Europe and the decline of Britishness

As the 'Brexit' (whether Britain should exit from the European Union) debate rages on, with claims that the country has lost its sovereignty as a result of the Union, Jeremy Seabrook argues that Britain's sovereignty is indeed compromised, but that the elements which are fretted over are highly selective.

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THE rhetoric of the Right against the decline of 'British values' and the sense of national cohesion is firmly directed against Europe: ancient foes have combined in the guise of a European Union in an assault upon British 'sovereignty', and have deprived us of our capacity for independent decision-making. Our laws, according to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and many in the Conservative Party, are largely framed in Brussels, and erode that self-determination of which we are so proud that we generously bestowed it upon others at the end of the long imperial moment. This has reduced us to the position of outlying province in an 'ever-closer political union' of the dissolving European project. The free movement of labour is an affront to the character of a nation impaired by the presence of those whose languages we cannot understand and who are 'taking our jobs'.

This has overtaken earlier hostility towards non-European immigration, previously seen as the principal source of dilution of national character. Many - not all - on the Right are anxious to demonstrate that racism has no part in their distaste for European immigrants, since the majority of these are white, and still unwelcome for all that. Here is a clear illustration of the distinction between 'racism' and 'xenophobia'. Racism has not, of course, gone away, but is now focussed on Islamophobia, which also feeds continuing concern with an 'alien presence' in Britain.

The referendum pledged by Prime Minister David Cameron on Britain's continued membership in the European Union revives nostalgia for the time when we were masters, not only of our own destiny but also of the fate of millions of imperial subjects across the globe. This is sometimes referred to as 'punching above our weight in the world'. Cameron's 'renegotiation' of our relationship with the EU concentrates on four issues: a guarantee that Britain would not have to contribute to 'bailouts' of countries which share the euro currency, a reduction of the 'burden' of excessive regulation (a want of which led to the banking crisis and subsequent crash), and a rejection of 'ever-closer union', of which there is small danger in the present state of discord between the EU's component countries. His most passionate concern, however, is not with these questions, but with his desire to exclude migrants from any welfare benefits (whether in or out of work) for the first four years of their stay in Britain.

Thus we see the chilling spectacle of the Prime Minister racing through European cities to save small amounts of 'taxpayers' money', while the great upheavals caused by indiscriminate slaughter, war and the ruin of whole countries threaten to overwhelm the continent. Tides of humanity, set in irreversible movement to which our own actions have made no small contribution, leave a Mediterranean floating with corpses, humiliated refugees behind barbed wire reminiscent of prison camps and cliffs of stone that mimic the Berlin Wall, while their 'valuables' are confiscated by Denmark, and the deportation orders are stamped in the appropriate departments of capital cities.

Echoes of familiar experience are unmistakeable. We have been here before, and not only in the aftermath of the war against Nazism. Britain rejected membership of the Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s, precisely because it rejected any 'supranational authority'. It wanted no part of the Treaty of Rome in 1957, because Britain still retained grandiose fantasies about its 'world-role', in the shape of an empire that had mutated into something called a 'Commonwealth'. This, naturally, failed to live up in any way to its name, since it comprised some of the richest countries in the world and some of the poorest, and redistribution of any 'common wealth' was emphatically not part of its remit.

By 1963, Britain applied to become a member of the then Common Market, but France's leader, Charles de Gaulle, vetoed it on the grounds of British hostility towards European integration; a refusal repeated four years later. Britain joined in 1973 - a policy confirmed by referendum in 1975 - but always as a faintly condescending participant. 'After all, we won the war' has remained part of the subtext.

All this is fascinating, but it scarcely engages with the real forces undermining what we like to think of as our uniquely British identity. These have affected the national psyche far more profoundly than the bureaucrats of Brussels, who are presently accused of 'taking our country from us'. Yet they are not subject to the vitriol reserved for those we call our 'European partners'.

The principal agent of our faltering identity is Britain's subservience to the United States. This is no new thing, but it has intensified in recent decades, and Britain's mimicry of the US is no longer confined to support for that power's elective wars (with Iraq the enduring evidence of our voluntary surrender of autonomy). Our festivals, culture, idiom and way of living are all now inflected by forces emanating from the US. The power of 'political money' and the revolving door between politicians and the private sector (especially in armaments, pharmaceuticals, banking and energy) were lessons eagerly acquired through the high tutelage of those we used to refer to as our 'American cousins', a kinship that has become dangerously incestuous in recent decades. 

Falling public confidence in the electoral system, a growing army of non-voters, the disengaged and dropped-out of democracy, pioneered in the US, is faithfully reproduced in Britain, where transnational entities now also 'negotiate' their feather-light tax burdens with the authorities; and rich 'anti-establishment' politicians like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage offer remedies for loss of faith in 'establishments' with promises to make America/Britain 'great again'. The current 'welfare reforms' are a version of experiments conducted in the US for the past 20 years. The government is also keen to dismantle the BBC for the sake of the market-driven news favoured by the US. This largely uncommented passage into a foreign culture is rarely seen as a forfeit of identity; certainly the alleged 'diktats' of Brussels have nothing to do with it. 

The growing power of the US over our public discussion is evident in our language - euphemisms like 'collateral damage' (the death of innocents in war), 'enhanced coercive interrogation techniques' (torture), 'friendly fire', 'surgical strikes', 'special rendition' (kidnapping). Entities we had never dreamed existed spring into our consciousness: whoever heard of an 'intelligence community', 'undocumented migrants', 'hard-core unemployed', 'underperforming assets'? It was not the EU which presented us with such elegant concepts as 'reduced headcount', 'vocational relocation', ' the elephant in the room', 'embedded media' or 'rightsizing' - an extensive lexicon of obfuscation and jargon to render palatable what would, in straight human communication, be unacceptable.

Our traditions and culture are also voluntarily surrendered in favour of more urgent festivals: Hallowe'en, which lends itself to a lot of fancy dress, trick-or-treat being far more commercially fulfilling than shabby Guy Fawkes celebrations. And whoever heard of 'Black Friday', the day after Thanksgiving, as a day of frenzied discounted shopping? We were innocent of such practices as 'bridal showers' and 'baby showers' until initiated into these (money-making) rites by our betters. Many schools now regularly have a 'prom' for 'graduates', while young men spend the whole year in defiance of meteorological reality dressed for a Californian climate. The whoops and screams of TV audiences are also borrowed reactions, a far cry from what used to be known as British restraint. Formerly, when some unheard-of criminal act - drive-by shootings, mass slayings in places of education, sieges at the headquarters of religious cults - was reported in Britain, people used to say 'It couldn't happen here.' Now, we look on in grim awareness that we are looking at our own future.

This is not, of course, the only source of our weakening sense of self. There may be subdued grumbling over the foreign ownership of what used to be considered 'quintessentially' British companies, brands and institutions, but external economic control of these is considered inevitable, and not an assault upon our sense of who we are. The Qataris own the Shard, parts of Canary Wharf, Harrods, One Hyde Park, 20% of the London Stock Exchange, 20% of Camden Market and much of the natural liquid gas imported into Britain. The Saudis own builders the Berkeley Group and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal owns the Savoy Hotel; much of the wealth of the Saudis in Britain is in discreet holding companies. Abu Dhabi is less reticent: the royal family is the largest landowner in Mayfair. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority owns New Scotland Yard, 16% of Gatwick Airport, 9.9% of Thames Water. China has interests in Barclays, BP, drinks conglomerate Diageo and Thames Water, Weetabix and Lloyds. It owns 10% of Heathrow, the port of Felixstowe, much student accommodation and Drapers Gardens in the City of London. Agreement was reached recently between Electricite de France and the China General Nuclear Power Corporation to build the new power station at Hinckley Point in Somerset. The cost of electricity - at œ92.50 per megawatt hour - is twice the current rate. An undertaking has also been made for China to build and operate two nuclear power stations at Sizewell and Bradwell.

This is perceived as a necessary functioning of globalisation and not as a diminution of Britain's independence, although whether we are enhanced by these realities is difficult to say. Business Secretary Sajid Javid, speaking in the House of Commons on 20 October 2015, seemed to admit that our capacity to control our destiny is circumscribed, when he said, apropos of the loss of jobs in three steel industry plants (two of them owned by Thai and Indian companies): 'There are limits to what the government can do in response. No government can change the price of steel in the global market; no government can dictate foreign exchange rates; and no government can simply disregard international regulations on free trade and state aid - regulations that are regularly used to protect British workers and British industry.'

The government makes a virtue of its own powerlessness in this context, while in every other circumstance it is keen to display its ability to control everything. It takes noisy credit for its 'delivery' of rising employment, zero inflation, accelerating economic growth, cuts in welfare and the curtailment of the activities of potential terrorists: an assertion of national dignity that leaves shrouded in silence its failure to protect what many regard as much of our heritage.

Perhaps this is why we cling to the outer symbols of our sometime supremacy, our 'sovereignty' and independence. The monarchy, for all its modernising impulse, still means the Queen, archaic and imperishable figure of unflinching and dutiful rectitude. The (literally) crumbling Houses of Parliament take on a more ponderous role as their actual power slips away. 'Traditions' become corporate events - the shooting season, Henley Regatta, Wimbledon, Cowes Week, Ascot and all the rest confer a sense of changeless stability, although beneath there is continuous churning and change; while the division of labour witnessed the end of manufacturing and the rise of services, finance and retail, without any acknowledgement of the profound shift in popular sensibility this entailed. Britain is a museum cocooned in a shopping mall, and yet we play at continuities as though we had something to offer the world other than a language - rebranded as American - in which to discuss the true meaning of contemporary life, which is our ability to turn every object, experience, feeling and every human thing into some tradeable commodity.

Britain's sovereignty, it is clear, is compromised, economically, culturally, socially. But the elements over which we fret are highly selective. Europe, migrants and refugees are blamed for our abandonment of much we claim to hold dear, while we are asked to bless the passing over of power - nuclear power at that - water and public services (including care of the elderly and most vulnerable) to unanswerable entities domiciled in the ethereal, untraceable regions in which finance is now transacted; while in London, whole streets of shuttered mansions testify to 'inward investment' of the super-rich. In the silence of these deserted thoroughfares all you can hear is the soft sound of assets appreciating.

We voluntarily exchange what we championed as our most cherished British characteristics - our reserve, sense of fair play and justice - in favour of shallow displays of emotion, abandonment of our own culture and sensibility. At the same time, we are to teach British values to those at risk of becoming 'disaffected' from our enduring ideals; none of which bear much resemblance to daily reality, apart, perhaps, from one abiding quality which foreign ownership and external dominance have not so far dispelled - the accomplished practice of hypocrisy.                                           

Jeremy Seabrook is a freelance journalist based in the UK. His latest book is The Song of the Shirt (published by Navayana).

*Third World Resurgence No. 305/306, January/February 2016, pp 61-63