Brexit and the Myths of English History THE TRIUMPH HERALD & THE BMW Brexit and the Myths of English History Stephen Cooper Copyright Stephen Cooper, 2018 The right of Stephen Cooper to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Brexit and the Myths of English History For Sir David Bostock K.C.M.G. (1948-2016) Great European 2 Brexit and the Myths of English History We are English, and that is one good fact. Oliver Cromwell, Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotand and Ireland (1653-58). Messieurs, l'Angleterre est une île, et je devrais m'arrêter là. (Sirs, England is an Island, and I ought to leave it at that). André Siegfried (1875-1959). So what really moves the opponents of Britain’s full participation in the EC? As much as anything it is frustration… that we are no longer a world power…that nowhere is the nation state fully sovereign… that some of the fixed and treasured aspects of our national life are subject to seemingly relentless change. They practice a sort of phantom grandeur, a clanking of unusable suits of armour. Sir John Major, 1993. 3 Brexit and the Myths of English History CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: THE TRIUMPH HERALD & THE B.M.W. 1 BORIS JOHNSON & THE ROMAN EMPIRE 2 HUGH GAITSKELL & THE ANGLO-SAXONS 3 JOHN MAJOR & THE HEART OF EUROPE 4 ROBIN HOOD & MERRIE ENGLAND 5 THE RISE OF ENGLISH NATIONALISM 6 WILLIAM REES-MOGG & THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT 7 THE TUDOR MONARCHS & THE NATION STATE 8 THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 9 THE TEMPLE OF BRITISH WORTHIES 10 JOHN BULL, WILLIAM PITT & HORATIO NELSON 11 THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 12 SPLENDID ISOLATION CONCLUSION BIBLIOGRAPHY 4 Brexit and the Myths of English History INTRODUCTION THE TRIUMPH HERALD & THE B.M.W. 24 June 2016; the result of the EU Referendum; scenes of excitement in my local pub; someone I knew raised his fist in the air, and cried that ‘we’ had won. Who are the ‘we’, I wondered. Alex Salmond said the Scottish lion had roared all over Scotland, after the SNP won 56 of the 59 available seats in the elections for the Scottish Parliament in 2015. That night in June 2016, I thought I heard the roar of the English lion. Then I had a dream. I dreamed that I had owned a Triumph Herald in the 1960s (this much was true.) Then, after an uncertain period of time, I owned a BMW. (Not true). I went to the car dealer I had bought the BMW from and said that I had decided, after 40 years, that I preferred the Triumph Herald and wanted it back, or at least another one. The dealer was surprised, even shocked. He pointed out that the BMW was a superior vehicle in every way. It had a larger and more reliable engine, power steering, much better brakes, and electronics which we could only have dreamed of in the 1960s. He asked if I had any complaints about the BMW. I said I had none. It was just that I was not fond of it, whereas I had once had a great deal of affection for the Herald, with all its faults. The dealer pointed out that I had not bought the Triumph Herald from him, and it might be a tad difficult to get hold of one now. Even if he were wrong, it would cost me dear. Did I not know that the last Herald had been produced in 1970; and the Triumph Motor Company had ceased production around 1980. Actually, he understood that the marque now belonged to BMW… He smiled as he told me this; but the look on my face must have told him that I was not for turning. It might be possible to get an old one, he said - there was a still a market for them in New Zealand; but it would be much more expensive than any equivalent car which was available in Europe. Even if I was prepared to pay more, he was sure that I would soon find the old Herald was much smaller, less powerful, and less reliable than the car I had now; and, what’s more, it would make me look like an 5 Brexit and the Myths of English History idiot. He paused. Did I want to change my mind? After all, what I wanted to do was rather like insisting that I preferred planes with propellers, in the jet age. I said I had considered the matter carefully, and had made up my mind. I did not need any further information. I wanted to own and drive a Triumph Herald again, because it would remind me of my youth and it was made in England. Wasn’t that a good enough reason? The dealer, who clearly thought I was mad, but also that the customer was always right, closed the conversation by saying: ‘Well, all right then, but you will have to pay me what you owe me on the bloody BMW, before you can have the damned Triumph Herald’. Where did the dream come from? Why did I feel, so strongly, that the result of the referendum was an unmitigated disaster, while others felt equally strongly, that it was both a declaration of independence and a cause for celebration? It seemed to me that the answer must lie in our history. I was born in 1948 in Manchester, and brought up in Liverpool, where it was still relevant whether you were Protestant or Catholic, and the question of why the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII was still a matter of lively debate at school (at least among those of us who thought that there was more to life than football). There were several Catholic schools in the neighbourhood, but I never went inside their gates. I attended an Anglican primary school and an all-boys grammar school. I learned a traditional, Protestant version of English history; and I am sure that it was little different from the version which my parents had learned in the 1920s, or the one which had been taught to their parents in the 1890s. Both at home and at school, I was taught by my parents and grandparents that British was best. The British Empire was the largest in the world, and it had brought civilisation, along with Christianity and the English language, to many countries. True, it was somewhat smaller than it had once been, and it had been re- named, but we still celebrated Empire Day in the 1950s, and it was only in 1960 that Harold Macmillan made his speech about the ‘winds of change’ sweeping through Africa. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, in 1953, was widely regarded as marking a new ‘Elizabethan Age’. The British armed forces were still the best in the world. Had not England just defeated Germany, for the second time? The English system of government was the best there was, and a model for the ‘Free World’. We were one of the ‘Big Three’, along with the USA and the USSR. We had created the first National Health Service, and introduced a system of free education for all; and we had the best footballers in the world too. It came as a considerable shock when Hungary thrashed England 6-3, in Coronation Year. My references here to England, rather than Britain, are deliberate, because people of my parents’ generation did not distinguish between the two (though they had come to accept that Ireland was different). For us Britain was England with 6 Brexit and the Myths of English History Celtic (or Gaelic) appendages. We might not all have read H.E.Marshall’s Our Island Story (1905) or her Children’s History of Scotland (1907); but our view of the world was hers. The English had created the United Kingdom by ‘taking over’ Wales, Scotland and Ireland, at first by conquest (or attempted conquest), but later by consent; and it was all for their own good anyway, as well as ours. We had become a happy family of nations, and put the bloodshed and the bitterness of our separate histories behind us. We had also (by and large) put religious difference to one side, though the Anglican Church was still at the heart of the Establishment. Although Mis Marshall wrote for children, her histories were essentially simplified summaries of the narratives to be found in the great English historians of the 19th century: Lord Macaulay, William Stubbs, E.A.Freeman, J. A. Froude and J. R. Green. (For example, she explained Boadicea’s revolt against the Romans by saying that Roman soldiers had been ‘rude’ to her daughters.) It was her view of English history which inspired many of the public monuments which were erected just over a century ago, and which are still to be found in our cities today. Marshall’s rosy Anglocentric view of our history (as imparted by schoolteachers to generations of schoolchildren) was lovingly pilloried in 1066 and All That, which was published in 1930; but it survived the radical revision of our history exemplified by A.L.Morton’s People’s History of England of 1938; and it also survived two World Wars; the Irish War of Independence; the Egyptian Revolution; the grant of independence to British India; and the foundation of nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland. As late as 1965, the Socialist historian A.J.P.Taylor could still write a book about British history entitled English History, 1914-1945, though he felt that he now had to apologise for this: When the Oxford History of England was launched a generation ago, 'England' was still an all-embracing word.