My name's Joe Lo.
I'm a 23-year old who's lived in London all my life apart from an enjoyable
3-year stint at University in the northern city of Sheffield. I live in a
3-bedroom flat with my girlfriend and three of her friends and I'm studying an
intense year-long course in Journalism at Kingston University. My main
interests are politics and football and I'm a Green Party voter and a Chelsea
FC fan.
To the European Union I feel ambivalent. I'm not
a Eurosceptic but neither am I a Europhile. A question that's often asked in
Britain is "who runs Britain? Brussels or Westminster?". This is a
rhetorical question. It's taken for granted that you'd much rather be ruled
from Westminster (the area of London where the British parliament is based)
than Brussels (where the European parliament is based). For me, the question
seems less relevant. The important question is what sort of people are running
our lives? In whose interests? At whose expense? Not where exactly they are
located geographically.
So what I want to know is whether the political
class in Brussels is any different from that in Westminster and over whom do
ordinary people have more control. I think they are very similar. They're both
mainly made up of rich, white men and bend to the wishes of big corporations
not the ordinary people who vote for them. The proposed referendum on our
membership of the EU is a meaningless distraction from the real issues that
affect British people like unemployment, the cost of living and inequality.
I think many of my friends feel the same as I can not remember ever discussing the EU although I discuss politics regularly. I think this is because my friends are young and live in the multicultural metropolis of London. The people who are obsessed with the EU are generally older and live in less internationalized areas. Perhaps they have never visited Europe. For my generation, living in the EU is a fact of life. We don't consciously think about it but leaving it seems a bit weird, a bit drastic. Like leaving Facebook. You could do it but why would you? Everyone else is on it.
This doesn't mean we feel
"European" though. I would describe myself first and foremost as a
Londoner. Secondly as British or English and only European as an afterthought.
Only 14% of British people in a recent survey described themselves as European
compared to 48% of Poles, 39% of Germans and 34% of French people. When we go
on holiday across the channel we describe ourselves as "going to
Europe". I have an Austrian friend who finds this irritating. "You
are in Europe", she says, "What are you talking about? You are just
going to another part of Europe".
I think there are three reasons why we feel like we are not European. The first
is geographical, we have to cross the sea to "get to Europe". Prices
for the ferry, Eurostar train and the Channel tunnel are expensive so this is a
real barrier. Unlike most of Europe we can't just drive across borders. We have
to bring passports and book in advance.
The second is linguistic. There are many non-European countries that share our
language. This is not unique. Much of the world speak Spanish, French and
Portugese but those countries are largely former colonies that have a very
different standard of living and culture to their colonisers. Whereas
English-speaking former colonies include wealthy, culturally similar ones such
as America, Canada and Australia. A recent poll showed that we see these
countries as our strongest allies, with France only in fourth. The talk of a
"Special Relationship" between America and Britain is much mocked,
both seriously after the unpopular Iraq War and humorously in the romantic comedy Love Actually, but it seems we do still cling on to the
idea.
The third is historical. While most of Europe was invaded by Hitler or the
Soviet Union (or both) during World War Two, the British mainland was not
invaded. Although we love to talk about the Second World War, as it was the one
time in history we were "the good guys", we escaped from it
relatively unscathed and so the idea of European Unity is not seen as of such
vital necessity.
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