Category: National Identity

To protest too much… or too little?

angela findlay6 Comments
The coronation of King Charles III and Victory in Europe Day 1945

This Coronation Bank Holiday weekend marks two events that will retain prominence in British history books forever: the crowning of King Charles III on Saturday 6th May 2023 and the 78th anniversary of Germany’s unconditional capitulation on 8th May 1945 that brought an end to the Second World War in Europe. 

My grandfather (centre) surrendering to the American forces in northern Italy on 2 May 1945.

The Royal Family and Britain’s World War victories are defining features of our national identity and regularly create occasions for celebration. This weekend, both elements came together with the unforeseen effect of highlighting a common, more sinister undercurrent relating to protest, or rather the right to protest. 

For some people the traditional spectacle of ritual, religion, militarism, pomp and swathes of red, white and blue flag-wavers doesn’t reflect any aspect of their lives. Indeed, the price tag of putting on such an event appears obscene in a cost-of-living crisis. And the slightly creepy swearing of an oath of allegiance to the king resembled rather too closely the oath of obedience demanded by Hitler. 

‘Not my King’ became their activist cry, just as other universal voices have cried out: ‘No war,’ ‘Just Stop Oil,’ ‘Insulate Britain,’ ‘Not in my name,’ ‘Me too,’ ‘Black lives matter.’

I am with everybody who is either tired of or has been inconvenienced by protestors. But I fully understand the frustration, desperation even, people feel that leads them to take extreme measures in order to draw attention to what they see as being destructive or plain wrong… for us all. Their right to have that voice of protest is indisputable. Aren’t we after all constantly reminded that the Second World War was fought and won to protect our freedoms because Hitler’s evil regime had removed so many? 

No wonder then that there was an outcry of concern when, in the run-up to the coronation, the government rushed stronger laws through parliament intensifying the powers of the recently passed Policing Act while resurrecting proposals in the largely rejected Public Order Bill. With extended stop and search powers, the criminalisation of disruptive protests, and the imposition of protest banning orders, the right to peaceful protest is clearly under increasing threat. 

“The coronation is a chance for the United Kingdom to showcase our liberty and democracy, that’s what this security arrangement is doing,” Mr Tugendhat, the Security Minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in defence.

Liberty and democracy? Hmmmh… I’m not sure those words quite match the policies and resulting actions!

And while the statement Home Secretary Suella Braverman made on Tuesday 2nd May might sound fair enough, in reality it is pure, misguided hypocrisy: 

“The public shouldn’t have their daily lives ruined by so called ‘eco-warriors’ causing disruption and wasting millions of pounds of taxpayer money… The selfish minority must not be allowed to get away with this. We are giving our police and courts the tools they need to stop this chaos and I back them in making full use of these powers.”

In another context, say in relation to our water companies and their appalling levels of waste, pollution and greed, a similar statement would make perfect sense, maybe along these lines:

The public shouldn’t have their daily lives and futures ruined by blatant ‘eco-destroyers’ causing disruption to public water services due to the contamination of our waterways and the wasting of millions of gallons of water each day. The selfish companies must not be allowed to get away with this. We are giving inspectors and courts the tools they need to stop these criminal practices and I back them in making full use of these powers.

Pollution on the Jubilee river in southern England. ‘The EA has called for water company directors to be imprisoned for the appalling decline in performance.’ Photograph: Maureen McLean/REX/Shutterstock

I personally believe Britain would be a poorer nation, not a richer one without the monarchy. But I still respect the views of those who want a British republic because they see the Royal Family as an outdated, unrepresentative, dysfunctional and extortionately expensive establishment that should be abolished. Given King Charles’s sincere dedication and visionary, common sensical, environmental concerns and solutions, which he has expressed – and been ridiculed for – since the 1970s, my hopes are that he will sympathise with protestors in ways this government doesn’t. And he will help push forward the environmental agenda that the whole world desperately needs to make its priority.

The lessons of the Second World War, especially of the Third Reich with its top-down dictatorship, are more relevant today than ever. Nazism showed us how thin the ice of morality is, how even such a culturally advanced country as Germany could fall through into barbarity. It happened slowly, incrementally, in full sight. Little laws restricting more and more little freedoms…

As I say in In My Grandfather’s Shadow: Germany’s lessons are therefore universal, as are the questions we must all ceaselessly ask ourselves: how thick or thin is the ice today, and what structures are in place to stop us falling through it again?

‘In My Grandfathers Shadow’ is now out in Paperback.

Links to further reading (as always, not all reflect my opinions necessarily)

UK security minister defends new anti-protest laws before coronation – The Guardian

The Shame of the Coronation Arrests – The Spectator

King Charles will be green in deeds before words, says adviser – The Times

Water company environmental performance hits new low – Environment Agency

England’s water industry now represents the unacceptable face of capitalism – Simon Jenkins

Victory in Europe Day, 8th May 1945

Right to protest in UK ‘under threat’ after coronation arrests, human rights group warns – iNews

Forthcoming Events:

Monday 22nd May: British and Irish Association of Holocaust Studies Online Conference

Monday 22nd May: Nailsworth Festival

Tuesday 27th June: Bradford Literary Festival

Remembering Russia’s past as a way to understanding its present

angela findlay12 Comments

The Remembrance Sunday of 2022 will be one of thankfully few since 1945 that sees another war in Europe raging. As we remember those who lost their lives in past wars, fellow Europeans will be losing theirs in the all too real conflict fighting itself out in Ukraine.

In my last blog I wrote about travelling the Berlin Wall Way, itself a form of 100+ mile-long memorial remembering both a repressive episode in history and those who lost their lives trying to escape it. Well, a little off that route in what was central East Berlin is Treptower Park, the largest Soviet military memorial outside the Soviet Union. Opened on 8th May 1949, it is a 10-hectare cemetery for 7000 of the more than 22,000 Soviet soldiers killed in the battle to take Berlin in the final months of the Second World War and contains the world-famous symbol of the role played by the Soviet Union in destroying National Socialism: the 13-meter towering statue of a Soviet soldier holding a lowered sword over a shattered swastika and cradling a rescued German child in his arm.

The Soviet Warrior Monument built by Yevgeny Vuchetich

To experience this place is to experience a sense of the enormity and profundity of the impact WW2 had on the Soviet / Russian people. For a start it is vast. And the extensive layout is designed to take you through a process of mourning and remembrance to honouring the victors as heroes and liberators. 

‘Heroes and liberators.’

We too use those words in relation to our own soldiers. But how often have we – or do we – actively honour the decisive role the Soviet soldiers played in defeating Nazi Germany? And how often do we include the mind-boggling numbers of Russians murdered or killed in the process (25 million to give a rough/round figure) in our process of remembrance? We don’t really, is the only answer I can find. And yet they were our allies in a war that we, as a nation, have made central to our national identity. Could our slightly introspective leanings and lack of acknowledgment of the Soviet sacrifices and achievement (among many other factors, not least the horrors of the Stalin era) have contributed to the attitudes of subsequent regimes and politics towards the West? Just a question… but one that walking through Treptower Park certainly made me ask.

‘Mother Homeland’

Entering through one of two avenues, the (tiny) visitor is led first to the statue of a grieving “Mother Homeland.” 

From there a promenade lined with weeping birches – incredibly moving witnessing trees seemingly crumpled in grief – you arrive at two sphynx-like kneeling soldiers that act as guardians to the cemetery section below. 

Looking back to the avenue of weeping birches
Looking ahead to the cemetery

Beautifully executed stone reliefs illustrating scenes from the ‘Great Patriotic War’ decorate the sixteen marble sarcophagi flanking the graves, while gold-lettered quotes by J. Stalin, the commander in chief of the Soviet armed forces, underscore the importance of the Communist Party and the Red Army under his leadership. Though clearly outdated, these quotes survived Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalinist rule in 1956 with the subsequent cull of Stalin-statues and effective banning of any mention of his name in public. 

The sarcophagi tell the story of the Second World War in Russia…
…through extraordinary imagery and craftsmanship.
Dedicated to the ‘heroic dying’ of the Russian people

At the very far end, you climb a stepped hill to a mausoleum supporting the aforementioned bronze statue of a Soviet soldier holding a small German girl.

Turning around to descend, you get an overview of the whole dramatic panorama that reflects the historical narratives and artistic concepts dominant in the Soviet Union under Stalin and to a degree still exist today: monumentality, hero worship, a personality cult, and a claim to exclusivity.

Treptower Park has been and continues to be a frequent venue for commemorative events. Since 1990, with the signing of the German-Soviet treaty on neighbourly relations and the German-Russian agreement on the upkeep of war graves in 1992, the Federal Republic of Germany committed itself to the care, renovation and maintenance of all Soviet military graves and war memorials in Germany. 

The evident meticulousness with which the whole site continues to be maintained (and patrolled by German police) is another of Germany’s visible expressions of understanding and reconciliation that have been extended to the Russian Federation and other countries brutally destroyed in the Third Reich’s expansionist and ideological wake. Does this reaching out in friendship make it easier to understand Angela Merkel’s unpopular (certainly in retrospect) policy relating to the Nord Stream pipeline? And the apparent weakness of Olaf Scholz’s initial reluctance to break Germany’s practice and permit the transfer of lethal weapons to areas of conflict… in this case, to Ukraine?

If the premise of my book is true and unresolved traumas of one generation can impact the lives and behaviour of subsequent generations, then the extreme collective traumas experienced by the Russian people over the past century are part of what we are seeing playing out in the attitudes, politics and actions of Russia today. Trauma responses such as emotional numbness, low self-esteem, acceptance of poverty might go some way to explain the apparent passivity and gullibility of large swathes of the population. Likewise, trauma responses such as shame might be producing the violence, megalomania and greed of those in power. Is this then, by extension of the idea, the natural destiny of all traumatised nations? After all we can see similar dysfunction and violence in Africa, South America and plenty of other nations once brutally colonised.

‘Psychohistory‘ – a new but exciting term to me that I appear to have already been practicing – seems to offer a way forward in thinking about these things. It combines history with psychology/psychoanalysis and social sciences/humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. In other words, the ‘why’ of history.

I don’t have any answers, nor even the right questions yet, just an ever-growing sense of discomfort in simple, black and white narratives of good and bad, right and wrong. And an increasing belief that we are still very far from seeing, let alone comprehending the fuller picture. But we need to become more trauma-informed in all areas of life. For to neglect trauma is to leave people in a state of emotional numbness. And when you don’t feel, you become capable of overriding humanity and care for fellow living beings and life itself.

Further Reading / Viewing: 

These questions are explored more deeply in my book: In My Grandfather’s Shadow. Published by Penguin Transworld and Bantam Press in July 2022 and available in most bookshops and the usual online outlets

The brilliant BBC documentary ‘Russia 1985-1999: Traumazone’ by Adam Curtis is made up of multiple film snippets taken in those years. As a fly on the wall experience and from the comfort of an armchair, it doesn’t get much ‘better’ in terms of an experience of Russia. To have lived through those years of extreme deprivation, corruption and hunger must have been little short of appalling.

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone review – ingenious, essential viewing from Adam Curtis

‘Generations of hurt’: Children and grandchildren of war survivors fear ripple effect of Russia’s war in Ukraine

Russia has yet to recover from the trauma of the Stalin era – The Guardian

What does ‘British’ mean to you? And are certain ideas of ‘Britishness’ holding us back?

angela findlay11 Comments

I’m really interested in the question of what ‘British’ means to people now. I am curious which images of Britishness are conjured up by Brexiteers. What British means to Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors, NHS workers, army officers, staunch Conservatives and practicing artists alike. And what British means to you, whether you are British or not.

The reason for my interest comes partly from reading Afua Hirsch’s excellent book, BRIT(ish). Born to British and African parents and raised in middle-class Wimbledon, she explores questions of identity on personal, collective and political levels and reveals the on-going challenges and prejudices faced by many black British. It’s shocking, moving and humbling. And it offers potent insights into Britain’s evident desire to be ‘post-racial’ before it has properly confronted the deeply embedded racism derived from old but intractable beliefs in the superiority of whiteness. 

As a person born to parents of differing nationalities, I have often occupied myself with questions of national identity. Now I am fascinated by the concept of ‘British’ more than ever because, from where I’m standing, Britain and Britishness are hurtling towards a potentially exciting cusp of change. I don’t mean the very tangible changes we, along with much of the world, are making as a result of the Covid pandemic. I also don’t mean the changes that will inevitably come about as a result of Brexit and our divorce from the EU. I’m not even referring to the changes the prime minister and government are plotting in order to make Britain ‘the greatest place on earth’. No, all those proposed changes, a bit like HS2 in a post-Covid world, feel slightly old and out of date already. Most have a reactive feel to them, like sticking plasters, firefighting or making-it-up-as-you go-along.  

Change is rarely comfortable. And fundamental change even less so. Many people fear it and tend to hold tightly to the status quo in preference of disruption. But I am keen to understand precisely what qualities of ‘British’ people are wanting to hold on to. Because it seems to me, and I am far from alone in this, that Britain – whatever that means – is holding onto something, or at least desperately trying to hold onto something. Critical words that have been around for decades in smaller circles are suddenly trending in new publications, articles and programmes. Where Britishness may once have conjured up images of fish and chips, rainy queues, Mr Bean and the Royal Family; or diplomacy, reserve, wit and multi-culturalism, the main things now being cited both here and abroad – and not without considerable sadness and dismay by countries that have deeply admired and loved the UK – seem to be largely scathing criticisms. Above all, of prevailing attitudes: British self-importance; self-congratulation; delusions of grandeur; flag-waving patriotism; exceptionalism; self-entitlement; immaturity, isolationism, archaism… it is not a flattering list.

What has happened? It’s long been clear that Britain has never got over winning the war and, though it’s less verbalised, losing its empire. Boris Johnson is busy channelling Churchill and the language used by many of our leaders merely reveals how stuck they are in ruts of victor/loser rhetoric on the one hand, and nostalgia on the other. Both are ossified and now misplaced attitudes that infuse national thinking and hinder their ability to respond to the very specific demands of these unbelievably challenging times with the appropriateness some countries with lower death rates have displayed. And of course, our pride in our victories and apparently benign empire is only partially justified anyway. There are far broader perspectives to explore and embrace that will not only bring honest nuance to our favoured narratives, but also acknowledge the lingering dark shadows we have cast over whole areas and peoples in our past. As Afua Hirsch says, ‘Britain definitely has secrets. They lurk in the language and the brickwork and the patterns of society.’

Why is it important to look at them?  

Why do we need to look behind us before moving ahead? 

Because until we do, many options and possibilities for the future will remain closed to us, not least in relation to the biggest challenge facing the world, climate change. Like a person riddled with festering wounds, Britain cannot move forward with the light optimism it so desires. It can only limp making the wounds more livid. But once we have tended to the hurt, trauma and ethical redress needed to heal our past, we will be able to move forward less hindered. We can then start the process of integrating the fragmented aspects of British society into a healthier, synchronised whole. This more inclusive version of ‘British’ with its stronger, more contemporary identity will restore us to the position of respect and admiration we long for and will then rightly deserve. 

It won’t be comfortable… but it will be deeply healing and liberating in the long run.

In the meantime, while I am aware that English, Welsh and Scottish also have individual identities, please send me the words and qualities that ‘British’ conjures up for you.

A few related links:

Afua Hirsch on BRIT(ish) – a short video

BRIT(ish) Review – what does it mean to be black and British now?

National Geographic: Why Britishness, as an identity, is in crisis