A
dark and gathering sameness
A couple of months ago, in Leopold's Bar in the Colaba district
of Bombay, I got talking to some locals, and the party later moved on to a
flat in one of the giant city's posher areas. The bhang came out, the Cobra
beer, the Lebanese wine, the wonderful mutton curry, and the usually-tied-with-reserve
Indian tongues were loosened and relaxed. They offered observations and asked
me questions about Britain, one of which I can't shake. What, they said, has
happened to your country and its people? All the qualities of Britishness that
much of the world used to admire - the bolshyness, the defiance, the fractious
disobedience, the free and spirited thinking - have all been steadily and systematically
eroded, and you seem to have rolled over and submitted and let it happen. Why
is this? Why aren't you fighting, like your fathers and grandfathers did? Why
are you letting your collective personality be chipped away at from without
until not much more than a programmed automaton remains? (They can be an articulate
bunch, the Indians).
I thought about this on the plane back to London, and on the interminable train
journey across the country back to Wales, suffering long delays or cancellations,
travelling standing-room-only on overheated cattle cars and paying a small
fortune for the privilege. Being told everywhere, on signage and over Tannoy
systems, what I'm not allowed to do; only what I'm not allowed to do. A long
list of prohibitions, everywhere. Passengers are warned not to. Passengers
must not. British Rail operates a no. Passengers are reminded that no. Is forbidden.
Is not permitted. Is not allowed. It is against the law to. Don't, don't, don't,
don't, DON'T.
Since returning from India, I've travelled out of the UK three times; to Finland
where, in the bohemian Kallio district of Helsinki, everybody is drunk, but
nobody is unfriendly; to Ireland's west coast, where you're seen as a potential
pal to have fun with; and to Dalmatia, which is horizontally laid-back. Compare
these to Britain, where anger and frustration have become the norm. It's more,
much more, than skin-tone or weather; it's to do with a kind of attitudinal
default setting, especially in parts of England, where most people immediately
dislike and mistrust you until you prove otherwise (in many other countries,
it's the other way round; you're liked and trusted until you behave badly).
Why should this be? The ingrained class system probably has something to do
with it, and the discrepancies between earnings and inflation, but such things
have been around for ages, and the general atmosphere of pissed-offness is
relatively new. The climate? Well, Ireland's under water for much of the year,
too. The ferocious pursuit of alcoholic oblivion? Well, nobody drinks like
the Finns. The genetic make-up of a warrior race? What, more so than the Croats,
who, these days, exude contentment, both with themselves and the world in general?
Their favoured response to queries is, usually, 'something will happen', delivered
in a supremely calm and unbothered voice and with a uniquely Adriatic shrug?
No. None of these things. I'm beginning to think, rather, that it's to do with
a widespread crisis of confidence, not just in the (to me, welcome) breakdown
of monolithic ideologies, but in the growing understanding of a wider conception;
Brits are starting to realize how they're perceived in the wider world, as
belligerent pink-skinned drunks, as unjustified cultural snobs, as the arrogant
products of a benighted empire and the beleaguered subjects of a pointless
and outmoded monarchy and a bullying government. Take tattoos; I've just spent
a week amongst thousands of half-naked people on the Dalmatian coast, and not
once did I see one of those pathetic Maori or faux-Celtic designs on shoulder
or arm or back, which the British ubiquitously sport in a manner that suggests
they were once told that such designs are cool, so they'll have one permanently
etched onto their skin; they're not really certain that they look good, but
Becks and Robbie have them, so… Self-conscious, self-obsessed Britain.
Not quite sure what it is anymore. The beautiful girl who I once saw in the
Sagrada Famillia in Barcelona had her entire back tattooed with the Bleeding
Heart because she was filled with some kind of divine passion, but the pasty
kid in Portsmouth has a stylised crucifix on his upper arm because another
pasty kid, Wayne Rooney, has one too. Brits aren't cool. A people who need
to be told what to do can never be cool.
I know how this sounds; the Guardian-ista world-traveller struck with a snobbish
cultural self-loathing, but I repudiate that. These aren't sneering words,
they're saddened ones; I'm finding it awful to watch Britain rot. The potential
of this small collection of countries is astounding, particularly in the contiguity
of disparate cultures; in under three hours from London you can be in Cardiff,
Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Cornwall - differing cultures,
all. But a dark and gathering sameness is smothering them. Their contours are
being ironed out. It's increasingly becoming the case that the only way to
differentiate people from various parts of the country is by accent. There
are some bastions of individuality left, still; Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow,
where I live in mid-Wales. But I wonder for how long they'll stay that way.
So why don't I move? Well, I'm thinking about it, but I feel, still, that,
for better or worse, I belong here; this is where I was born, forged, nurtured.
It's where my blood began to beat. I'd miss it, if I left. And besides anything
else, who wants to be a rat deserting a sinking ship?
I'm annoyed and disappointed, this week. I'll be tied to my desk for the next
few months; airports are out of bounds. But rant over. Until next time.
©
Niall Griffiths 2008
Whatever went wrong with Britain? Niall is having the rant of all rants
A
dark and gathering sameness