Farage wants to tell England's story. He won't like it.



"I shall not weary you by repeating the tale of how public opinion has changed during those twenty-one years. But, as an example, I may recall the fact that in those days, and for many years thereafter, it was tenaciously upheld by the public authorities, here and elsewhere, that it was an offence against laws of nature and ruinous to the State for public authorities to provide food for starving children, or independent aid for the aged poor. Even safety regulations in mines and factories were taboo. They interfered with the ‘freedom of the individual’. As for such proposals as an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to work, and municipal houses, any serious mention of such classed a man as a fool. --- Keir Hardie, April 14"

THE far-right often speak about our history as a whole treasure box of things that prove them right.
It is no surprise that ahead of St George's Day, Nigel Farage has said he wants a curriculum in schools that instill a sense of pride in our past.
The messaging is obvious, we need to stop banging on about slavery and get stuck into stories about giving Europeans a good thrashing - the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, World War II.
Now part of the problem for Farage is that the biggest and most recent of  those victories was against an ugly flag-waving form of nationalism built on the promise of past glories. Sounds sort of familiar.
But let's leave aside this BBC Final Score version of our history - "The Royal Air Force 1 - The Luftwaffe 0" - and you'll find there's a lot from our national story to take heart in. 
In fact as former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has argued, it would be foolish to leave national pride to narrow-minded bigots.
In many respects England's development is the story of ordinary people telling Mr Farage and his ilk - well-off men and vested interests - to fuck off. 
The fact is that some 200 years ago it wasn't just Africans on plantations who were suffering at the hands of the rich and powerful. 100 years ago it wasn't just easier to kick people out of the country, but to kick them out of a job or out of a home as well. Londoners back then needn't worry about phone theft, but poverty was endemic. 
Truthfully the sepia-toned version of our past never properly depicts just how bloody horrible life was for the average person in bygone days.
When my grandparents were born many women were yet to get the vote, there was no NHS - if you could not pay you had to hope for charity - and even old age pensions were relatively new.
A generation on and my parents were born into an England where abortion was illegal, we still hanged people (sometimes for crimes they hadn't done) and filthy coal fires could kill thousands of city dwellers a year.
I arrived some 35 years later into a country where there was no legal minimum on what a boss could pay his worker, handguns were sold in shops and rape in marriage was not considered a crime.
What is striking is that over time, the advocates of what would now be considered "woke, radical left" causes - equal pay between men and women, universal healthcare, the Clean Air Act - took on their opponents and won.  
Much is often made about England's natural status as a conservative country - reflected in its tendency to mainly elect Tory governments and resist sudden, dramatic change. But the slow steady progress of progressives over the past century or so has improved the lot of ordinary people  far more than any number of racists shinning up lamp posts.
These plastic patriots might hate "lefties" but it's thanks to their efforts that they've got days off in which to stick the flags up - and the promise of not having to pay £3,000 if they break a leg while doing so.
Farage by contrast is typical of the reactionaries who have stood in the way of the changes that have made life fairer, safer and more dignified for the general public. 
We know this because he branded the gun controls which followed Dunblane "ludicrous", regularly endorses scrapping the NHS and boasts about plans to roll back new  rights for renters and workers.
When Labour's first ever leader Keir Hardie railed against landlordism and called for fair rents and respect for workers (including the outrageous demands for an 8-hour day) he would have known opponents like Farage. People who ranked a nation by its strength of arms, yet recently embarrassed by the number of Boer War conscripts deemed simply too sickly to fight.
What concerns me is that Reform's vision of England is the Ladybird book version of church spires and village greens, while dodging the past realities of working down deep pit coal mines - which they seem keen to reopen - and being denied rights we now take for granted.
No doubt some believe in their promise of a Britain which looks a lot like now -  Netflix, national insurance and all - just with fewer black faces. But any cursory glimpse of Reform policy hints at a more general reversal. 
And if you don't believe me, believe the words of those who the party puts forward as candidates. 
The would-be councillor in Westminster who wants "the NHS torn right down to the ground" or the Senedd hopeful who suggested most women want to stay at home. If you elect the political wing of Pathe news-reels do not be surprised about exactly what they want to bring back from those jerky, monochrome times.
I'm personally proud that over time the country has embraced a more tolerant, generous attitude which has benefited pretty much all of us. The story of our past is that we have known when to move on from it. If not we'd still be persecuting Catholics, jailing gay people and force-feeding women who wanted the franchise.
Progress has never been linear nor easy but it has happened all the same, in spite of the relative rarity of left wing governments and those that there were tending to present as NatWest regional managers rather than revolutionaries.
I love the country. I love Doctor Who, Branston pickle and Wimbledon fortnight. I love our theatres and writers and chalk streams. But more than that I love the fact that over time ordinary people, be they Levellers or Chartists, Suffragettes or trade unionists have fought for change and eventually they have got it. That is something worth holding on to.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Ghost Story for Christmas - a tribute

Image
The very first entry was 1970's The Stalls of Barchester NOTHING says Merry Christmas like spiders the size of kittens - plump and mewling - scuttling up the boughs of an ageing ash and in through a bedroom window.  The nightmarish experience of a country squire is one of the stand-out moments of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas strand. Elsewhere in its annals, a terrible vengeance is visited on a treasure-hunter whose night-time dig disturbs more than just the earth, and an orphan boy wakes in darkness to hear the horrid sound of music and laughter. It was 2004 when I came across the long-running series via a set of late-night repeats on BBC4. In fact I was steered that way by my Dad, who had watched the episodes on transmission 30 years earlier. Somewhat scarily several decades now stand between me and my sixth form self tuning in to watch The Ash Tree for the first time. Interest in the episodes from the 1970s was enough to persuade the BBC to commission a brand new in...
Read more

Describing a friend

Image
PETER Kennedy - or simply PK to many in the newsroom - was the very definition of an old-school journo. He'd cut his teeth as a cub reporter on the Solihull News in the early 1960s and by the time I started my own traineeship almost 50 years later he was back on his old patch having seemingly seen almost everything during a career in newspapers and BBC Radio. Having someone of this experience sat opposite you was a rare thing in this era of the local press, most others from my particular cohort of trainees usually shared a desk with a senior who'd started a year to 18 months before them.  Peter was in many ways the sort of reporter who if I'd really stopped and thought about it would have persuaded me that there was no way I was cut out for the profession; he was fearless in his questions, shameless in his anecdotes and would wash down his lunch with a mini bottle of wine. Frankly I should have been terrified but strangely having this imposing industry veteran sat opposite ...
Read more

To save the NHS we must remember the courage it took to build it

Image
IT is 75 years ago this month that healthcare free at the point of use - to each and every one of our citizens - became a universal right in this country. As Tony Benn once told me when I asked him about the often quoted claim that Britain is, at its heart, an instinctively Conservative nation, the NHS was perhaps "the most socialist thing any government has ever done" and - more tellingly - "the most popular". Nye Bevan, the father of perhaps the most famous three letters in these isles, oversaw the seemingly impossible; he built a whole new framework for healthcare within three years of Labour taking power. All this in a country which newly vanquished PM Winston Churchill admitted was bankrupt, with city roads reduced to rubble and everything from meat to bread on the ration. The transformation should be seen as a symbol of what is possible against even the bleakest backdrop. What Bevan and his fellow ministers realised was that a nation that was battered and wear...
Read more