The Parliamentary petition for a 2nd EU Referendum has now over 4.1 million, in itself a remarkable event, unprecedented in terms of usual totals achieved by this device, and in an incredibly short period.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/131215
The Government has given its responses, that there is not to be a 2nd Referendum, but this was framed in the time of Cameron's premiership. The Petitions Committee has now decided there will be a debate by MPs on 5th September, and there are details about this at the above link, including where to watch on Parliament TV.
Are there logical grounds for such a rerun (as opposed to the two sides making their obvious stated positions)? It's perhaps worth recalling that the petition was not called by a Remain support after the poll, but by a Brexit supporter one month before .... One assumes he felt it would be close, but against Leave, and wanted a second bite.
Interestingly, Farage called for such an eventuality just before the petition was posted:
Nigel Farage: Narrow Remain win may lead to second referendum (BBC 17 May 2016) One doesn't hear much from him on this score now, though I have read local Brexit supporters decry the idea with "We won, it's democracy!"
This hardly passes muster, and .... sauce for Brexit goose=sauce for Remain gander etc. In 1975, the decisive' EU Stay/Leave Referendum (called by Labour as the Tories took us in without a vote) came out 2:1 to stay, I voted Leave for good socialist reasons (of which more).
So 40 years passes and public opinion splits almost 50/50 (52% to 48%) with huge regional/national and age variations. By no means as decisive, in any sense, as 1975. Also, the aftermath seems to be as bad in the early stages as many feared - my own decision to vote remain as late as the morning of the poll less to do with the conflicting arguments and much more with one does not walk through a door without knowing what's on the other side if there's a risk of a sheer cliff (unless one is a lemming).
So, if we Leave, it's forward to a glorious future - for sure? It will be so different, and all them pesky immigrants will stop coming here and, as wished it seems clear by many brexiteers, a lot of them will have to go back etc. I have despised this aspect of Brexit, blandly denied by dishonest asses like Farrago but, hey, he highlighted it and helped engineer 'immigration' as THE real issue (and said as much). I hear so many Brexiteers repeat this lie and self-delusion.
I'd like to give a very personal view on this.
Half one thing, half another ... which part gets sent back?
I am half-Polish, war-time romance .... happened all the time. Not told, brought up by Mum and (English) Dad, birth certificate (father not admitted) but later one records Ernie as Dad. I find out at 10-11 years old by accident (no crisis, I told Mum Ernie was my Dad but it told me a lot about who I was and why perhaps he did not understand who I was). I never told him I knew, why would I, he was Dad. The thought of finding my biological Dad (not, not 'real') only got practical expression when both Mum and Ernie had died. I found something about Bruno Nadolczak, that he had served with the Polish special forces from the Polish Institute in London, but no idea of his whereabouts - maybe back to Poland or gone to USA.
That is, until Google and this is what I found:
http://www.videofact.com/polska/gotowe/n/nadolcz/nadolcz.html
and this
http://www.videofact.com/polska/gotowe/n/nadolcz/enc_nadolczak.html
Clearly, a remarkable gent, I see him physically in my sons and my Polish-American sisters, niece and nephew (who came with that package) say I get more and more like him.
So at 60+, he 90+, I get to meet him in the USA, in Cape May, NJ (Bognor in America, of which oddity more another time). We gel, he's laconic (I didn't inherit that part) and says out of the blue, in his study "Janek, do you know the story of Abraham and Isaac?" "Yes Daddy, that was when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac - " (characteristic wave of hand by him). "Quite so, quite so. Yes, Abraham and Isaac". It was a while I realised, God had restored his son from sacrifice.
His wife, Aldona, became my Polish Mum. "You will be called Janek". "Like Johnny?" "Yes." "So what do I call you?" Now, she was never called Mum, Mom etc but "Bobby" (for babcha, granny) and her name, Aldona. "So how about Mum?" "That's fine." "Would she have minded?" "She doesn't mind". "So, do you want for to go to the movies?" "What's on?" "King Kong" "Yeah".
I was her son, she made that plain, total acceptance, I sent her some posh chocs for Xmas the next year, and to friends "My son In England sent me these special chocolates, I will share them with you." Sitting with her in her car (she's then 86) in a parking lot outside the shopping mall, she describes her role in the Warsaw Uprising, aged 17, running guns and messages, defending a house about to be blown apart by a panzer tank, just ordered to pull out in time. After surrender, as they marched to POW camps not death camps, saluted by the Germans even the SS.
Came to England after liberation, met Bruno, and fell in love. Why did they move to the USA, I asked her. Purely, the awful attitude of so many English people towards them. I was stunned. And then I remembered my recognition in the small Essex village where I spent 5 years of childhood that I was seen by adults as different, and the equally uncomfortable feeling of being suspect amongst the Polish kids when Mum agreed with a family friend who was Polish (Uncle Jan Grezak) that I spend a week in a Polish resettlement village (camp) at around 7/8 years old.
Why didn't I go with Bruno and Aldona when they emigrated. Well, she told me, he asked my Mum but she wouldn't agree and that was that. No chance of contact in those days. Bruno wanted it. But he said one day "You know Janek, if I had to do it over again I would do the same" (out of the blue as ever). "Of course, Daddy".
His attitude: when I said I had been Mayor of Bognor Regis "So you have made something of yourself", from a man who probably spied in Germany between 1938-39 which explains perhaps his statement to me one day "You know, I came close enough to Hitler to kill him 3 times." Fluent German speaker, attending a Nazi Rally?)
I attended the Polish Legation in Madison Avenue a while back to receive with my sister a posthumous medal awarded by the Polish President for his services to Poland to add to his tally of Polish, British and French medals, including the Virtuti Militari their VC. The Polish equivalent of the SAS, GROMM - tasty peeps - has the insignia of his outfit the cicochiemni ('silent and dark') as its own. His burial came with full military honours at the centre of the Polish Military Cemetary in Philadelphia, as an eagle obligingly soared into the sun as the rifles were raised and shot, he even arranged that ....
(I also got the epigthet "WoW" from my sister. "Walks on Water" (qv Joves Garcon ....) as she wryly noted when, in the nursing home and he was not being at all cooperative, he exclaimed "My son would not allow this!" Funny, isn't it, in the first week we met I spent a lot of time with a lot of silences with him in his study, but when family discussed things with me, they said there was 'something' clearly going between us without words and "he's spoken with you more in 3 days than the rest of us in a year!")
So, why all this in this article? Because I am angry with my fellow Brits, those who have said to me "You don't hear English spoken down Longford Road any more". Such a nasty throw-back, people scared of their own shadows, blaming anyone and everyone else, and taking the Referendum campaign material on board from both sides, not realising the real reason for "where we are now".
I lost my Dad for 50 years because of the same racist attitudes now in Bognor Regis 2016 as there were in England in the late 1940s. That is something to despise, I assure the reader. One can make all sorts of allowances but in the end, the real tragedy of the Brexit vote is that, despite mealy-mouthed protestations (but so far not "some of my best friends are Polish"), it is xenophobia, a symptom of a tired people blind to what is the real cause.
I have 2 sons and a grandson and grand-daughter, they deserve better from their fellow citizens ...
Freedom of Movement v Immigration
In the UK we have one of the bastions of true freedom, freedom of movement of people. We talk of migration in terms of people moving round the UK to lead their lives as best they can, but we don't talk about immigration into, e.g. Arun District with its 150k population from other parts of the UK, we talk about inward and outward and NET migration.
Recently, I asked about migration to Arun Council, and it seems that net migration from the rest of the UK was a gain of around 6.5k people. Or Freedom of Movement indeed. We do not call them "immigrants". (Mind you, around 30 years ago, I recall hearing some local folk speak about scousers working at Butlins in the summer much as one hears eastern europeans discussed now by some here.)
So, what did we agree in 1975, by 2 to 1, that we would stay in the EEC under the terms of The Treaty of Rome. Very clear, and one of those terms was ..... Freedom of Movement ..... So, when Poland and other Eastern EU countries acceded to that Treaty, that was a major condition, and, hey presto, when we now ask the EU for trade benefits, they remind us of that. In that 150k population of Arun, there are some 8.5k non-UK citizens, mostly arriving since 2002-4, 14 years. 6,500 extra people arrive from other parts of the UK in 4 years.
It seems both Remain and Leave want the benefits but Brexit wants to mess with Freedom of Movement of people. How convenient. I am reminded of Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks' brilliant wild west 'take' : "OK we'll take the chinks and the niggers but not the irish" "No deal" "Oh prairy shit. OK then, everyone!"
So, is it the immigration (peoples coming from outside a defined an agreed border area) the Brexit campaign so dishonestly and damagingly pressed, oblivious or damn-well not caring about the consequences for ordinary people who moved about the EU under a Treaty our government signed-up to and we agreed 2 to 1, or was/is it Freedom of Movement?
We created a collective border area. Try to undo that for ordinary people who trusted that situation, and you betray them, be they Poles here or ex-pat Brits in Spain. That we are now unsure of this, shown by new PM Theresa May being unwilling/unable to give any assurance, shows how lemming-like our walk through that Poll-door may just become.
But Freedom of Movement of People misses the real point
The Treaty of Rome has many aspects to it, many wholly worthy batman. But let's not miss the real issue, the mainstay, the lynchpin, one which makes Freedom of Movement of People truly subsidiary. In a very real sense. Freedom of Movement of Capital. Was it Tory Chancellor Reginald Maudling who removed exchange controls, 1962? I recall the decision and felt then, "bad move for ordinary folk".
In a capitalist economy, with the essential need to maintain not profit but the rate of profit, and the unending tensions this creates for costs, growth and investment, there is the permanent feature of looking to manage costs, about the biggest and most persistent being labour costs. Freedom of movement of capital is the cornerstone not only of the EU economic area but also of the UK economy. One can relate employment trends, wage costs, labour contractual status etc wholly with that basic tenet.
Why did Poles come here? To earn, more than they did there, less than many do here, because capital presented them with work opportunities. Their fault/blame? Of course not! Ours? Of course not! Er - JOBS FOLLOW CAPITAL, repeat after me ....
Ah, the siren cry "Stop freedom of movement of labour" (aka immigration) "All will be well!" Really? So, Brexit = Freedom of movement of capital will also come back under UK control? Is that in UKIP's manifesto, or the Leave Tories? Why, no, didn't you know they want to sign us up to trade deals, like TTIP (Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership) which will loosen the already weak controls national governments have over global mega-corporations. "Ah, those EU blighters have been discussing that in secret with the yanks! There, told you so!" So does UKIP say we shouldn't join these trade deals, do the Leave Tories? Er, no, they want us to sign up to them and other deals, all around that movement of capital.
Or globalisation, as it's known. Or, falling living standards. Or, death to national health services! More zero-hours contracts. The one thing maybe the EU did was to develop also welfare capitalism (tasty crumbs), now that is waning and to be eradicated.
After this perambulation around the issue, the (male) Clinton provides me with the summary:
"It's not immigration, it's freedom of movement of capital, stupid!" (meaning no offence).
Tweedledum Remain and Tweedledee Brexit.
