Submitted by Clayton Goodwin – Letter From London
I once spent a whole evening drinking with Neil Kinnock in the Strangers’ Bar in the House of Commons. It came about like this. Having just been selected as Liberal PPC for Gravesend, I requested to pay a courtesy call on the sitting member, John Ovenden, who invited me to meet him at the House. John was committed already to having a drink (or a few) with Mr Kinnock and invited me to make it a three-some. He introduced his colleague as “the next Prime Minister”. Although he didn’t quite make it there – just – Neil Kinnock, with his then flaming red-hair and powerful, persuasive voice certainly cut an imposing figure. He was excellent and stimulating company. Oh yes, two years later I joined Mr Ovenden also in the experience defeated by our Tory rival, Tim Brinton, in the General Election (1979).
That evening was in my thoughts when I read a week or so ago it reported that the now venerable Lord Kinnock had observed with apparent approval that the United Kingdom was now drifting towards the Europe Union. That was very welcome news and well worth another glass of whatever it was he had been drinking then. On this point the ennobled Welshman and the still un-titled Kentish peasant can agree. The United Kingdom is stronger within the European Union. It is the comparatively little things of exclusion that rankle as much as the major bones of contention. Particularly the manner in which the right-wing press and their political mouthpieces cannot resist the temptation to niggle at anything European.
The sniping about the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris was a case in point. Yes, some things did go wrong – though I cannot see how the French could be blamed for the downpour – but some of the criticisms seemed as though they had been prepared in advance and reporters were required to find any faults and blemishes that matched the already-written headlines. Whatever happened, Celine Dion gave the occasion all the sense of soul that had been missing from the much-hyped London Olympics eight years earlier. Oh, didn’t the commentators keep going on about that year and how no foreigners could put on these major events quite as well as the British. Methinks, they did protest too much.
From this distance in time it is possible to assess exactly what that over-saccharine binge of patriotism achieved. Let me make this quite clear. I am not criticising the expertise and professionalism with which the UK carried out every aspect of the show, and maybe I am looking back through the prism of subsequent events. Yet the excess of nationalism did cloy, even then. It was the sense of context that went awry. Therefore, the French could not be blamed for wanting to set the balance right (at least, to one way of thinking). They may not have had flying monarchs, and over self-publicising mayors, but proceedings did appear to walk the tight-rope with some, albeit flawed, decorum. It wasn’t super-great but fortunately through the failings of language I was spared having to hear too much over-the-top nationalism.
The London Olympic Games were indeed a social and political landmark, but not quite in the way that a sycophantic media saw them at the time. The outright winner, whatever the achievements on the track and in the field, was Boris Johnson, the flamboyant, ego-centric Mayor of London. The Games arrived on his watch at the most propitious moment for his political aspirations, and – who can blame him – he made the most of them. It also tied the monarchy to the coat-tails of nationalism. The image of Her Majesty flying through the air, however much seen in artificial representation, was not in that spirit of accepted decorum. There have been too many celebrity television shows, I fear.
Boris Johnson, and the country, went on to the next round of the game-show, namely the Brexit Referendum. The greatest issue of our time was treated with scant respect. I remember the young lady who, on the day after the vote, told me that, although she recognised that all sound reasons pointed to us remaining in the European Union, she thought Johnson and Nigel Farage were such jolly fellows that she fancied going on a mystery-tour with them. A good many people have repeated that sentiment. Then off the country went to the “Come on Down – Winner Takes All” general election, and everybody know what happened after that. Partygate, Liz Truss, financial fiascos, a drop in living standards … and every bit of the buyer’s remorse morning after the night before.
Today when the electorate have given the right-wing tendency in Parliament and the media the biggest rejection in recent history, the heirs of corrupted patriotism and nationalism have taken their anger onto the streets. The Conservatives lost the last election, not because they were not right-wing enough, but because they pandered to those tendencies too much. Over-patriotism is much like any other drug. One dose lifts the spirits and stimulates performance, but after that it is all downhill. The porter in Macbeth said something like that about alcohol. Mis-placed patriotism is not patriotism. As Johnson said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”. That, by the way, was Dr Samuel Johnson, though his name-sake could well have taken note and heeded the message.
I cannot see how a person cannot be proud of their own country – and I am very proud of much of that happened in London 2012 – and still see much to commend in another’s similar performance. It doesn’t degrade us to acknowledge them. Neil Kinnock and myself didn’t see eye to eye politically back in 1977, nor we do so today. That doesn’t concern us here. What we do have in common is to note with approval that the United Kingdom is moving back (in whatever manner) to its destiny with the European Union, where it has such an important role to play.
And I am still prepared to drink to that?