Life

Mary Kelly: Songs of empire might well offer solace in post-Brexit Britain – next year

I think British people should cringe a lot more about their history when they have a wee think about Britain’s imperial record across the globe and maybe consider the mess that they left in India, South Africa, Cyprus, Rhodesia, Palestine, Ireland...

A previous 'Last Night of the Proms' at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Picture by Guy Bell/PA
A previous 'Last Night of the Proms' at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Picture by Guy Bell/PA A previous 'Last Night of the Proms' at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Picture by Guy Bell/PA

SOMETIMES I feel ashamed of my status as a baby boomer – that’s those of us born between 1946 and 1964.

I got a free university education, with fees paid and a grant on top. Oh, and for a while it was possible to sign on for unemployment benefit during the summer break, although I usually found it easy to get a vacation job.

I got a job soon after graduation – a proper job with a monthly salary and full working hours each week – I have never had to do an unpaid internship nor have I had to work 'flexible hours' that suited an employer, not me.

I was able to buy a house with my husband, which was a stretch at the time but seems like a gift compared to property prices nowadays. I also have a work pension and in a few years time, will qualify for the state pension.

All I can say is that it’s not my fault it isn’t like that for the current generation of millennials, generation X or whatever young people are called now. And this is why I will never use the word snowflake to describe them. I would have wished them to have exactly the same benefits as me, but the politicians in charge, who all enjoyed similar benefits, decided otherwise.

So the young are saddled with education debts the size of most of us boomers’ mortgages. Some won’t have to pay them off because they have low-paid jobs in call centres or 'flexible' jobs that don’t give them holiday, sickness or maternity benefits.

And those hoping to set a tentative foot on the property market are finding it increasingly difficult to get a mortgage. First-time buyers, furloughed workers and young people relying on the bank of mum and dad for support are being hit hard by mortgage providers as banks and building societies are taking a tougher line.

Yes, those banks that were bailed out to the tune of billions of pounds from the public purse following the crash are now introducing measures including declining to lend to borrowers who have deposits gifted to them by relatives, refusing loans to people buying flats who have a small deposit and barring workers who have been furloughed or who are in industries that have suffered job cuts in the current economic crisis brought on by Covid-19. Talk about kicking people when they’re down.

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SO BORIS Johnson needed to get something off his chest – not apologies for the school-exams fiasco, his mishandling of the pandemic or the mess he is making of the Brexit departure. No, he’s all worked up about the BBC Proms only featuring an orchestral version of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia instead of the customary lusty singing.

The fact that the Albert Hall will not be full to the rafters and public singing is not a great idea when there’s an airborne virus around seems to have escaped his notice.

Land of Hope and Glory was written in 1901 after Britain had won the Boer war and it glorifies the empire and the idea that Britons were blessed by God who made them “mightier” than the rest of the world. The same sentiments are still shared by many Brexiteers who believe in Britain’s exceptionalism.

Boris fulminated: “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions and about our culture and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness.”

I disagree Boris. I think British people should cringe a lot more about their history when they have a wee think about Britain’s imperial record across the globe and maybe consider the mess that they left in their former colonies, like India, South Africa, Cyprus, Rhodesia and Palestine. Not to mention Ireland.

But a YouGov poll just a few years ago found that 44 per cent of British people (and 57 oer cent of Conservatives) thought their country’s history of colonialism was something to be proud of. It’s hardly surprising as British schools teach the Tudors and the Nazis while the man on the street celebrates “One world cup and two world wars”.

There’s not much taught about the massacres, the famines, the slave plantations and the prisons, nor indeed that the concentration camp was a British invention.

It wasn’t all bad of course, and Britain, under a Labour government, did produce a National Health Service that everyone should be proud of, even if it is woefully underfunded.

And by next year, hopefully the Proms will have an audience again, and if poor, post- Brexit, isolated Britain wants to cuddle up and sing of empire and happier times, who would begrudge them their fantasy?