By Glenn N. Holliman

Our regular writer, Terry Field of Normandy, France, passed along this article from the 'Financial Times' of London. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom is betting his government on a June 23 referendum asking the populous if the U.K. wishes to remain in the European Union.  The vote, pro or con, will have profound ramifications for the future of Europe and the United Kingdom.  For example, many Scottish Nationalists have advocated removing Scotland from the U.K. if the U.K. leaves the E.U.  And this is just for starters!  There are always issues such as trade, police cooperation, terrorism, immigration and that tricky concept called the balance of power between Germany and France (think World Wars I and II).

Terry passed this article to his friend also living in Normandy, France, another Englishman, David Lott, one of the founders of the United Kingdom Independent Party. UKIP favors withdrawal from the E.U.  For our American readers, David's dislike of intrusive government reflects the USA's current political acrimonious debate.  - GNH


UK’s EU referendum

News, comment and analysis on the referendum to decide whether Britain will leave the EU

By Phillip Stevens of the Financial Times, February 21, 2016

David Cameron has his deal. Now it is best forgotten. The prime minister says six months of intense negotiation with Britain’s European partners delivered a triumph; the Outs say nothing much has changed. The argument is immaterial. A decision on Britain’s place in the world cannot turn on whether in-work benefits should be paid to Polish plumbers.

The referendum campaign will pit internationalism against nationalism, the political establishment against insurgent populism and the world as it is against nostalgia for a bygone age. Mr Cameron’s essential pitch is that Britain is stronger, safer and more prosperous within the EU.

His antagonists imagine plucky Britain throwing up the barricades against its neighbours and setting its own terms for its relationship with the world.

On the face of it, this is a debate that should be easily won by the pro-Europeans. Some 23 of his 29 cabinet ministers have lined up with the prime minister. So has most of the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Trade unionists will stand alongside business leaders in arguing that jobs and living standards depend on Britain’s access to the single market. They are right.

The Outs call this “project fear”. It is nothing of the sort. There is nothing discreditable about pointing out that economic interdependence is one of the facts of modern life or that the other 27 EU states are unlikely to shower gifts on a departing Britain.

The Brexit camp is similarly weak on the matter of national security. A measure of the threats and risks facing Britain and the response demands close international co-operation. Membership of Nato is not enough. Britain controls its border at Calais only with the help of the French. The fight against terrorism depends on the European Arrest Warrant. Standing up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia demands EU-wide sanctions. It is no accident that Britain’s closest allies, the US foremost among them, have added their voices to the in campaign. 

The Outs struggle to paint a picture of life outside the EU. The loudest, nativist wing of the leave movement sees opposition to immigration as the answer. Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence party, promises that Britain will slam the door against “the 500m people” now entitled to come to Britain. Putting aside the eccentric notion that the Germans, Italians, French and Spanish all want to come to Britain, Mr Farage has no answer to the reality that free trade and free movement of people are inextricably linked. 

The divisions run deeper. The smaller, mainly Conservative Vote Leave grouping simply refuses to discuss any of the alternatives to EU membership. To do so would expose the deep divisions between those who want to retain access to the single market and those seeking a total break — some imagine Britain as Norway, others see Singapore as the model. None can say with any certainty on what terms it would trade with its main economic partners.

The glib response to all this is that the pro-Europeans are assured of a comfortable victory. Even if Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, adds a touch of colour and magnetism to the “out” campaign, the British people, being British, will choose the status quo over a leap into the dark; uncomfortable Europe over unknown risks. 

If the normal rules of politics applied this would be true. They do not. The story of modern democracies is one of an insurgency against the elites — of a Republican party in the US flirting with Donald Trump, of the rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and a Labour party in Britain that has chosen the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. The backing of the establishment may turn out as much a weakness as a strength for pro Europeans.

The Out campaign will rely on more than the national exceptionalism that has long seen Britain a semi-detached member of the EU. It will tap into a broader backlash against globalisation, exploit public fears about immigration, will rail against bankers and corporate “fat cats” and offer voters a chance to punish Mr Cameron for his government’s austerity programme. It will appeal to emotion over logic. A referendum about Europe, the Ins can win comfortably; not so one that turns on what voters feel about the state of the world. - philip.stephens@ft.com

David Lott responds:  

I find the article superficial and rather Establishment.

Before we consider the referendum it is worth looking at the stability, prosperity and solidarity of the EU as a whole. Let us ask the question, "would we join the EU as it is today if we had never joined in the first place?" because if we vote to remain that is in reality what is on offer.  

Two English friends, deep thinkers in their generation.  David, right, flew for the Royal Air Force, as did his father in the Battle of Britain.  Terry, left, articulate writer, prone to the long view of the human condition, now retired businessman.  Terry and David have shared many glasses of vino and calvodos, going back and forth on European and British politics, often disagreeing, always friends.

The EU is in a mess. Growth is stagnant, the Euro unmanageable without ever closer union but ever closer union is not only at odds with the British view but also those countries bitterly opposed to the Merkel invitation to the millions of migrants and refugees without consulting her EU colleagues. Sanctions against Russia after the Ukraine fiasco also divide EU countries as some oppose this and the weight of sanctions against the EU weighs unfairly upon certain individual countries. Terrorism is rife and violent rape stalks the continent. Not a pretty picture and just ask a Greek what he or she thinks of it. I am sure joining the EU today would be a non starter.

In response to the article I agree in a sense that it is the Establishment against the People (and by that I do not agree that this can be equated with the word populism). More deeply I feel that it is reality versus wishful thinking.

Politicians have become so remote from the lives of us ordinary folk that their remedies to problems just create more problems. How can a politician, an unelected one at that, in Brussels possibly understand what a terrible impact that the decision to allow the Chinese to dump cheap steel on the EU market has on steelworkers in Sheffield and Wales? To which is added the over the top carbon taxes piled on this industry by a different group of bureaucrats/politicians who simply do not seem to communicate with one another. The steelworker turns to his government in the UK for help but there is nothing his government can do as the laws are made in Brussels and cannot be rescinded even on a temporary basis by the helpless government in London. 

This is but one example of so many. We get some 30,000 rules, regulations and Directive a year from the EU that impinge upon our lives. Our media censors much of this information as our government dare not reveal how much authority they have given away.

So the referendum will be fought on what is relevant today in the village towns and cities of the UK. The campaign is a grass roots construct so the campaigners are in touch down to street level. We understand the fears and hopes better than those in the Remain campaign, in other words we live in a real world, not some PR dominated fictional dream. So the detail of the campaign will reflect ordinary peoples fears and hopes and by doing so we hope to shatter the Establishment and provide the opportunity to rebuild a free and independent nation at ease with the world and the role it can play in proportion to its size and importance.

The restoration of our freedom to conduct our own affairs is all we ask.

The final point I shall make concerns the rise of Germany and the tensions it is creating. Mrs. Merkel has presided over the ruination of Greece, the mass immigration flooding into all EU countries some of whom are genuine refugees but the majority, and they are the trouble makers, are single male economic migrants of whom some carry the Islamic torch. The low value of the Euro has allowed Germany to undermine manufacturing throughout EU  but in the southern states in particular, and it then fills the space with its own production. All this happened whilst Britain has been an EU member and we have been helpless to stop it. I do not know if we could restrain Germany if outside the EU but we certainly could not do worse than we have to date.

All the best

Comments anyone?!

From a science professor in the Midlands of England, just back from the Antarctica....

I'm a passionate European and don't give a fig for "National Sovereignty", whatever that could mean in our one-party state. However, it was fairly easy to apply such idealism to a relatively manageable EU of a few nations (France, Germany, Italy etc) which had some sort of parity. Now that the EU has become an huge unwieldy diverse mix of nations solvent and less so, liberal and less so, economically viable and less so, I think the ideal of a united Europe is an impossible dream. I genuinely do not know how to vote in the upcoming referendum. Is it not sad that it's going to be decided on a selfish, pragmatic, "what's in it for us?" campaign?

(I'd rather be in Antarctica again, when the realities of life were far away!)

D

From a cousin in Alabama....

Another cup? Glenn, after reading this, my coffee pot is empty! 

Mike

An Englishman Visits the States

by Glenn N. Holliman

In this space, I often share insights by persons I have met in my life.  Last posting, was a review of the biography of Tom Price, an Australian statesman, who responded to the challenges of his time and place with productive good works.  His biographer, his great grand daughter, Stephanie McCarthy, did a marvelous job bringing his story to life.  If you have not read the previous post, click back and ponder how one's energy and focus can make a difference.  

Today's post is more of a long article one would find in the New Yorker or Harpers, so do not feel one must absorb it in one setting.  Terry Field writes often in this space.  He is an irrepressible Englishman who has built a home, a garden and a wine celler in Normandy, France.  This past January, he and his good wife, Fina, traveled to Florida and spent about a month.  As a businessman, Terry has often been to the United States.  Ever insightful and stimulating, he  records his latest impressions, observations and makes some comparisons with the United Kingdom. 

Reflections on a Visit to America by Terrance Field    

Having settled back into gentle but tired France, it seems sensible to reflect upon the lands visited and their peoples.

America always amazes, sometimes excites, occasionally disappoints.

But is always worth the experience. Florida is famous in England as being the home of bland, somnambulistic, usually antique and often unintelligent people living out their last days in a sort of dreamscape. Certainly, there are enormous numbers of people who seem to fit the description, and the gentle flatness of the countryside, the languorous pools of water that betray the building up of 'gated community' lands sufficiently above the water table -and hopefully the sea-level yet to come - to allow optimistic enjoyment in pleasant vistas of 'bungalow' living.

Without exception, when encountered, Americans of the Floridian variety showed brotherly (and sisterly) kindness and consideration. A cheery handshake and an engaging phrase left me feeling pleasantly warm and appreciated. The almost courtly good manners of the Americans is not contained to Florida, but seems to be ubiquitous. After a time I yearn for a hearty disregard, and possibly an expletive; you know, the sort readily distributed amongst the normal intercourse of the English when they are amongst each other.

'Can this be real?' one wonders, when confronted with the warm bath of polite consideration. Indeed, the manners seem to reflect the architecture.

Naples (the Floridian version, not the Italian) appears to be a sort of stage set. A kind of reference back to 

'The prisoner' and the bouncing water ball. (to 'get' this, please see British television, about forty years ago). All looks flimsy and almost cardboard-like. Until you strike the walls with an enquiring fist, only to find that they are made every bit as well as a public building in London, Paris or Berlin.

The overconfidence that led me to expect the cardboard would give way under the force of the blow is replaced with a numbing pain as I look to see if bones are broken, and if flesh is damaged. Nearly but not quite. A new respect for the three dimensional reality of America takes hold. Not only does America build to stupendous scale, and often simply for fun, but also with a solidity and permanence that makes any future decision to demolish and replace one of economic excess simply unknown in the antique world over the pond.

(At this point I am reminded of a moment in Liverpool in 1970, when I leaned against a wall of a Victorian end-terrace house, it duly gave way, and my arm disappeared into the void within.)

Further preconceptions are about to be bowled over. This is another visit that makes my ideas as fragile as skittles in a bowing alley.

The Tamiami Trail

We travel to Sarasota on the 'Tamiami Trail'. Fina asks what this means. Puffing myself up I tell her in all confidence that it is an ancient word taken from the Seminole Indians, used to identify the tracks worn into the boggy landscape during fishing and Alligator-trapping hunts. My squaw is duly impressed, but deflation awaits. The radio informs us, only a short while later that it is the 'Tampa -Miami road'. I decompress and wrinkle for the rest of the day.

Arriving in Sarasota, and having not 'looked up' the town, I am surprised to see that there is 'culture' here. An opera house; theatres in the plural, more than one symphony hall; a fine orchestra, an range of smaller scale classical musical offerings, and a patronage replete with fine careers in human form distributing creditable quantities of money to the higher functions of human expression.

What with jazz, folk, local stuff, etc, this town is a delight, and has fine beaches and an elegant 'corniche' replete with pleasant excess in the boat department. It even has a toy shop selling chickens that, upon squeezing, 'lay' eggs of a sort of gelatinous jello that leaves me rolling with laughter; not the sort of thing that politically correct Europe would allow its children to enjoy. (For them only the seriousness of 'permanent improvement', a touch like the Strength through Joy' movement).

Bit wait! There is more! A fine museum, (the Ringling), and with it a story of truly heroic self sacrifice by a wonderful self-made man who -literally - bankrupted himself (sauf his kind friends) to give such a gift to this hoped-for American Nice or Monaco.

Everywhere here I see the sinews of a muscular, honest, endeavouring society that scattered the joy and meaning of high culture for the pleasure and improvement of Americans considered entirely of one citizenry, and thus fully entitled to participate in the best that life can offer.

All it took was honest hard work. Yankee thrift. Tough integrity.

Then, in a return visit to the present, and its strangely mutated characteristics reminds me that all is not well.

Times have changed.

The soup of culture that the American swims in seems to reward almost everyone for almost anything in the school and college 'system'. That is the correct description; a 'system' that spews out hordes of the same; blandised, averaged, unremarkable, uncourageous, profoundly illiterate people, who, on multiple acquaintance seem incapable of using the languages that God gave them.

Just watch a film made in the thirties and forties and the contrast is stark; where actors spoke quickly and lucidly, with density of language, connection of ideas and completion of sentences, the present offering - both on screen and in real life - is characterised by lack of clarity, slogan-speech, no complexity of ideas, weak reasoning and no ability to dissect the arguments of others and generate a valuable riposte.

True, I meet intelligent educated people who are not so disadvantaged, but even there is exhibited a mortal terror of describing reality in robust terms and then dealing with it effectively and with style.

Why is this? What has happened in America?

I would suggest the following possibilities, that, taken together, explain in part the interpersonal desert now prevailing.

Firstly, like the worm which consumes its own brain when a pleasant piece of earth has been found in which to dwell, the broad mass of the Americans are rich beyond dreams and need not use language to battle for advantage; most are single-skill technical specialists who receive monthly currency credits entitling them to click a mouse to have all foods and other goods delivered to them. Why speak when the effort is superfluous.

Secondly, English there has been so reduced by its mongrelisation as to be inherently ugly and unsatisfying; to such a degree that even a Pole or Bulgarian who finds his life being spent in Philadelphia or Peoria recoils from using it when avoidable.

Thirdly, the means to use language are decaying within families, where books, literature, discourse, rhetoric, the pleasure of verbal combat has entirely disappeared. Add to this a thick layer cake of the worst and most degraded intercourse found on earth - courtesy of the American television system, and the direction of travel towards monosyllabic grunting is fixed.

As if to confirm this personally, I met some relatives I had not seen before, and was pleased to see their bodies fine and straight, but their minds imprisoned behind a wall of no language.

That a billionaire like T Rump can dominate with the use of only a tiny vocabulary, and a language bereft of wit, humour, colour, reflection and the joy of deprecation speaks of the disaster that is American non-communication.

One of the results? An incapacity to discuss complexity; to understand it; to overcome it. The politics of the cretin is only a step away.

And WHO likes to really discuss the state of the world in America? I met nobody willing and able to do so. I saw nobody willing and able to do so on the American channels I tuned to.

Here, I am not an Englishman with any sense of superiority, however, since I see exactly the same happening in my poor country. I am in the habit of attempting to discuss current affairs in England during my infrequent visits. The result is interesting; most shy away, some look as if I have made a smell, most refuse to respond or say something of such stupidity as to be beyond belief? Is this the same country that produced the levellers, the Puritan revolution, the Reform Acts, the wonder of nineteenth century pamphleteers, Aneuran Bevan, Keir Hardie, F. E. Smith, the Liberal Party, the list goes on and on.

My latest visit to Derbyshire produced a bizarre set of juxtaposed absurdities that mirrors exactly the problem I describe in America.

One pleasant lady - a 'Green' - attempted to tell my that there are only peaceful Muslims and dreadful Islamists. I asked if she head read the Koran. I also enquired if she was happier with the destruction of the countryside and slaughter of birds by application of solar panels and wind-vanes from horizon to horizon as the dreadful nuclear power plants she so despised are phased out.

She slunk away, clutching her bigotry like a dead child. Drenched in politically correct attitudes, she had lost that part of the brain able to reason. It had gone, to be replaced by a new growth in the cortex that responds peculiarly well to direction for the BBC.

British snobs sneer at Fox (News); at least there is variety there, say I. pity the poor British, with a thousand and one varieties of the same flavour in the political output of the BBC that informs the views (code for conditions) of 70% of the local inmate population.

At last an intelligent response!

I am in a picture framing shop in this pleasant but really grindingly poor town in the Derbyshire peaks when a fellow complains of the poor quality of a picture frame he has bought for his 'Madonna with the Big Boobies' as he calls them. This is enough for me; I venture an opinion on the frame; his wife agrees and we strike up a conversation about the new Puritanism and foul narrow-mindedness of contemporary English life.

He shows the picture - and indeed she is a fine dusky girl with quite magnificent breasts. He remarks that his friends are upset by her raw sexuality and nakedness. On the other side of the picture an artist of wroth has pained a quite different picture. His solution? A two way glass frame - one side to show the breasted one when he is 'en famille', the other turned to face outwards when the local bigots are around.

I venture to agree with his loathing of modern British life and thinking. I am invited to tea the next day, and find myself with my hosts in the parlour of the magnificent manor house of the village. This gentleman is High Tory, as is his wife; both are dwellers in London - Mayfair of course, with this as the weekend country retreat, together with a place in the best skiing resort in Europe, and of course a pile in the Caribbean.

Old money; I know it well. I have spend much of my life close to it, but have never had much at all of it. The worst of circumstances for an Englishman. Not to be endured.

Yet again I am compelled to experience the country that has shaped me like a horse-shoe under the anvil. It seems inescapable.

The peasantry, ubiquitous, silent, resentful, fearful, prudish now and knowing their place, contrasted in vivid colour with those accustomed to command, to direct the future, and, of course, entitled to opinions; thus with an obligation to express them.

    Terry chats with some non-bland Americans  whilst in Florida

SO what happens when I allow these patrician folk to know I have spend a month in Florida?

The predictable happens.

'SO bland! SO full of mindless Americans! Gods waiting room! How can you BEAR such a place?!?!?

At this point I am reassessed and found wanting as a companion. They detect an alien mind. Distance is established over the coffee and hot cross buns. He bustles off and announcing 'we are off for a cycle ride - SO nice to see you'.

They make arrangements to return to the London that does not care to know that people like me exist. Their parting shot is ' Of course we will leave the EU - we need to recover the direction of our country!!

By 'our country' they did not mean 'my' country. They meant theirs. E unum pluribus in Britannia est.

Why do these ramblings matter? Possibly because one could argue that a country needs to have a structure that gives it meaning, context, direction and worth-whileness. From that it follows that those superfluous to the structure need not live. as a part of that superfluity I know my place.

In England the aristocracy gave a steady hand and - in general - enlightened direction to a beautiful place where the agrarian world imposed the contentment and obligation of known place to its people. The development of its gentle democracy shaped to the landscape under this benign hand, and over great lengths of time.

The industrial and imperial period continued this in new circumstances; new money behaved like the old enlightened aristocracy. A continuing patrician sense of responsibility and high ideals helped to avoid the brute violence that predicated war and revolution in so much of Europe. but now that is over and gone and there is no structure; just a boiling cauldron of discontented mini-egos jostling for survival and pretending all the while that things are as before.

The dispensable superfluity of those outside the ancient social structures in part explains how the slaughter of the wars in Europe in the twentieth century could be endured and overcome by the populations; people busied themselves whilst suffering losses that they knew had no real social cost. Personal pain is private. It passed as time flowed. Duty and obligation, however, had been long accepted as eternal and enduring. Like rock. The dead were replaced by tractors; cheap memorials homogenised them for future marketing opportunities.

Britain is returning to a kind of  eighteenth century; post industrial, but now, unfortunately, possessed of a curious sub-group of disconnected people, who feel no mutuality of obligation, enjoying immense wealth and replete with the power of manipulation for personal advantage undertaken entirely without pity. 

I contrast this with the philanthropic community of achieving Americans, who give enormously to the betterment of their communities. In this group, the successful Jews should be recognised as offering outstanding generosity, as well as fine intellectual contributions to American life. That truth should be recognised. A small example of the newly corrupted British world - in that country over 90% of serious occupations go to the 9% who are educated via private means. The rest are padding, like the stuffing of a mattress.

So where is the connection with contemporary America?

Maybe not in the details but one social pattern seems to be strikingly similar in both societies.

In the United States, for the first time since its creation, it can be plausibly argued that the endless opportunities for personal and social enrichment are coming to an end. The exploitation of the most capacious continent on earth has now become strained; resources are not without limit, and the life of the individual is more precarious. Capital is not American but indeterminate in character, and this has come as a body blow to a naive polity after 2007. Capital can leave and go to China; it can impoverish as it enriches, and all in America. From sea to shining sea.

How do modern Americans react to these reduced circumstances? From what I saw, they hope for the future, and still applaud the rich who build thousands of homes like palaces on the waterfronts of Florida's best bays, whilst knowing that they may be inundated in a few decades as the waters rise inexorably. When I point this out, my fellow tourists laugh and say ' Oh they will just walk away from them and build someplace else!'

These pleasant folk are not outraged. They are not incensed at the absurdity of it all. They are not just de-politicised, they are devoid of any sense of the ironies of life. They seem like fish, gulping in air to no good purpose. Just like the good peasantry of Derbyshire who know their place.

I hear (Bernie) Sanders describing some symptoms of this new American condition, but it is done with no sense of secular rage; no sense of directed resentment. He blames 'Wall Street'. He avoids the blame being directed at any individual or group of individuals. How gently American and how polite, to avert the eyes from the villains who can be seen in plain sight. In Europe, the hatred is directed, personal, always potentially violent. In America the criticisms are aimed at structures, so as to offer an institutional set of solutions. Britain was once like this. it preferred institutional strength to personal strife.

Here in Europe, we prefer the knife, the bullet, the camp, the stiletto.

Trump, the talented emotional manipulator, as well as arch globalising financial operator using property as chips, suggests to the economically disenfranchised that he will pump up the nation to 'greatness' again, and they will all become 'winners'. Vast numbers of 'fellow Americans' seem to love this rhetoric. 

Ever mischievous, Terry sports his 'Make America Great Again' cap.

Suggest to an working-class Englishman that being a winner is desirable or even possible and a laugh of bitter disengagement will result. Suggest it to the ruling rich and they will say nothing, since that is all that they know anyway. In Britain, the Trump figure is (Labour Party leader) Corbyn, but he blames groups of real people. He is a communist and his solutions would very probably result in smooth skinned folk finding they had holes in the back of their heads.

That is the common thread running through both continents; the people behave as though changes have not happened. but when they see danger, whilst one people looks to a solution of social engagement, the other to the killing of one's enemies. England is moving closer to the continental violence it avoided for so long. Why?

Aristocracy is replaced with a degenerate universal franchise, and representative government is being rapidly replaced with the calamity of private interest groups and personal greed (with the attendant corruption) on a scale this writer would have not believed possible.

The choice of location?

It has to be America. The donuts are better there. - Terry Field

Comments, ever welcome, may be made to glennhistory@gmail.com.

From a cousin in Alabama....

Very interesting, and remarkably right on target in many aspects, and I really like his writing style. By the way, it did  go well with my morning cup(s) of inspiration. Thanks, Glenn. 

From a retired pastor in Tennessee....

Thank you ... will go for the cup of coffee and find an easy chair.

From England, south of Heathrow...an American expatriate....

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for sending.  I hate generalisations because they rarely hold water.  Too many exceptions easily found.  I'd love to read what he thinks about the French!  

From the Australian biographer of Tom Price....

One day I’d like to meet this Terry. He has views so much like my own, but I’d very much like his powers of expression!

Thanks so much for sharing Terry’s views with me.

 PS -  parrot pix to brighten your day. I love the movement and colour.

       

P.S. - One of your bloggers has a go at Terry Field about generalising. I do shudder at statements uttered by one dimensional people who blithely declare that ‘all politicians are lazy and greedy’ or ‘all nuclear is evil’. However, I’ve observed that Terry is careful to back up his generalisations with examples and to note exceptions. Would Terry’s critic never have said something like “The German people, in general, are meticulous and methodical’? What is wrong with that remark? Is that false? When we notice a tendency about a race or religion or culture, it’s not a sin to note that tendency. It’s how we generalise which matters.