So consider the word 'surrender'. When this is spoken in a political context, I think that British people can hardly help but have the ghostly voice of Winston Churchill growling 'we will never surrender!' in their ear in response. It's like striking a deep and resonant bell inscribed World War Two, the great organising narrative of what it means to be British, and especially English: it sets overtones and undertones sounding beneath the immediate context of the word itself, notes of identity and affiliation. All of that, and much more, is set in motion by that one word, a little avalanche of emotional stones.
I suppose the question is how self-aware those who use this language are: whether it's a calculated attempt to connect the events of our own times in some way with those of 1939-1945, or whether they do it automatically and without much thought. There are other examples of words evoking hidden narratives, such as the way criticism of the State of Israel can be couched in terms that bleed into antisemitism, and those who use them are often too close to see it.
As an old Whovian my mind turns to the scene in The Empty Child where Christopher Eccleston as Dr Who surveys a Blitz-period London strafed by searchlights and loud with bombs and says something like:
You lot are amazing. The Nazi war machine is sweeping all across Europe, crushing everything in its path. Nothing can stand against it. And then one damp little island says: "Nope. Sorry Adolf. Not here." A mouse against a lion.
The Mancunian accent adds an authenticity to this piece of writing which, though magical, is inauthentic to the point of bollockitude in ways we will not go into here. I do wish we could frame our national identity around something other than those six years long ago, and that someone would call it out when politicians try.
(Mind you, it strikes me as I write that if you live in Ulster the voice you hear echoing the word 'surrender' might well not be Winston Churchill, but Ian Paisley, prefaced by the cry 'No'!)
There may be an element of projection here. To the extent that we "frame our national identity", we do it around a huge number of things, according to context. The Second World War might be one of them, but it is no more important in this respect than many others. Rural idylls, suburbia, the Swinging Sixties, the Welfare State, literary creativity, class consciousness, the North/South divide, industrialisation; the list is almost endless due to it being so subjective and context-dependent. Very few people, I suspect, think much about the war outside a few settings (like sporting events and critical political struggles) where there is conflict over national existence or pride.
ReplyDeleteThe same would apply to other terms used in debates over Brexit. "Crash out", for example. What overtones and undertones are sounded by these words? The anxiety most of us have, from time to time, that we or loved ones will be obliterated or maimed by motor vehicles or planes falling from the sky? Maybe the economic crashes of the 1930s and 2007/8, and the fears that we will lose our homes and livelihoods.
With such high stakes, I would imagine there is little chance that highly-paid political strategists would not be aware of the nuances of chosen terms. Boris' team, for example, seem to have carefully crafted the terms of debate to set a trap for their opponents. Having spent millions of taxpayers' money and invoked the Supreme court to forcibly end the prorogation, the opposition on their return are seen to do little more than argue about the links between political violence and terms such as "humbug" and "turkeys". We were promised a restitution of democracy, but it looks more like pop sociology.
Truly, that wartime imagery only comes into its own at moments - but it does seem to me to be the framework for which people reach, more often than anything else, in those axial episodes. You're right about the use of other terms, too, which is just why I strive to avoid them: they reach the point, probably very quickly, at which they tell you nothing useful.
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