You used to know where you stood, often quite literally.
Entering a busy fish and chip shop, where people waited for various nowadays
incomprehensible orders, there was a certain Englishness in the calm order in
which matters were dealt with; first come, first served, elders to the front of
the queue. Ah the queue, for which we were once famous throughout the world,
the very epitome of fairness and egalitarianism.
We didn’t need an identity in the modern sense, for we
all had one already and one with far stronger bonds than the myriad fractured
hierarchies of grievance to be found today in the relative pain rankings of
gender, sexuality, race, learning needs and disability. It was once considered
impolite to talk about politics or religion but nowadays we have little else –
and some religions are legally off-limits. So all we have left is politics...
and the weather, although even the weather is now fraught with difficulty
depending on how far down the climate change rabbit hole you have ventured.
But the biggest division today is, of course, Brexit. And
it is a division which shows so much about how far we have travelled since the
chip shop days. If you are older and still have a sense of the common bond of
Englishness (and I do mean English as opposed to British; British is no longer
an easy and reassuring identifier) you will likely have voted to try and regain
that enviable status. If you are young and have been brought up to believe that the
source of all that is good is somewhere else, you are probably a remainer.
If you are an older Brexiteer you are probably a little
confused and certainly dismayed at the disdain the young show for a thousand
years of modern history. If you are young you are probably furious at the
nasty, crusty old leavers who have, in the current parlance, ‘stolen your
future’. If you are young, of course, you also know nothing that others haven’t
told you... you don’t even realise this fully because, as young people, you
still need to be protected from your illogical and self-destructive urges.
We used to do that, we ‘old people’. Nobody voted to make
your lives poorer, we voted to make all our lives more meaningful. You may not
see a problem in globalism, blasphemy laws, unlimited, unchecked migration, Ponzi
welfare systems and the culture of self above all else, but we do. You will
still be able to spread your wings, travel the world, see wonders and better
yourselves. Having, maybe, to put the tiniest bit more effort into it might be
the making of you. But in or out, what you become has always been in your
hands; nobody has taken that from you.
And when you’ve made something worthy of yourself, when
you are yourself sitting back and taking stock of your life, we hope that one
day you will appreciate: “This royal
throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little
world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office
of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier
lands,--This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
No need to thank us.
They won't know what they've got 'til it's gone
ReplyDeleteTwas ever thus. Besides, it's nearly gone anyway.
Delete