A Eulogy for European Values.

Fear, anger, and confusion.  I sit here, over 48 hours after Britain made its most critical decision in a generation, still gobsmacked and heartbroken.  I try to reassure myself about how fortunate I am to have experienced the EU’s benefits, and remind myself that not everyone is as lucky as me, but this is proving very difficult.

It’s hard to know where to begin.  So many things about the EU referendum have angered me.  So much misinformation, so much fearmongering.  I’m the first to admit the EU isn’t perfect, but the main reason Brexit is so heart-wrenching, is it is an outward rejection of European values and identity.

I feel, first and foremost, emphatically European.  Most of my education was spent in the European School of Luxembourg, which is, or perhaps now ‘was’, a microcosm of European values and integration.  The classes, divided into sections based on nationality, reflect what is special about the EU.  Children of different cultures, nationalities, ethnicities, and outlooks whose ancestors, decades and centuries ago, had tore each other apart in brutal continental wars, remember the past but look to the future, forming long-lasting friendships and relationships in a celebration and embracement of their differences.  That, for me, is what it means to be European.

“Educated side by side, untroubled from infancy by divisive prejudices, acquainted with all that is great and good in the different cultures, it will be borne in upon them as they mature that they belong together. Without ceasing to look to their own lands with love and pride, they will become in mind Europeans, schooled and ready to complete and consolidate the work of their fathers before them, to bring into being a united and thriving Europe.” –European School motto

Nonetheless, I still identified as Welsh and English, and ultimately British.  I holidayed there.  I have family there.  I support their sports teams.  I speak English.  This for me fitted within the framework of European identity, but now Britain has decided that being European and being British are no longer officially compatible, two parts of what I considered to be central to my identity have been wrenched apart from each other.  In the space that remains I don’t know what to feel, other than embarrassed and ashamed to be British.

Cultural and national identity are relative, abstract, and malleable, but they reflect who you identify, and are willing to identify with.  They reflect with who you share, and want to share, cultural symbols and heritage.  Moreover, they reflect the type of environment and people you want to be shaped by.

I refuse to share the values of those who voted to leave a project with peace, cooperation, and integration at its heart.

I refuse to share the values of those who voted because they feared people ‘different’ to themselves, who came to the UK out of desperation or simply to work, like so many in the past and so many Britons have done across Europe.

I refuse to be shaped by the values of those who gave in so readily to scaremongering about immigration, who, caught up in their own hatred, jumped to believe the propaganda (yes, propaganda) which was fed to them by the Leave campaign.

I refuse to give up my European values, I refuse to give up my European identity.

I don’t blame the decisions of the individual to leave; their decision is partially a result of a perpetual state of hate that has bubbled over, causing poisonous divisions in British society.  For many this is a protest vote against an elite they can’t see, and don’t understand, and circumstances they can’t get out of.  In a post-industrial country where minority groups are limited by their birth, where social mobility is, according to some experts, the lowest in the developed World, it’s easy to see where hatred comes from.  Lack of opportunity, and lack of hope, has created a cycle of hatred with immigrants and the biggest peace project in our history, that should have taught us so much about integration and acceptance, falling victim.  In reality, we should be scrutinising the policies of our own government, not blaming the most vulnerable or a system that strives for peace and acceptance.  History repeats itself.  The question on my mind is who will the British blame next?

It’s hard to end on a positive note.  The one thing I would say is that only 52% voted to leave, which by many countries’ definition of a referendum isn’t enough to constitute a majority.  Juxtaposed against the UK’s bleak future, are young people.  We will live longest with the repercussions of this decision, and yet paint the most positive picture of the UK’s future.  75% of young people voted to remain, whilst older generations, too young and too comfortable to remember the times of a divided Europe, too insular to embrace difference, too ready to use the EU as an outlet for their misdirected anger, have taken us out. No, we voted emphatically to remain, demonstrating a conscientious, open-minded, and driven demographic that will one day take better care of important decisions like this, and for this I am proud.

To those who voted remain I’d say: hope, believe, and hold those who led us to this to account.  But most of all I’d say learn from the values of the EU; from its amity, its celebration of difference, peace, tolerance, and acceptance, to try and address the deep rooted divisions in British society.

George Penn @gtcpenn67