everything was – or so it seems to memory’s
selective mind – so ordered:
how old was I, when I stopped
raising my school cap
(‘Don’t just touch it, Michael;
lift it! ’) to, not just staff at school,
but anyone to whom my parents talked
or who had talked (‘My, hasn’t he grown! ’
as if this was some personal achievement) to me,
or more likely, over my head, as I
shifted from foot to foot,
trapped in a grown-up world
of politenesses; which however
my mother loved and rightly
as one now raised in her station
from being polite to customers
in grandma’s terrace front-window shop
where homemade cooking was the income
now that the cotton dust had got to grandpa’s lungs;
but now the wife of a man retired
at thirty-eight, stone-deaf…
The history books at school were slender – since
we’d won every war – or if some foreigners thought
we hadn’t, it had all the same brought out great courage,
incredible bravery which was a lesson to us all,
fortitude and leadership and deeds
‘ surpassing the call of duty’. We’d even
won wars in places which technically weren’t ours,
called The Empire; over which we ruled
because we did it better than the natives;
because we were born to rule..
And we were taught by haunted heroes who’d fought
in the war to end all wars – the PT instructor
had a face like camouflage, white, greenish, brown and red,
where he’d been mustard-gassed; our heroes
were still close to us, although
they didn’t talk about it much. That was
another lesson in how to be British.
Geography was happy natives
(only the National Geographic Magazine
photographed their tits, and then only if brown)
moving export crops, balancing trade
and the occasional water-pot – which was always full.
And the sun never set on those red bits on the map
which were the British Empire…
How easy it was to be proud of being British,
and to take for granted
that gift of birth, our birthright
which, unearned, we would seek
to earn anew by living up to it..
But then, haven’t all of us, by some
trick of space-time unexplained by Einstein,
lived, as a child, in better times – or at least,
if any didn’t, we never heard of them;
or if we did, it was because the missionaries
were putting all that right, if we just simply
put a penny or two in their box, and here’s a flag to pin
on your jacket like some painless medal..
* * *
So, no more nostalgic trips now down that memory lane;
let’s start from now and work backwards
on why I’m currently ashamed, after all these golden years,
to be British; and despite
all that there is left of those things of magnificence –
fair play, free speech, freedom itself,
not yet quite worn away
I’m deeply ashamed this week
that three British subjects,
despite Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta, and the rule of law,
were handed over – and in irons –
without due process of laws promptly promulgated
by reason and humanity; and
if they did indeed steal a million each on paper
yet never charged here, where it occurred,
we can guess that it’s because
such unearned money is
the game of all financial deals,
in City circles, as in other countries…
I’m deeply ashamed as of last year,
that after a history of ‘responding to a request’
and just defence of the oppressed,
we made a pre-emptive strike
in the oily name of exporting democracy
while our governments at home
confuse democracy with ‘spin’; we are the spun
in the woven lies of history.
We have dirtied the name of democracy.
I’m deeply ashamed, as of this decade,
that we have found no way
to enable our uncontrolled immigrant population
to feel as proud of being British as are
Americans of being American;
ashamed that politicians
put party over conscience;
ashamed that – yes, young and old alike -,
we have lost respect for others
both in action or the lack of it;
that ‘neighbour’ is now a mere
geographical location;
that we apologise for or demean our religious sense
in a world where those we fight
are more religious than are we;
and last of all, I’m ashamed
that one day soon we may become
ashamed of being British.
(Please read Tara McHale’s poem on the same theme, it’s a group effort – or add your own!))