Happy St. George’s Day
Toward a rational View of Society: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 , 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 13a, 14 & 15
Update: this is the last of Toward a rational View of Society (1 — 15); other series are Speaking truth to Power (1 — 16a) and ANew World Order (I — X).
Note: written on 23 April 2016 after Obama’s visit, purportedly to help Remain side of the Brexit vote two months later... Rings true today, even though the conclusion may appear quaintly optimistic &/or idealistic in retrospect! And for a longer read from even earlier, see The longer view: why Brexit was inevitable.
US President Obama’s pro-EU comments during his visit to England raised not a few hackles in the Brexit camp. Johnson went so far as to suggest Obama had ‘a chip on his shoulder’ against Brits, and Farage appears to hark back to pre-EU, dare we say Victorian glory when Britain ruled the waves?
Of Magyar heritage myself, I am used to others harking back to pre-1956 Budapest Uprising or pre-1918 Trianon Treaty. But living in the Texas introduced me to Ohioans also of Magyar extraction, who don’t hark back to pre-1948 Uprisings, no… but rather to pre-1780 Empress Maria Theresa… ladies and gentlemen, meet the Maria-Theresopolitans!
So from my perspective, I am not entirely surprised that some Britons dream of former glory. So let me wax even more poetic, if you’ll allow me, and wonder on St. George’s day if some of the British don’t regret that King George III (no relation) did let go of the American colonies?
McCullough’s “1776: America and Britain at War” and Zinn’s “A Peoples History of the United States” paint an unfamiliar story: that Americans did not win their revolutionary war, as much as Britain did let go of their colonies! Late 18th c. Americans and Quebecois were querulous — perhaps not as much as those transported to farther Australian shores, but not sit-at-home types either — and they didn’t draw the economic benefit expected of colonies. East India Company started garnering that sort of wealth just about then, so that Britain eyed the East not the West — ambitious generals and civil servants headed to West Asia not to North America — so much so, McCullough relates, that not British generals but German ones and Hessian troops helped even the odds against the American Revolutionaries. McCullough also found through Washington’s letters that the odds were fairly even indeed, and the outcome by no means ‘a given’ as is taught in history classes.
So if “Britons First” campaigners dream of a Greater Britain, and if they mourn the loss of our American cousins, then why are they so keen to leave Europe themselves? They cannot have it both ways: Dream of a former unified if troubled status from a distant past, and at the same time call tomorrow for a separation from a current stable union with Europe?!
Former troubled state, you might ask? Howard Zinn will tell you the end of colonialism started very early with the Age of Enlightenment: Not only did philosophers and the masses herald the freedom of Man and thus abhorrence to slavery, but engineering and science ushered in the Industrial Revolution that eventually went counter to Colonialism. While initially it helped overseas trade and domestic cotton mills through better and faster ships and machinery, mechanisation ultimately went counter to the ‘ancien regime’: That was the need for very large tracts of land and cheap (often slave) labour to sustain a very inefficient and broad-based agrarian economies.
In other words, none of this can be reverted to. The European Union was built, not without difficulty, in the aftermath of WWII, which made our forefathers realise that cooperation not competition was the way forward. Separatism is no way to resolve differences, be it over the Refugee crisis or meddling, say, with policies to equalise women’s insurance rates or retirement age.
Separatism? I’m also Canadian, and lived in the western Province of Alberta, which is largely seen as subsidising the eastern Province of Quebec — ‘transfer funds’ are what provinces put into a federal fund as a function of each province’s gross revenue, and ‘equalisation payments’ are meant to help provinces less favoured with subsidies from those more favoured… and the $1B payment out-of Alberta for 2016 purportedly equates the payments in-to to Quebec — now every generation or so there is talk of Quebec leaving the Confederation… but that has yet to happen! Albertans see Quebecers as ‘the squeaky wheel that gets the grease’, meaning that they simply raise the spectre of separation to keep the concessions coming.
Now I myself often wonder if that is Scotland’s game too? Note that there are more Scots apparently in the eastern Canadian Province of Nova Scotia than in Scotland, can that be a coincidence? And so by extension is Brexit not playing the ‘squeaky wheel’ game also?
So to wrap it up, the Brexit vision of a Greater Britain outside a European Union, which they also see as being parcelled up soon, can only be seen as out-of-step with the times. The same way OJ Simpson’s trial in Los Angeles a generation ago was won on emotional not on rational grounds, Brexit runs on emotions not on reality. No number of economic arguments will counter it, as they sought to move the goal posts away from day-to-day realities. So Obama’s visit is the perfect counterpoint: he raised the emotional link that, in and of itself, runs for and not against a European Union!
Turning the emotional weapon against Brexit was a stroke of genius. Now let’s get on with the business of continuing to build a strong Europe, and address real issues such as the refugee or the financial crises in many member states. The same way Georgia and Czech Republic also claim Saint George as their own, let’s help him slay the dragon of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
