam Fox. It was all a big lie, peddled by the hard right who see this as a golden opportunity to roll back the state, to end the regulations that protect ordinary folk, to let unfettered capitalism have its day.
Whether it is Boris Johnson or Tommy Robinson, we are told foreigners are to blame. As someone with more ‘foreign’ blood than English, a Scandinavian surname and Dutch middle name, I wonder “Do they mean me?” Are the problems being suffered in Britain the fault of my Norwegian grandfather who came to this country in the early 1900s to help set up a company or my mother who came here from the Netherlands to marry my father? Why are my ancestors any different from the Europeans of today? With weak leaders, the country suffers still more. And weak leaders open the door to populists who have slogans that can sound oh so attractive.
Would this country be in the mess it is today without Brexit? Who knows? Brexit, in any form, will be a disaster for this country but might all this fear and loathing have happened in any event? David Cameron’s austerity driven governments of 2010 and 2015 and now Theresa May’s austerity driven governments of 2016 and 2017 might have caused the same problems as we face today without Brexit.
Will I soon feel like I did during the Falklands War or after Diana’s death, keeping my head down, hopping things turn out fine? If not Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson, then what about a currently little known charismatic figure of the far right, an Oswald Mosley, was to emerge, offering simple solutions amid the rhetoric and slogans, dressed up as hope?
I’m a secularist who is opposed to the failed experiment of multiculturalism and any form of religious privilege. I am a left of centre mainstream (currently ex) Labour supporter. I am an internationalist, I support Churchill’s vision of Europe, which today we seek to leave behind. Weak leadership from mainstream politicians and the empty rhetoric of populists is not what this country needs today. If we don’t act today, we will have major problems tomorrow, if not today. And I am very worried about it.
