Nationalism: toxic generally, but it has a lighter side

After a great month in Valencia, in Spain, we’re driving back towards England. That’s Danielle, the two toy poodles and me. The first stage of the journey took us into France. That meant travelling through Catalonia.

Or rather not through Catalonia, but into it, because even when you get over the border to France, you’re still in a bit of Catalonia, north of the Pyrenees. Even the French refer to the region as ‘le pays Catalan’ (note that the expression is in French, not Catalan).

Separatist feeling is nothing like as strong as on the Spanish side of the mountains. You hear far less Catalan being spoken on the streets. But there is still a strong attachment to the region’s Catalan roots. Town and street names often appear in Catalan as well as French, and the Catalan flag – gold and red bars – proudly flies everywhere.

The flag of Catalonia flying from a small surviving part of the
battlements of Perpignan (French) or Perpinyà (Catalan)

Indeed, when I ordered an ice cream in fine old town of Perpignan (Perpinyà in Catalan), the waiter who served me was full of congratulations of my choice of mandarin and raspberry as it produced a serving in the Catalan colours.

An excellent ice and in the appropriate colours for Catalonia

It took us a while to drive to French Catalonia. As we approached the border, we discussed where we might get dinner. One of the more attractive aspects of French towns – including, we assumed, the Catalan ones – is that they tend to offer a wide range of restaurants where one can eat well, and not always for a lot of money.

‘I’d like a crêpe,’ I announced.

Crêpes are sold in crêperies. They’re usually Breton and offer both savoury and sweet pancakes, and they can often be delicious. Sometimes not so much. But I’m forever hopeful. They usually sell wines and beers but the drink of choice to wash the crêpes down is Norman or Breton cider, served in pitchers and drunk out of vessels that look like nothing so much as tea cups, even down to the handles.

It was a shock when we got to the village where we were spending the night, just on the edge of the Pyrenees. There were far fewer restaurants than we’d confidently expected, and most of them were closed. With autumn on us and shorter days, we soon found ourselves wandering dark and gloomy streets in, even at 9:00 at night, in an apparently hopeless quest for somewhere that would serve us food.

It was beginning to seem to me that we would just have to come to terms with not finding anywhere open. We’d have to settle for a night without a meal. Given my weight, that might well be a lot better for my body, but it would be a lot less fun for my soul.

Danielle hadn’t yet accepted the grim truth that weren’t going to find anywhere. She was leading the way confidently ever upwards through the village streets, into the top levels where the streets were all streets and it was perfectly obvious we’d find no restaurants.

And then we came around a corner and saw light flooding out onto the pavement. A pool of good cheer. And – it was coming from a crêperie. We received a new burst of energy and new strength to our legs, as we made at speed towards the vision of delight, even though the street became even steeper for our last few steps.

It was not just a crêperie, but a genuinely Breton one. With a real Breton as owner and chef. It was open, we weren’t too late to order, and it let us in with the dogs. We had an excellent savoury crêpe each followed by one with caramelised apple, drowned in calvados and flambéd. 

Washed down with cider, of course.

On the wall alongside us was a large Breton flag. But, to my amusement, next to it was a Catalan one. I remarked on the fact to the proprietor.

Breton (left) and Catalan flags

‘Well, what do you expect?’ he asked, ‘if I hadn’t put a Catalan flag up, the people here would have lynched me.’

French Catalonia is about as far southwards from Brittany as you can get without leaving France. But Danielle is from Alsace, which is as far eastwards as you can get without landing up in Germany. But she’s always been struck by the number of Breton-Alsatian couples she knows.

She told the proprietor. ‘It seems that whenever a Breton meets an Alsatian, they both say, “what a shame that France comes between us.”’

France of course would deny that vile allegation. The nation brings these disparate regions together, its leaders would claim, it doesn’t separate them. A great notion, though somewhat belied by the staunch spirit of independence expressed in so lively a way by regions such as Alsace, Brittany or Catalonia.

Symbolised by the two fine flags we could admire while enjoying the excellent crêpes Danielle’s persistence had earned for us.

Catalonia: another simple solution sure to fail

In the early part of last century, the American commentator HL Mencken pointed out, “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong”.

In Spain, elements in the troubled region of Catalonia have felt for a long time that they would be better off outside the Spanish state.

I say ‘elements’ because a great many Catalans are far from convinced that this is the right solution for their region – even if it is, in fact, a nation. Many on the left, for instance, are concerned by a separatist movement they see as xenophobic and conservative; many in the centre of the political spectrum see themselves as Spanish as well as Catalan, feel there’s no contradiction between the two and believe Catalonia would enjoy a more secure future linked with the other Spanish regions than on its own.

So which side commands a majority of Catalan opinion?

Opinion polls are only worth so much, as we have learned to our cost in numerous elections around the world. Even so, they’re about the only indication we have of where an electorate’s view stands, outside an actual election. The Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (Centre of Opinion Studies) is a body that is run by the Catalan regional government, so one wouldn’t expect it to be biased against the views of that government, and yet even it has found a majority against independence in every poll bar one since late 2014, and in three of the last four, including both polls carried out in 2017.

The regional government is currently held by nationalists. They have decided that they wanted a referendum on independence in the hope that it would endorse their separatist views. In response, the central government in Madrid made it clear that it regarded such a referendum as illegal and ordered the Catalan government not to hold it.

Let’s pause a moment at this point.

Here’s one approach the Madrid government could have taken. It could have announced that it would not regard any referendum result from Catalonia as binding. That would have laid down that in no circumstances would a vote for independence have had any effect on the central government or lead to any change in the law concerning Catalonia.

The referendum could have gone ahead. If the opinion polls had proved accurate, the result would have been a rejection of independence, massively discrediting the separatist movement. The regional government might have fallen; the question of independence would have been off the table for many years to come.

Had the referendum delivered a vote for independence, the Spanish government would simply have confirmed that it was non-binding. They would have faced a reinvigorated separatist movement but, having made their own position powerfully clear beforehand, they would have had a strong, pre-declared position from which to build a new view of the Catalan situation resulting from the vote.

That’s a complicated solution to a difficult problem. It leaves many issues undecided, requiring the government to come up with solutions later, pragmatically, in the light of circumstances. Instead, Spain decided that it wanted a well-known, neat and plausible solution.

So it opted for repression. It sent in the police. On the day of the referendum, they were shown battling with protestors in the streets, inflicting some serious injuries. The optics, as marketing people call them, were terrible: here were Spanish police, acting on orders of the Spanish government, using often violent power to prevent people voting.

When you’re acting in the name of democracy, that’s a pretty lousy image.

Unarmed civilians in fear of the police
Not a great advert for democracy

Governments seem to like resorting to the use of force. It can be domestic, as in Catalonia, or foreign, as in Iraq, Libya or Syria. It’s always a simple solution, easy to reach for, close to hand. And it usually ends in tears, as it did in Iraq, Libya or Syria.

In Catalonia, the bloodshed on the streets will have only one effect. It will unify and galvanise the opposition to Madrid. Those who opposed Catalan independence before, will come under increased pressure to change their view. If they refuse, they will be accused of treachery, of betraying the sacrifice of the dozens who suffered injury from police violence, all in the name of Catalan freedom. Some at least who opposed separatism, will change sides and back it.

Blood shed in Catalonia:
shameful behaviour to would-be voters, a boon to the separatists

In other words, from the point of view of the Madrid government, the situation will be as would have followed a referendum result backing independence. Or, rather, far worse: whatever the result, the separatists will claim they have been cheated and will draw additional strength from the powerful emotional cohesion that the spilling of blood gives to a cause.

The Spanish government of Mariano Rajoy chose a solution, police repression, that was well-known, neat and plausible.

And, as Mencken could have told him, wrong.

There's nationalism and nationalism

While on a visit to Llanelli in South Wales, I found myself chatting to a pleasant woman who had spent some years working in bookshops.

“The worst thing about the London-based salesmen for the publishing companies,” she told me, “was that they didn’t want to come down to see us. One of them even said they only delivered to the mainland.”

It’s an interesting notion. Because, you see, Wales isn’t in fact an island separate from England.

OK. So where's the sea between England and Wales?

The conversation reminded me of one I had decades ago with a Welsh lawyer. A fluent Welsh speaker, he’d built quite a practice in a rural area providing legal services to farmers and others whose English was poor.

“We’re always talking about nationalism in this country.” 

We were in Wales at the time and there was, indeed, a great deal of talk about Welsh nationalists who were on the rise and, in their most extreme manifestation, had even taken to torching Welsh cottages owned by absentee English proprietors.

“But,” he went on, “I don’t think it’s Welsh nationalism that’s the real problem. It’s English nationalism.”

He was on to something, it seemed to me. After all, Welsh, Irish or Scottish nationalism might be the ones that made the most noise, but what they were noisiest about was the need to resist an arrogant and overbearing England, intent on treating them as second-rate citizens with no specific needs of their own.

Why, even the iconic British red postboxes had been emblazoned “E II R” since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. However Scotland, part of her realm, had never had a first queen of that name. For the Scots, the present queen is “E I R”.

A trivial matter? I’m sure it is in itself. But symbols matter and Symbolically the postboxes proclaim “Scottish history doesn’t matter. It’s been subsumed into English.”

How English history subsumes Scottish

Both sides of this divide are nationalistic. But there is a difference: Scots and Welsh nationalists, and their Irish predecessors who successfully achieved independence for their nation, are speaking out in defence of rights denied. The English nationalism is an empowered variety, proclaiming its own entitlement to deny rights to others.

It’s that kind of rampant, ugly nationalism whose rise around the globe is so worrying today. It’s bad in Britain. Here English nationalists, ironically supported by the Welsh on this occasion, inflicted Brexit on the entire population of the island, and the six counties of Ireland that are attached to it. It has become ever clearer that the hopes on which that movement based itself are entirely unfounded, not just illusory but self-delusory: there will be no savings to plough back into cherished national institutions like the NHS, despite the deceiving promises of the Brexit-backers; there will be no repatriation of control, but deepened dependency on others, such as the US, without Britain even enjoying the limited say in the making of their policy that it had in the EU; and, it has now been admitted, there will not even be the kind of reduction in immigration Brexiters had hoped for, such is our need for foreign labour to keep our society moving.

However, that only means that Britain will suffer for Brexit. Damage may be inflicted on other countries, but it will be relatively minor.

In the US, however, we have a team in power that has explicitly adopted the slogan ‘America First’. It sounds noble but in reality it means ‘everyone else a (distant) second’ (which, it has to be said in passing, makes it particularly ironic that Brexiters are looking to the US for national salvation). And the worst of it is that Trump has his finger on the button for an unimaginably powerful force – a huge nuclear stockpile.

On top of that, to ensure that in future the America he wishes to put first wins its wars, he’s looking for a large increase in military spending. To achieve it, he’s prepared to cut environmental protection and foreign aid, because he prefers dominating the world to keeping it habitable, and things it makes more sense to bomb people than feed them.

Refusing to deliver books to a part of your own country on the insultingly false belief that it’s an island is bad enough. It’s only the start of the harm that nationalism can do. It can go far further, hurling a nation into regression as Brexit will do, or worse still, jeopardising the future of the world as Trump now threatens.

Ugly and unpleasant, rampant, empowered nationalism turns out also to be dangerous.

Beefing about nationalism

“All meat sold in this store,” said the sign, “is British.”

That had me smiling wryly. Because I lived in France for ten years and out there they had signs proclaiming all the meat they were selling to be French. Indeed, during the mad cow disease crisis in Britain, French butchers were strident in their insistence that none of their beef was British.

A guarantee to make us feel safer
Well, unless you're French. Or from anywhere outside Britain

Now I have no objection to people demanding that their food be safe. To be frank, I’d also rather prefer it that way. I’m not convinced, though, that the fact that it’s being produced by compatriots offers any guarantees. I really don’t see why I should expect British farmers or food companies to be any safer than French ones – or vice versa. They all, after all, use the same techniques and products as each other.

But food is a visceral matter. I’ve known Jews or Muslims, for instance, who have abandoned every aspect of the practice of their faith who can’t free themselves of their dietary laws: once your body has learned that pork is unclean, it’s hard to shake that feeling. Bear in mind that it is a feeling, far more than a belief. The faith, say that certain rituals must be performed on certain days, is relatively easy to shake because it is a matter for the mind; but the body is far more basic and far more conservative.

So when we feel threatened in our food, we run for atavistic cover: back to what we identify as our community. So British (or French) food is safer because France (or Britain) is our country.

Nationalism is the belief that one country is better than others, simply because it’s ours. And the example of the fatuous posters about locally produced meat underlines how widespread and baseless, that belief is. 

It wouldn’t matter if that was as far as it went. But in England today we see the rise of a viciously nationalistic party, UKIP, which wants to further inflame national sentiment and build its popularity on it. So its primary stance is anti-immigrant and, make no mistake about it, their objection to immigrants isn’t truly economic or even political, it’s simply based on the crassest of gut-feel dislike of the foreigner for no other reason than he or she is foreign.

Unsurprisingly, as the two nations are so close, and not just geographically, France is seeing the parallel growth of an equally vicious, xenophobic nationalist party, the Front National, with views that mirror much of UKIP’s stance.

Both parties would, naturally, strongly maintain the superiority of their country’s meat over that of the other – or indeed any other. The people of their nation are better, the foodstuffs of the nation are therefore better.

Sadly, these attitudes are spilling over and infecting far too much of the life of each of these nations. The French FN is whipping up Islamophobia as part of its hatred of anything it sees as extraneous and those attitudes are spreading through an increasing portion of the institutions of society; in Britain, both the Conservatives and, sadly, Labour are trying to woo support among UKIP voters by making dangerous concessions to its views.

It’s no surprise that for all its talk of sympathy with the sufferings of Syria, Britain has let in just 24 refugees from that country.

Nationalism is toxic and it’s deeply anchored. Indeed, there’s only one sentiment capable of supplanting it. Curiously, that’s best exemplified by another matter of nationality of meat. 

When the European Union decided to ban beef imports from Britain because of Foot and Mouth, many Northern Irish farmers asked to be reclassified as Irish.

Wonderful, isn’t it? Many of these men are the descendants of Edward Carson who proclaimed “no surrender” to the attempt to push the North into an independent Irish Republic. Many would have voted for Ian Paisley’s party during his “Never, Never, Never” phase. Over their dead bodies would they ever be made to give up their British status and become Irish.

Until, that is, they were hit in their pocket books. Then, yes, being Irish was a legitimate demand and they pursued it energetically.

Come to think of it, that might be the best answer to the threats nationalism poses. Not guns and bullets. Just a little money to persuade its adherents that their bread might be better buttered on the other side. In the long run, it might be a lot more effective.

And, actually, cost a great deal less.

Persecution - pass it on

It’s fascinating to examine the way human tolerance, or perhaps I should say intolerance, pans out. For instance, I used naively to think that people who’d been victims of intolerance would be more sympathetic to other victims and would not behave intolerantly themselves. What an illusion. The reverse is the case. It’s as though someone who’s been regularly kicked around likes nothing more than to find someone else they can kick in turn.

An example. Back in 1848, the Hungarians got very fed up with being pushed around by their overlords, the Austrians. They rose in revolt and were fairly ferociously put down for their pains. The Austrians, however, got the message. In 1867, the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was set up and the Hungarians were made more or less equal partners in the Empire. Celebrations all round? Not quite. The Slovaks, the Croats, the Galicians, the Rumanians – they had nothing to be cheerful about. In fact, the Hungarians were pretty much as nasty to them as the Austrians had been to the Hungarians.

Then came the First World War and the Empires were broken up into the so-called Successor States. At last an opportunity to satisfy national aspirations. But again there were lots of dissatisfied people: the Slovaks, again, weren’t happy about being absorbed into Czechoslovakia, the Croats, again, weren’t happy about being a part of Jugoslavia. The Jews were recognised as a minority more or less everywhere but got their own state nowhere.

Then the Nazis came to power. When they invaded Czechoslovakia, that was pretty bad news for that new little nation. Or at least for the Czech part. The German-speaking Sudeten people were only too pleased to be absorbed into Germany. And the Slovaks, believing that the ‘independent’ state they were going to be given would actually be independent, were pretty pleased too.

Czechoslovakia was one of the nations reconstituted after the end of the War, so the Slovaks lost their illusory independence again. But then in the nineties, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, they got it back and for real this time, when the Czech Republic had its reasonably peaceful divorce from Slovakia. At last there was cause for celebration, or so you might think. I met a young Hungarian-speaking citizen of Slovakia at the time, very worried about being part of a minority in the new country – previously his people had enjoyed some protection against the Slovak majority, from the government of the unified nation in Prague.

So it seems it doesn’t matter how bad a time you’ve had as part of a minority yourself. When you finally get to be the majority, you’re likely to be just as ghastly to other minorities. Perhaps it’s just like most child abusers being people who were abused as children themselves: the victims become the perpetrators.

So when I see Israeli soldiers firing on schools where civilians are sheltering, I have to learn to stop saying ‘how can they, of all people, behave that way?’ Instead, I have to learn to ask ‘how is it that we all, humanity, persist in behaving that badly?’