Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music

What is the true nature of the UK as a country? By which I mean what is the natural disposition of the inhabitants of these islands? I don’t just mean in a political sense, although politics does play a part in our social and cultural make-up, but also from an identity point of view.

It is a tough question to ask and even tougher to answer. It is the kind of question that circles my head like a vulture flying up above eyes always ready in case it spots carrion. In my case the prey is a better understanding of the country in which I chose to live many years ago. One of the stages in the process of integration for immigrants is to cast off old prejudices. Though exciting, this is also a daunting exercise. Prejudices sometimes provide a comfort zone even if in the long term they cause untold harm. Rid yourself of them and you suddenly have to deal with a different mind-set. As it is the case for me now.

One of the myths I always heard about Britain when I still lived in Cuba was that it was a hard-core, right-wing, individualistic society with very little space for liberal ideas. True, these notions were based on a narrow, Castro-led, ideologically-driven agenda that sought to masquerade socialism’s excesses with capitalism’s flaws. My lectures in uni on history, life and culture in the UK reinforced this thesis, ramming home the point that the United Kingdom was all about hooligans, the monarchy and the stiff upper lip.

As soon as I arrived in London and after an initial cultural shock I made it my mission to try to get under the skin of this country. Even if it took me a lifetime. By the looks of it this will take me three or four more lifetimes and I don’t believe in re-incarnation (at least re-incarnation in the sense of coming back as a human being. The soul and all that, let’s leave it for another post, shall we?). That meant that I had to confront my old prejudices head on and expose myself to concepts with which I might not feel comfortable.

The first idea I chucked away was that Britons were inherently right-wing. There is a strong liberal tradition in this country. From John Stuart Mill and his defence of the freedom of the individual to Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan who introduced the National Health Service in 1948 the UK has a progressive tradition of which to boast. That brought me some solace as I particularly found myself on this side of the social and political spectrum.

Yet, with each passing year I noticed a phenomenon that continues to this day to puzzle me, hence this column. At the same time that I noticed a forward-thinking and left-of-centre tendency in British society I also spotted a similarly conservative mind-set. This conservative trait was small “c” conservative and not linked necessarily to Tory/Conservative party values. It is rather conservative-lite. A low-level, unobtrusive, tucked-away-in-a-corner type. More related to the Latin “conservatus”, meaning someone disposed to preserve existing conditions and institutions than Cameron’s privatisation-obsessed political manifesto. In fact, many of these small “c” conservative attitudes were sported by people who would otherwise call themselves liberals.

Take the monarchy, for instance. If there were to be a vote tomorrow on whether the UK should become a republic or carry on being led by a queen or king, I think we could see a similar mood to the recent one in Scotland on the Yes or No vote. However, in the absence of a plebiscite of this kind (and I can’t see one happening in my lifetime) most people in this nation, even those who hate the monarchy and what it stands for, are happy to coast along with it. This is the sort of conservatism I am referring to. I know there is a pro-republic movement in Britain but I do not think this has necessarily translated into an overt call for the immediate termination of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor’s reign and the abolition of royalty. For some reason it is OK to keep Lizzie on the throne. After all she is only there in the background, quiet most of the time, keeping herself to herself, not butting in. Put your placards down (if you went as far as to make one), calm down and have a cuppa.

Beautiful contradiction: liberal and conservative

Another example of how this small “c” conservative attitude manifests itself is the way the UK sells itself to people from abroad. Both to visitors to GB and when it exports its culture  to other countries. In this case what gets trotted out straight away are stereotypes, of which the mumbling, stammering Hugh Grant figure is the more easily identifiable. Implicit in this cultural offering is the class system, a structure that although politically many of us (born here or not) oppose, socially we accept.

For what are we doing when we lap up the Downton Abbeys, the Upstairs Downstairs and many other period dramas of similar DNA? We are tacitly agreeing with a status quo that is more interested in preserving the same power structure than in bringing in much-needed radical changes.

There is no right or wrong in this post. Small “c” conservatism is prevalent even amongst those of us who were not born here. Every time an independent shop or a small café closes down I mourn their disappearance as if they had been part of my childhood landscape. One of the reasons why I think there is an in-built conservative trait in the UK is due to the cultural and historical wealth this country has. If I may touch briefly on Politics (capital “P” there) and with the recent Clacton-on-Sea result still fresh on my mind, this is one of the reasons why the far-right UK Independent Party (Ukip. I know that some will disagree with me on the “far-right” bit but to me Ukip is the BNP with suits instead of boots. Thugs with suits, you could say) has done so well in the last year. They have managed to tap into that area of the British psyche that is still firmly moored to that distant past.

As are the hipsters of Shoreditch and Dalston and the “spornosexuals” of Essex. Though modern-looking, they, too, are moored to a past that perpetuates the “upstairs” and “downstairs” structure. That past is present in the vintage fixed-gears bikes that populate the roads of Hoxton and Hackney (irony included in the ride) and the last night of the Proms and its sea of Union Jacks celebrating Britain. The same sea of Union Jacks celebrating the marriage of Kate and William. The same sea of Union Jacks rising in unison to cheer on Mo Farah at the London 2012 Olympics. As I mentioned before, there is no right or wrong in this post. The small “c” conservative attitude is about preserving institutions (even when sometimes people might not agree with them) and keeping certain traditions alive. For me personally it is another small step in understanding the United Kingdom. Now, if only I could rely on those three or four more lifetimes to finish the job.

Occasionally I like sharing passages of the books I read in the same way other posters do on their blogs. This time I would like to bring to your attention a beautiful sentence I read recently in The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel. For me this was a re-read as I had already devoured the text in Spanish when I was a teenager. However, on reading the novel a second time now I realised that my younger self had perhaps missed out on some of the book’s better-known traits, i.e., its humour and lyrical language. I hope you enjoy it. Have a good week.

The thunderstorm had passed without leaving a trace, and a multicolored rainbow had formed an arch over the entire city and was drinking water from the Moscow River.



© 2014

Next Post: “Food, Music, Food, Music, Food, Music... Ad Infinitum”, to be published on Wednesday 15^th October at 11:59pm (GMT)

Living in a Bilingual World (Allegro)

When I was still in Uni many years ago I had to deal with 'History of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' in third year. The name of the subject sounded ominous and the teacher maintained a po-faced attitude throughout the lessons. What always confused me was the Big Ben. You see, the message that we were getting in class, although not explicitly, was that at 4 o'clock the whole of Great Britain sat down to have a cup of tea. Yes, together, at the same time. Yes, including Wales and Scotland. And Northern Ireland. All of them, simultaneously, resting their behinds on seats, couches and chairs. To-have-a-cuppa.

And that was the problem. I was always wrecking my poor brain trying to figure out how the inhabitants of the Hebrides were capable of hearing the bells chiming from the majestic Big Ben.

I guess that's a mystery for Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Watson to solve.

Copyright 2008

Photo courtesy of Eufrates del Valle @ http://eufratesdelvalle.blogspot.com/

Meditations on Britain (Experimental)

Saturday evening. 5.30pm. Outside it is pouring down with rain. Yet, an ice cream van, with its traditional bell-like sound, interrupts the symphony of raindrops crashing against the pavement. It is cold, probably 9 or 10 degrees.

I love British eccentricity.

Copyright 2008

The Good Terrorist (1st Mov 'Allegro') (2nd Mov 'Andante') (3rd Mov 'Grave') (Contains spoilers)

Is terrorism ever a viable option to achieve a fairer society? Can acts of terrorism leave the perpertrators emotionally unscathed? Can a terrorist separate, right down the middle, the emotions that spur them to fight against the status quo and the emotions that make them human? Can socialist ideas flourish, or even survive in a consumerist society? At what point does the individual become more important than the collective? At what point does it happen in reverse? How much are we willing to give up to achieve the ultimate goal of an equitable society? And what happens when we realise that it's too much? Is it too late, too?

Alice's call to the Samaritans in the final pages of The Good Terrorist, by Doris Lessing, is the catharsis of one of the most poignant fiction books I've ever read on the subject of leftwing European politics. Its ending reminded of the movie 'The Last King of Scotland' which came out earlier this year in the UK when Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker, tells Nicholas Garrigan, played by James McAvoy, 'So you thought this was a game, uh?'. Politics is not a game. It's never been. It never will be. And acts of sabotage do not just harm state property, but people, human, beings, individuals with flaws and virtues, vices and merits. And that is the main theme in 'The Good Terrorist'.

Through Alice's eyes and her middle-class bourgeois upbringing Lessing details a left-wing movement desillusioned with the incumbent Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the state of the former Soviet Union and the lackadaisical attitude of many of their peers. The layers of their frustration, once peeled, reveal a strong desire to do. What? Anything. And it's that anything that proves fatal. Unfortunately for innocent bystanders, too.

Lessing manages to capture the spirit of a squat, its quibbles and quips, its flights of fancy and disappointments. Central to the novel is Alice as the character who holds it all together, and I mean that literally. She rescues the squat from the hands of the local council. She offers her shoulder to one of the occupiers when she needs it. She does the chores around the house and gets the money to get by (stealing it on one occasion even). She's the heroine, but more than that, she's the living proof that an individual's power should never be underestimated and thus, unwittingly she points at the failure of the state all the squatters are in awe of, namely, The Soviet Union.

Another interesting aspect of the novel is that there are not supporting roles, and I mean in the traditional sense that once one of the leading characters disappears, nothing is ever heard about them again. Whether by name or image, all original squatters appear all the way through the book until almost the very end.

Pivotal to the novel is the question of whether in a country like the UK, where there exists the rule of law, accountability, a judiciary and a free press (OK, don't smirk at the back, please), if there are enough conditions for a Cuban- or Soviet-style revolution to take place, or even to triumph. In my humble opinion the answer is a rotund no. Despite this, sometimes Alice's conversations with her mother, with whom she has a love/hate relationship, made me remember the slogans heard (and still seen and heard) in my childhood and youth in Cuba. Ultimately it's Alice's mother who serves as a powerful reminder that you can take the girl out of the 'class', but you can't the 'class' out of the girl. And by 'class', I mean social and economic status. When Alice sees the flat her Mum is living in after she vacates the house she shared with her father for so many years, she breaks into to tears. It's this kind of moment that Lessing is so good at depicting, the innermost feelings of a person for whom class is the source of all evil in the country she was born and brought up in.

The Good Terrorist is a good fiction read for anyone interested in the internal turmoils of the British Left. I gather that nothing much has changed since the mid 80s, although you, my dear fellow poster/reader/blogger would beg to differ.

Copyright 2007