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You don’t have to be
profoundly read in crime fiction to know that the first alibi to be
checked when a murder has happened is that of the surviving spouse.
Irritations arise precisely from familiarity and proximity. If anger
is most frequently provoked within the household, then within the
family, the sense of hostility extends swiftly to the neighbourhood,
especially the immediate neighbourhood just across the landing,
downstairs or on the other side of the fence. Nearness brings with it
motive, occasion and opportunity for conflict.
We can easily forget this fact
even though we meet it constantly in our daily lives. We forget
because the ultimate disagreement, which is war, arises most commonly
from some total divergence of values and principles which distinguish
one side from the other. Decision to make war is taken at high
official levels, whereas irritations which stir the general public
usually, and fortunately, remain no more than irritations, petty,
spiteful, jealous and ignorant. Thank goodness fighting does not
usually follow silly remarks or posturings, and loss of temper.
We have, as a Party, a good
record in refusing to encourage needless animosities. No serious and
honest observer would now see Anglophobia as a characteristic of
Nationalist argument and racism exists only when it can find a home in
misery and ignorance. The one permitted "anti" emotion seems to be
anti-Americanism.
There is always a problem as
Bernard Shaw, in a lucid moment, defined it as being "divided by a
common language". In England, as in Scotland, where popular
entertainment and the consequential popular culture are effectively
American, we think we understand the US and its people. Meanwhile they
for their part, at popular level, feel no great need to understand
anybody.
In the old days, when such
things were taught in schools, American Independence was presented as
an episode in British Imperial history, as if the subtitle was "Where
did Lord North go wrong?" or "Why did George III go off the rails?" At
a level well above that of the average school classroom some such
attitudes have been reported as surviving. A set of the
Report of the Warren Commission into the
assassination of President
Kennedy, which had gone astray somewhere in the University of Oxford,
turned up, so it is alleged, in the Colonial Library.
In England there is plain
jealousy, of course. "They" now are where "we" once were. Indeed so;
and it is precisely when US leaders behave as once British leaders
did, that the more enlightened citizens in Scotland, in England and,
be it remembered, in the USA itself, are moved to criticise and oppose
America’s conduct. Then there was a need for a chain of bases
which enabled the Royal Navy to patrol the sea lanes, serving strategy
and commerce alike. Now it is America which requires such
footholds. Just as Britain had some very dubious friends so now
America has sponsored some pretty swinish regimes. "A son-of-a-bitch?
Yes, but our son-of-a-bitch" was how President Roosevelt put
it, many years before the remark began to be attributed to later,
lesser figures. And Roosevelt made the remark in relation to problems
within the Democratic Party, not the wider world.
In relation to that wider world
Roosevelt expressed views which might find more favour with those who
wish to tar all America with the one brush. Economic disaster had come
about because "the rulers of the exchange..
. . have failed through their own
stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure
and abdicated. . . .The money-changers have fled from their high seats
in the temple of our civilisation. We may now restore that temple to
the ancient truths". In his first term Roosevelt said, these forces
have met their match. In his second he hoped they would meet their
Master. In so far as anti-Americanism arises from Left-wing
sympathies, just consider when, if ever, those sympathies were so well
expressed on this side of the ocean. Roosevelt’s America was not
Enron’s or Wall Street’s, and it is still there. |
