Citizens of Nowhere, the Battle of Britain, and island mentalities
As the debate continues over the ongoing residency/employment/general rights of EU citizens currently living in Britain once we leave the European Union (proud to say my old boss, Lord Cormack, was one of the Tory rebels yesterday), a superb, heartbreaking Facebook comment from a friend of a friend that cuts right to the chase:
“it was the Tories that made me a citizen of nowhere by depriving me of my vote in the referendum because I live ‘abroad’ in the European Union. Having distorted the franchise by letting Commonwealth nationals vote but stripping British expats of their say, they then led the country out of the EU and into the wilderness. What is citizenship without the right to vote? So I’m now seeking to become a citizen in the country where I live, and which allows its nationals to vote when they live abroad”
Again, I return to Francis Bacon: “If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island, cut off from other lands, but a continent, that joins to them.”
We cannot be a global Britain while treating Brits abroad, or non-Brits at home, as less important, less deserving of compassion, less deserving of rights. Deporting people’s wives, mothers and grandmothers based on administrative prissiness. Locking up star students because their father had the temerity to die of cancer.
This is not a Britain that makes me proud to be British.
The Brexiteer myth of British difference stems in large part from the Battle of Britain. Britain standing alone in the face of overwhelming odds after Europe had fallen. Britain doing what was right, no matter the cost.
Even ignoring the fact that the Battle of Britain was fought by pilots from 15 nations beside Britain (and supported by ground crew from many more), Brexit is the precise opposite of the Battle of Britain spirit. We aren’t standing up for what’s right — we’re standing up for selfishness (and misguided selfishness at that).
And this is being seen and recognised around the world: Britain is turning against foreigners. It is turning inwards. It makes superficial noises about free trade and openness while turning its back on the people (see the PM’s failed trip to India as a prime case in point). It is a Britain interested in money alone, not in humanity. It is a selfish, unwelcoming place.
British perspectives
Britain’s period of greatness started when she started looking outward to the world. Her failures have come when looking inward.
Island nations are indeed different. They are indeed cut off from the world. But looked at differently, the sea is a bridge — and this is how we used to look at it, as this description of 7th century English thinking from Michael Pye’s excellent The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are makes clear:
“Stand on the banks of the River Orwell [at Ipswich, Suffolk] and look out at the world. If you think of the time it takes to get to places, then Bergen in Norway is closer than York in England, even if your boat depends on the muscle power of rowers; but York is only 340km by road on modern maps, while Bergen is 510km by sea. The coast of Jutland is closer, and better connected, than an English Midlands city like Worcester. You could be over the water and in the port of Quentovic, on the border between modern France and modern Belgium, in half the time it took to get to London overland; and if you had a faster ship, under sail, you could be in Jutland sooner than in London… It was easy for Scandinavians to be in York, Frisians in Ipswich, Saxons in London, and the fact was so unremarkable that it is hardly recorded.”
Island mentalities
Being based on an island can make you insular and inward looking. But it’s the islanders who look outwards who have always been the ones who made Britain great.
To borrow and adapt Donald Trump’s inane slogan, I’m all for making Britain great again. But to do so, we need to look outward, not inward — to work with people from other countries, not set ourselves up in opposition to them.
The rhetoric we’re currently using, at home and abroad, is actively hostile to all things foreign. This attitude will see us fail as a country.
And, in the process, it is already actively destroying the lives of many individuals, both British and non-British. This thoughtless, callous destruction will not be forgotten for decades.
Far from being an opportunity to make new friends outside the EU, our current disgusting, deliberately hostile post-Brexit attitude towards “Citizens of the World” both at home and abroad is creating lifelong enemies.
