Fergus Finlay: Culture wars are an insult to the intelligence of English people

'Very few of the majority who voted to leave the European Union want to admit they made a terrible mistake. But there are more than a few who wish it had never happened.'

I haven’t been back there for a while, years actually. But I’ve been reading about it constantly, listening to stuff about it, taking what I thought was a keen interest. Based on everything I know, everything I’m certain about, it has changed beyond all recognition.

Except it hasn’t. And that has come as a complete shock to me. The England I remember as a teenager, as a young adult, as a working man, is still there. It’s still a beautiful country. Its towns and villages are full of character and charm, its suburbs are neat, its countryside sprawling and gorgeous, its cities frightening in their vastness and complexity.

And the people are the same. I’m one of those unfortunate travellers who instantly loses the ability to tell my left from my right the moment I land in a different country. So I’m always lost, and often dependent on the kindness of strangers. In England, strangers are kind, always willing to help a poor lost eejit.

I had a complete crisis when I found my car in a car park with a completely dead battery. Although I had jump leads I needed another driver to assist. The first two I asked — and I wan’t looking at the colour of their skin — mumbled excuses and moved away. The third man said, “sure mate, show me how it’s done”. While he was helping me, the first two came back. They hadn’t understood my “foreign accent” and were a bit nervous about getting involved until they saw someone else at it and realised what the problem was.

While most of the “strangers” I interacted with were white, they weren’t all. But every single one of them had English accents and mannerisms. Another terrible shock. For months now I’ve been reading that Britain — not just England — is being overrun, that tens of thousands of unchecked foreigners are stealing everything: jobs, public services, but also culture and identity. They’re swarthy, these invaders, and speak with thick, threatening accents.

Of course, I’d have to be there a lot longer to see it all, but I can tell you now (as one example) that Leighton Buzzard, an attractive little market town in Bedfordshire, about 40 miles north of London, is almost entirely white. Our niece, Karen (who lives there), tells me that nearby Luton has a much stronger Asian population, a lot of whom are very religious. 

Talking of religion, one of my other nieces is the principal of a secondary school in Lancashire in the north. It’s recognised as a really good and high-achieving school, despite its very high proportion of Asian and Muslim students. “What do you mean, despite?” she said when I asked her about it. “Asian and Muslim kids are ambitious, and so are their parents. They’ve given up a lot to be here, and it’s principally because they want their kids to have safe and secure futures.”

 The problem she faces — and this is easy to recognise — is the large number of kids in the school, from all forms of ethnic backgrounds, whose lives are affected by economic disadvantage. But as a general rule — and this is her voice of experience talking — immigrant kids keep standards up, because their family expectations are high.

So a lot of observation and as much chat as I could manage left me really puzzled. 

There’s a thing going on in British politics, it’s very unsavoury, and it's being led by government ministers. 

Culture wars, it’s called — an attempt to whip up resentment against anyone who looks different — and it’s completely out of sync with the personality of the great majority of English people

I’m not saying there are no racists in England. But by far the greater number of people just want to get on with their neighbours and get on with their lives. There’s far more generosity and ordinary decency in England than the stuff some of their politicians are trying to peddle them.

Yes, there’s a feeling of powerlessness in the face of economics, and it’s not hard to see why. I can only offer you anecdotal evidence, but I have a very strong sense that the cost of living crisis has hit English families even harder than Irish families. (Please don’t feel you need to have a go at me — of course, I know Irish families are suffering a lot and I’ve written about it before.) But everywhere you go in England, the price of ordinary goods in the shops is frightening. We were celebrating a birthday, so a nice lunch and a couple of West End theatre tickets were on our menu — and mother of sweet divine the cost of them. But apart from that, petrol, fruit and veg, bread and milk, the most basic stuff is at prices way ahead of ours now, and that’s saying something.

The most common conversation we had, with virtually everyone we met, was about energy costs. You end up with a very strong sense that people are really afraid of where things are heading — and they certainly don’t feel that their government has gone out of its way to help them. 

But rather than address the problem with some real help, it seems to be the case that Tory politics is actively trying to turn that sense of powerlessness and anxiety into a resentment of everyone else

I’d a long conversation about Brexit with one friend. Now, he didn’t tell me he had voted for Brexit, but he did argue persuasively that a lot of people — including on the left — had concluded that there was something rotten about the democratic deficit within Europe, and that there was a decent democratic basis for the argument about the need to “take back control”. I think if pushed he would acknowledge that leaving Europe hadn’t put anyone in control of anything better.

Overall, I think I detected a real yearning to turn the clock back. Very few of the majority who voted to leave want to admit they made a terrible mistake. But there are more than a few who feel very sheepish about that decision and wish it had never happened.

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Here’s my conclusion. England is a beautiful country, full of warm, intelligent, and decent people. They don’t understand what’s being said about them by their own leaders. They don’t understand why they’re being told to be afraid now, for the first time in their history, of anyone with a different skin colour or foreign accent. Ask an English person for help, and his or her instinct is to help. Not to run away. They don’t do afraid.

For all those reasons, I think the politics being played out now — the culture wars being stirred up by the Tories — are a bit of an insult to the intelligence but also the decency of the English people. That’s why they’re not going to work in the end. The narrow bigotry that successful culture wars depend on is not, ultimately, part of the English character. As for me, I can’t wait to get back for another visit.