Does what make me most sad about Brexit make other leave voters sad?

[TooTiredToTidy]

The saddest thing for me of all about Brexit (and there are soooo many) is that it's the country I was born in and have loved and been proud of all my life isn't the one I knew after all. I recently re-watched the London 2012 opening ceremony and it made me super sad because I remember being so proud of my country as I saw it - multicultural, diverse, open, tolerant, celebrating of knowledge, achievement, working together, ensuring fairness prevailed.

And since I've found out it isn't. There is more racism and more xenophobia than I realised. I found out so many of my countrymen have been simmering with so much anger, that what I thought was a bit of nostalgia is actually a real desire to live in the rose-tinted past, that we are sick of experts, that we so hate being part of the EU we are fine to screw over our the youth who overwhelming wanted to remain scientists (ditto) Scotland (ditto) Northern Ireland (ditto) etc. That we are more little England than Great Britain.

The huge rise in hate crime post Brexit has not personally impacted me but has impacted people I know. People who do and don't come from the EU have been told to 'go back to where you come from' and when speaking a foreign language told to speak English.

This German woman who rang into LBC radio show literally made me cry and feel heartbroken: www.lbc.co.uk/im-so-scared-now-german-woman-hit-by-xenophobia-calls-james-in-tears-132971

I know not many leave voters will have directly anticipated all these things happening but I want to know how they feel about them themselves? Other online trolls/posters I've asked just deny the rise in hate crime or say you can't believe everything you hear and say it's not happening. It is happening.

Equally if you've experienced something yourself as either an immigrant or is hate crime related I'd really like to hear about it.

Is there a British culture? There is a Scottish culture, an Irish culture, a Welsh culture actually even a culture from Yorkshire. But a British culture? I'm not so sure.

You'd have to start by defining British. Do you include the Northern Irish? (The British isles includes Ireland; Great Britain does not).

Like most larger European countries, culture in the UK is not uniform. I grew up in London; my husband's working class upbringing in Stoke is in many respects very alien to me. But that's all about class and nothing to do with nationality or national culture.

In fact, one of the reasons that it's so hard to identify a "British culture" may well be the class system, which makes it hard for people like me (child of educated professionals) to identify with working class people like DH's extended family or upper class people like my dad's second family. I have very, very little in common with most of DH's aunts and uncles and cousins - we don't watch the same TV programmes or eat the same food or even, in many respects, talk the same language. I probably have even less in common with my father's second wife who is from a very wealthy, landed family. In fact, I have far more in common with my foreign colleagues with whom I share a similar education and values...

The EU the Great White Fortress, Keeping migration from outside out whilst keeping nice white folk in.

That's just silly. In much of southern Europe you would find it hard to visually identify, say, a Syrian from a local. I live in an area with many people of Spanish heritage (people whose parents and grandparents arrived either as refugees from the civil war or as migrant labour for the textile mills) and without a clue such as a surname you'd be hard pushed to distinguish someone of spanish catholic origin from someone with a North african heritage.

Well surely we should put NI in the British culture seeing that it's part of the country

Yes there are some differences in big countries in Europe between north and south etc... but not in the way it is in the uk.
French people are french first and foremost. BEtween them they might say they are from Paris, Alsace or Provence but they do feel french first.
Here people feel Scottish or English in opposition to the rest of the uk (i.e. England/NI/Wales) first and then they feel British.

I have never experienced similar feelings of being different (as in I'm English which means not Welsh or Scottish) within one country.
Maybe it's a similar thing in Spain with Catalonia? That's the closest example I can think about even though as an outsider, it still feels quite different.

I blame the eu- once we've left we'll all feel British again

The EU the Great White Fortress, Keeping migration from outside out whilst keeping nice white folk in.

I think that's silly too, unless you are going to argue that British citizens of Asian origin aren't allowed Freedom of Movement.

^French people are french first and foremost. BEtween them they might say they are from Paris, Alsace or Provence but they do feel french first.
Here people feel Scottish or English in opposition to the rest of the uk (i.e. England/NI/Wales) first and then they feel British.^

Well, France is one country. But you obviously aren't familiar with the joke maps of France along the lines of "France seen by the Bretons" - www.topito.com/top-france-prejuges - which make illustrate the extent to which France is very definitely not a culturally homogenous country.

I live in a particularly insular part of France where some of my French friends who have moved here from as far as an hour's drive away say that after a decade they are still treated as foreigners .

And just over the border an hour's drive from where I live is Catalonia, a region that is at least as culturally distinct from Castilian Spain as Wales is from England.

You only think that other cultures are homogenous because you are not familiar with them.

You also need to look to Belgium where their is the Flemish part and the Walloon part. I have known Flemish people who have never been to the French part of the country, and saw absolutely no reason why they should do so. I imagine it works the other way too, although I don't have the personal knowledge there.

Of course the referendum has brought out things that were under the surface before. The high level of immigration we have from the EU is a problem. It is causing unease in some areas because it has happened quickly and people have had little time to adjust. Many don't want to adjust. Before the referendum speaking about immigration was considered unacceptable and people were labelled racist ( remember Gorden brown). Now the government recognise it is a problem and people now feel ok speaking about it. Previously people were scared to mention it.
In my village it is now openly talked about all the time

Wrong - I think the 'negative' - as in,not anything else, rather than 'not good' - nature of British identity is a) not new and b) not so much the function of us not daring to have an identity as of us feeling other cultures are just that - other, against our standard.

We could look to the past, to notions of Britishness we've discarded and which were tied up with Empire - stiff upper lip etc - or vague things like 'sense of fair play', but all those things are actually more to do with class than place in lots of ways. As someone said a few posts ago, what it means to be British has a lot to do with class and region, perhaps more than many other countries.

Wasn't Gordon Brown's bigot lady from somewhere like Blackburn or Burnley where the immigrants are from the Indian Sub continent, rather than the EU?

Now the government recognise it is a problem and people now feel ok speaking about it.

And what are the Government doing? Having fanned the flames with their disgusting Conference and Home Office policies, they have recruited Saatchi and Saatchi to airbrush the worst out. Hardly doing anything constructive. May wittering on about being global and open for business is just her empty words.

This year, two days after the ref, flags left on the ground, no waving, no singing.

Gee, I wonder why.

This year, two days after the ref, flags left on the ground, no waving, no singing.

Perhaps the leave voters felt a bit ashamed and embarrassed and the remainders felt appalled and disgusted and wished to dissociate themselves from flag waving?

That 'bigoted woman' was Gillian Duffy from Rochdale.
No mention of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent - just asking about what was going to happen to help with the massive influx of people from Eastern Europe.

Fair points that she made throughout the interview imo, and yet she was immediately dismissed as a bigot by the leader of the Labour Party.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr8IVWBuPE

I think you will find that there are more people from the Indian sub continent in Rochdale than there are East Europeans. Try looking at some of the faces on the video, for a start - there seem to be quite a few with brown skins. I agree the whites could be Poles or Romanians and you wouldn't know.

I'll have to watch that tomorrow. All I remember from the time is Duffy demanding to know where all these Eastern Europeans have come from. Repeatedly. I'm sure her points were far more nuanced than that.

I do not define my Britishness in a negative way but I certainly would not have flag waved after Britain voted in a way that was a kick in the teeth not juts of EU immigrants but also all immigrants and as I have heard repeatedly is viewed by the rest of the world as isolationist and a symptom of illusions of entitlement and superiority.

The bits I feel proud about are being the first country in the world to innovate not just technology but also intellectual thought, including an openness that meant that since 1826 we had a university that championed independent thought by attracting the world's best minds, irrespective of gender or ethnicity, and that others followed their lead, something that is was a source of our ability to punch above our weight in the world, both in terms of innovation and humanitarianism. I am proud that as a result whilst our Empire was guilty of a great deal of exploitation it also left legacies in terms of rule of law and government that are cherished. I cherish our irony and humour, even our drink culture, short of bingeing and filling our hospitals.

However underlying that I am most definitely proud that I grew up talking about dinner and tea, and called my grandparents Nana and Nanny, and all that goes with coming from "God's own country", and I take huge pride in my Yorkshire Puddings. I can still say bath and grass properly. I think in terms of identity you can have your cake and eat it. Most importantly though identity is internal, Nobody can "threaten" mine by opening a polish deli, nor did they, since I grew up near a city that was full of both Polish delis and some curry houses that served you "meat" curries ......

I do understand that there are a few places that have experienced very high levels of EU immigration where it could have been handled better. Lincolnshire appears to be one which has given fodder to DM articles. However put that in perspective with the Leave vote and it makes no sense, there are few areas with that issue. . What makes sense is that as Jamie actually expresses the real resentment is of the wealthy and resentment of areas of the country that appear privileged, diverted in part on to immigrants by politicians and the media

What makes sense is that as Jamie actually expresses the real resentment is of the wealthy and resentment of areas of the country that appear privileged, diverted in part on to immigrants by politicians and the media

Which will still be true - just look at the members of Theresa May's cabinet. Not all are wealthy and some come from relatively humble backgrounds e.g. Justine Greening, but the majority are. They will do very nicely for themselves whatever happens, short of there being a revolution, which doesn't seem likely at present.

All I remember from the time is Duffy demanding to know where all these Eastern Europeans have come from. Repeatedly. I'm sure her points were far more nuanced than that.

Seek, interestingly, that's what I remembered too.

She actually mentioned Eastern Europeans once!
Once in over 5 minutes!

She didn't mention 'brown faces' or anything either, specifically 'all these Eastern Europeans'.
Once.

It's actually quite a good representation of how people weren't 'allowed' to even talk about immigration being negative in any way - they were jumped all over and denounced as racists, xenophobes & bigots.
Like Seek, I remembered her repeatedly talking about immigrants; she didn't.

She mentioned them once, that's all.

Well, she named them once and then kept asking where they had come from. To which the obvious answer would be, Eastern Europe.

And she was allowed to ask it. And brown had to apologise for thinking she was bigoted. So which opinion was actually not allowed, really?

She mentioned them once, that's all.

Quite, and other issues were at least or more important. There is something which needs to be addressed here because apart from places like Lincolnshire, where there genuinely has been a large influx of immigrants, most places going on about immigrants aren't affected by them. This narrative suits the Tories, because it takes away the emphasis on how they only care for a small handful of wealthy people.

Labour has much less of an excuse, although Gordon Brown was trying quite manfully to put the case for the things his Government had done.

So maybe Brown needed to press her on why she was concerned about Eastern Europe immigrants. Not to belittle her, just to ask whether they were actually likely to cause her a problem. So often, when you dig a bit deeper - we can't get GP appointments, can't get choice of schools etc. a few questions show that isn't the case.

Well, she named them once and then kept asking where they had come from. To which the obvious answer would be, Eastern Europe.

No.

She said:

"...You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that you're … but all these eastern European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?..."

That was it.

The sum total of any mention of immigration, in 5 minutes.

One sentence.

Not "then kept asking where they had come from".

Peregrina, I don't think he needed to press her on it either though because it was just one sentence in the whole conversation.

She was far more concerned about being taxed on her pension, vulnerable people not getting the help they need & students being crippled with debt.
That's what took up most of the rest of the 5 minutes; immigration was one sentence in amongst all that.

Well, technically twice - according to your quote.