It was sometime during the 1970s that the
late Harri Webb regaled a group of us with a tale of visiting a local newsagent
to buy a felt pen. The newsagent told him that they didn’t have any Japanese-made
pens, only “cheap British copies”. “And that,” said Harri, “was the
day that I knew the British Empire was finished”. In more practical
political terms, the Empire died slowly over a few decades between the end of
the second world war and the early 1980s, with the bulk of former possessions
disappearing during the 1960s and 70s. The attitudes underpinning imperialism
have, though, taken a lot longer to die, but as the end approaches the death
throes are moving from pathos to farce.
Clinging on to strange symbols such as
medals of the Most Excellent
Order of the British Empire with its five different grades of membership of
an institution which to all intents and purposes ceased to exist half a century
ago could simply be chalked down as quaint, if a little eccentric. Building useless
boats as part of a pretension to be the same global colossus which
conquered so much of the world a few centuries ago is rather pathetic, although
those same delusions of grandeur can turn positively dangerous when the world
king decides to start threatening
China with an aircraft-free aircraft carrier, or to deliberately provoke
Russia by sailing a warship into disputed waters, complete with pre-installed
BBC reporter to report on events.
But it’s hard to avoid the word farce when
we turn to some of the more recent attempts to shore up the remaining parts of
the English Empire loser to home. Plastering
union flags on everything in sight, encouraging
school children to sing songs extolling the virtues of a model of Britain
which has rightly been consigned to history, and campaigning for the government
to provide a portrait
of Mrs Windsor to hang in every home – these are more signs of desperation
than a serious attempt to encourage unity. It’s as if they seriously believe
that the imposition of visible symbols will awaken some sort of innate
Britishness, one much more monocultural and deferential, which lurks
somewhere within us all and simply needs to be drawn out. Backing it up with
repeated attempts to brush away any idea that there can be more
than one nation in these islands looks more likely to have the opposite
effect to that intended, accentuating division rather than unity by trying to
impose one single view of what it means to be British.
The old saying is that “those whom the
gods would destroy they first make mad”, and madness is an appropriate
description of current government behaviour. But perhaps the earliest formulation
of the same sentiment, by Sophocles (an ancient Greek who will certainly be
familiar to Johnson), runs more like "evil appears as good in the minds
of those whom god leads to destruction". Genuinely believing that what
they are doing is a very good idea rather than a very bad one is certainly a
possible explanation for their bizarre approach. It’s still a form of madness,
though – and it doesn’t get them out of being led to their own destruction either.
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