COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN
I find this piece a bit muddled.
The simple fact is, as anyone knows who has read enough 20th
century British writers or followed British history, that varying degrees of
xenophobia have long been part of the British national character.
So much so, it is almost a cliché. Jokes and remarks about
the French, for example, are part of the fabric of traditional British culture.
During WWII, many British people made jokes about Americans, such as: “They’re
over-paid, over-sexed, and over here!”
You may observe mild xenophobia in many cultural artefacts
from writers to politics to a television series such as Fawlty Towers.
In a more serious vein, Churchill made some quite rude
remarks and used epithets about people from other places, as did a number of
other politicians and public figures.
It seems clear they did not fear ridicule or being
disparaged.
The fact is that xenophobia works on at least two levels,
and not all the parts are automatically bad.
On one level, there is simply love and affection for the
culture you have and no wish to see it change, including mild joking about the
influence of others who will, ipso facto through their presence in any numbers,
change it.
At the other extreme, there are the louts of football clubs
who go abroad and get into fights, insulting foreigners and making themselves
repulsive.
Theirs is the set of attitudes you would certainly find in
what used to be called "naavy pubs," there being an example of a word
used by Orwell that has largely disappeared.
In light of Britain’s becoming, as virtually all modern
nations are destined to become, more cosmopolitan with migrants from many
places, I’m sure these things gradually are changing.
And there is no use pretending otherwise, enough change and
you are simply not the same place anymore.
The smaller the size of the country’s population, the more
this is true. America’s more than 300 million can absorb many with no visible
effect, although America’s long prevalent xenophobia has always worked against
newcomers, one of the great ironies of a “land of immigrants.”
Denmark’s five million or so cannot, which explains some
fairly tough legislation in that country concerning migration. All other
countries fall somewhere between.
However, much of what the world thinks of as British will
pass away with substantial migration. Just look at British spelling and grammar
under the onslaught of American culture, as in the very newspaper you are
reading. A great writer such as Graham Greene already reads as a bit antique in
his language. So also, George Orwell, and neither of them is in any way
ancient, being both contemporaries of at least some people still living.
The Britain of umbrellas, bowlers, fry-ups, careful
language, and eccentrics, including truly eccentric comedy, is already in large
part gone.
