The European Referendum is not only about Europe. It is not only about trade, quotas and being at the behest of so-called, unaccountable faceless Brussels bureaucrats. No, it goes much deeper than that. It is about our self-confidence as a society and as individuals. About base instincts that swirl within us, about Them and Us.
Throughout history, we in these islands, indeed for a shorter period of time in Newton Aycliffe, have lived in a land invigorated by the constant lapping waves of European migrants; indeed many generations ago, my ancestors came to these shores from Norway, via Scotland. We, in essence are a nation state of immigrants – whether it be from Viking, Saxon, Angle, Friesian or Jute ancestry – feel threatened by what we perceive as being the opening flood gates of further immigration to OUR country.
We have a fear of losing our national identity. An identity, ever changing, that has been shaped and moulded from and by the human raw material provided over the centuries by many waves of immigrants.
We are no longer, as Roger Miller sang a nation of “Bobbies on bicycles, two by two, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben – the rosy red cheeks of the little children.” Those times have gone and gone forever. We are a parochial lot; we have prejudicial feelings – irrational or not – against all manner of things both Macrocosmic: the Germans; the French; Southerners and so on. At the microcosmic level, it is those who support a different football team – Newcastle v Sunderland – or even who live in a different town or even village. But this is not wrong or right. It is just human. We are like that.
But to come to rational decisions based on facts we have to understand what Soren Kierkegaard wrote: “Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are”. Vote according to facts and not prejudices.
We have had two World Wars within the last century or so. I would like to think that two is more than enough for our planet at the moment. True, we will squabble and bad mouth our fellow Europeans at times because, well, that is what we are about!
In conclusion John Donne wrote: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”. I think he got it just about right.
Do you?
Derek G Atkinson
Denham Place