LONDON LETTER JUNE 2019
To speak of England and Britain or the UK as if they were
one and the same thing, as many in the US and on the European continent are
often want to do, always demonstrates a lack of understanding, particularly
galling for Scottish citizens, but is now a form of deception, witting or
otherwise. In a very real sense as a political unit,
This process began with the SNP landslides at the beginning
of the new century but it has taken Brexit to blow the union wide open. All of
this was perfectly foreseeable, indeed I
wrote about it in 2013, and I make no claims to special insights, I did not
need a crystal ball. Though, in an age when political stupidity has become
ubiquitous, it is still incredible that NI unionists backed leave seemingly oblivious
to the consequences for the province.
Crystal ball or not, I failed to foresee was the combination
of stupidity and malignancy that the modern conservative would become. No
matter who wins the leadership contest the party now is the creation of Nigel Farage.
A man who in less than a decade has destroyed the cohesion, primarily of English
and Welsh, society and created the circumstances in which the union can surely
no longer hold together. If, as now looks increasingly likely, we are wrenched
out of the EU without a formal agreement then we will enter year zero. The
destruction will begin in earnest.
Things fall apart
The centre cannot hold
And anarchy is unleashed upon the world.
The mix of nostalgia for a world that never existed along
with the notion of British history as one long seamless unfolding of liberty,
freely granted by a patriotic and paternalistic ruling elite, who also sought
to share British virtues with the rest of the globe, is the swamp out of which
Brexit emerged. Educated in Secondary Modern school in the late 1960s, what
little history I was taught was a tale of English exceptionalism. Even the civil
war had a ‘happy’ [sic] ending with the restoration. The king back in his castle
the poor man marched back to the gate. We inhabited a ‘sceptred isle’ destined
to rule the greatest empire ever.
This was the history taught to all ‘baby-boomers’ like
me. It was the history they took into the privacy of the voting booth on a
Thursday in late June 2006. They had had enough, they wanted no more rules
‘dictated’ by Brussels, we rule makers not rule takers, we kicked
ass. Brexit stood for making Britain
great again.
Our future is now being decided by revolutionary zealots,
though like most revolutionaries they have no idea, beyond wishful thinking, what
this future will look like.
I have just finished Ministry of Truth a Biography of George
Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey it is an extremely good book and I have never
read a better one on how Orwell’s world view was constructed. However, Lynskey’s greatest achievement has
been in helping Orwell down from the pedestal upon which, despite all his
protestations, he has been placed for so long. Enabling Orwell to have a fag,
drink a mug of mahogany coloured tea, and be unfair about HG Wells. Orwell a
mere mortal once more.
I first read 1984 in 1972 when I was 16. I took away with me,
what most people take, a sense of the fragility of the individual in contrast
to the immense power of the state. I also took away with me something else,
harder to pin down, it is something that Lynskey focuses on brilliantly. There was something strangely contemporary
about the book.
In 1972 I, like most people, thought 1984 could not possibly
maintain its extraordinary power after the year 1984. Instead of which, owing to this uncanny quality of feeling somehow
contemporary
the book has, if anything, grown in power.
The sun is out and I have been unwell, being unwell
separates you from others, creating a mist between you and the world of
activities and healthy concerns. Being ill, even as I am only moderately unwell
introduces you to a reality that people dive into the sunshine to forget, the fragility of the human body, the fragility of life.
