Brexit AU
It might interest some British and European readers that the Brexit vote, to be held in a few days has attracted huge media coverage here in Australia. Indeed, last weekend’s newspapers (if you remember such things as newspapers, ghastly oversized things stinking of printers’ ink and staining your hands) were full of double page, closely typed spreads with no photos, no charts or graphs and inviting serious consideration of the intellectual arguments on both sides. Meanwhile, our own federal election campaign is in full swing, but is generally reduced to a sound bite, a cost of living chart or a handful of dot points outlining rather dull policies designed, it seems, to reduce Australia to a nation of snorers, so uninteresting is our own ballot by comparison.
The whole concept of the EU is somewhat baffling to those of us with British heritage but not resident there. To visit requires a 90 day visa, easily and generally automatically granted. To want to stick around and maybe work for a bit on the other hand, is extraordinarily difficult even if your parents were both English (as were mine), and requiring the outlay of significant sums of non-refundable monies for mysterious visas which may or may not allow to you stay, work and perhaps vote in the EU. Or not, as the case may be. Pay your migration broker another chunk of cash and they might tell you your odds, but nothing is certain except confusion and doubt, such is the complexity of British immigration law for non-EU citizens.
It’s weird then to visit charming, rustic parts of England and stay in a B&B owned and run by a Polish couple, and have your full English breakfast cooked by a Romanian chef and served to you by a Hungarian. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, and I have to say I couldn’t really see any indication that the influx of people from other parts of the EU did anything to seriously diminish the local culture no matter where we went.
What is interesting, and perhaps not a little perplexing is the contrast between the difficulties of members of British Commonwealth nations trying to attain residency in Britain whilst EU members have no restrictions at all. This is rather frustrating for us, not to mention expensive if we choose to apply for and receive the necessary visas, which aren’t cheap.
Actually, this unease goes way back to 1973 when Britain first joined the ‘Common Market’, a trade coalition of six or so European nations that pre-empted the EU. This had a marked impact on my own family, then living in the southern Australian state of Tasmania. Back then Tasmania was famous for its apples, producing significant quantities for export primarily to Britain, and for which the island state received its moniker the ‘Apple Isle’. My Dad, who was a shipwright by trade made good money during the apple season by fitting out cargo vessels that would bring whatever to Tasmania, unload and then require extensive refitting of their cargo holds to take huge quantities of refrigerated apples back to the ‘mother country’. This work was exacting, physically demanding and had to be done quickly, hence the good wages for what was a relatively simple job for a craftsman shipwright.
Then virtually overnight nearly the entire apple industry was wiped out as Britain joined the Common Market and sourced its apples from its European trading partners rather than little old Tasmania. Entire orchards were grubbed out and planted instead to soft berries and potatoes, and the extensive, lucrative ship re-fitting work for shipwrights such as my Dad evaporated to nothing. My father had to take a job as a general carpenter and nothing was ever quite the same again.
It is extremely interesting therefore to see what may become of Britain. From here I get no especially clear idea as to which way the vote will go, except that it will be probably quite close. About half the population of Britain are therefore set to be disappointed, which is never a good thing, no matter which way the result sits. What will become of the B&B-owning Polish couple, their Romanian chef and Hungarian waiter should Britain leave the EU would be interesting to see.
I would say this: during my two recent trips through Europe, whilst I saw an enormous cross-pollination of people ever-moving around the continent, local heritage and culture remained remarkably strong. People in the street might seem out of place and be speaking a strange language, but the local culture remained strong as ever, or so it seemed to me. The homogeneity of people that I saw and which I feared might destroy local heritage and identity in fact seemed only to strengthen it. Co-mingling cultures perhaps actually amplify all culture, not water it down as I thought might happen. This is a good thing.
On the subject of governance and trade though, I have no idea. Countries have successfully traded with each other without the need for trade agreements in the past and will do so in the future. Such agreements seem to me to only fix prices and reduce competitiveness, as we saw in Tasmania back in 1973. But as I say, I’m no expert, just perhaps a small victim.
Good luck, Britain. I hope you choose well and can live with whatever the outcome.
Once in a blue June.
