Originally posted by Serial_Apologist
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This is not to imply that members of the public in fairly ordinary times have ever been ardent supporters of political strength or have wished to have a close relationship with politics in general. Good politics for those seated masses is a politics that rarely needs to be thought about. That is, until and unless the duty of voting is required so that it can then again be off the radar. So, then, one has to ask what politics stood for in public opinion after the war and before the 2007/8 crash. In other words, if you peel back the nationalism that has arisen and then peel back the financiers' revelation of political weakness, what do you find? It isn't total indifference but it is where most people hope to be again "after this Brexit thing".
Of course, ever since the mid 1940s, there have been ardent socialists and conservatives, ardent Europhobes and Europhiles, and so on. But specifically on the latter two, they could only have altered the culture so radically if something had been felt to be lost. It is that which has led to everyone becoming so engrossed in and around those agendas. When it came to transient quibbles or, at most, extensive moaning, the public were somewhat engaged in the Blair era with Iraq and the parliamentary expenses outrage. The considerable expansion of EU was barely noted even by politics watchers. In the time of John Major, neither the Maastricht Treaty nor Black Friday captured the imagination of the public as much as curly bananas and a series of old fashioned scandals. In the 1970s/1980s it was strikes and international causes - Live Aid - followed by the end of the Soviet Union, itself underemphasised. The increase in the number of member countries with Greece then Iberian enlargement wasn't even a blip and much the same was true of an expansion northwards five years later.
Given the obvious importance of all these things, one has to conclude that there was something more powerful behind their inconsequential appearance to the public than it seemed. And I would say that it was the war. It was the feeling that British politicians had had the power to lead to victory, albeit against the odds, and then one around the knowledge that they were subsequently booted out. Mr Attlee's Labour Party. The power symbol of recompense for ordinary man and a logical enough springboard for "it must never happen again".
Once that was in place, politics could happily be forgotten. Peace. A return to the cosiness of not having to be involved. Rationing ends. Eden comes and goes quickly over something called Suez. He is deemed not typical but unusually weak. Nice man. Not up to the job, sadly. The middle aged get their own homes. The new teenagers get their own lifestyles. As the 1960s commence, there are some strange bohemian people with CND placards, harmless actually when you get to know them, although somewhat eccentric and irrelevant. Later, America survives Vietnam. The protesters were presumably all on drugs which hopefully are a passing phase. There is no real connection with what the young men were put through any more than anyone gets to grips with the atrocities of racial divisiveness. It is over there. They didn't join us in our war until late on anyway so what do you expect? And as for Nixon!
I can recall the first EEC referendum. Compared with now, it was a mere parlour game. Amateurish. Not as significant as decimalisation with which it could even on occasion be confused. But then these were times when one had to take on board a man walking on the moon as the new normal and pretend away the ever present nuclear threat so that it was almost unreality. Indeed, life beyond the iron curtain was safely more remote than outer space. So that WW2 power - the power of stability and security - was so assumed in the unconscious, it didn't need to be acknowledged much, let alone scrutinised or debated for ever more. Hence there would be a bit of whinging about old Wilson or old Heath, neither of whom seemed to be any sort of perfect picture, but that was all. Life could be lived more or less without politics. That was politics. It was also the hidden sense of political strength.
We forget now just how apolitical people were. You may have been a part of a generation which was unusually politically active in the 1970s. You were still a rarity compared with the millions, much as I was when embarking on a politics A'level course in 1979. To mention it unassumingly in the East Lane market was like declaring that one was going to be Prime Minister followed by the receipt of quizzical and rather distant looks. Sure, there were the Harmans and the Hewitts of this world who seemed overly interested in skin colour, gender, the far right and police brutality. They were on the fringes - obsessive - and not to be taken as seriously as the mainly male trade unions. But even with the unions, there was no real fear of revolution. It was the stuff of banter - red versus blue and vice versa - with daft nicknames and a lot of laughter. Had there been a revolution, I am not entirely sure that many would have been bothered either way. They would have hoped to soldier on somehow, whatever. What actually got their goat was when union action affected their dustbin collections.
Mrs Thatcher did not achieve a resounding victory in 1979. By 1981, the Government was seen as so ineffectual that Thatcherism appeared to have been an 18 month experiment. But few knew the global context in which it sat or that Milton was to be to the next 34 years what Winston had been to the previous 34. They couldn't do. It would have meant that the politicians were losing power by their very own initiatives which in turn would have suggested wars could no longer be won and the threat of nuclear oblivion was, after all, too real. Things have changed. They always do change. They are also largely left to feel the same as they ever were. For better and worse that is how things will more or less remain. What the union strikes were to dustbins, the current political crisis is to armchair living. And nationalism, a reaction, is mostly a big placard which is just insisting "we don't have volcanos here".
- No, I don't think any of them would want it: but the buck can be passed to the EU by saying EU rules would necessitate it (implication: you can't have independence if you don't want a hard border). Norway, being in the EEA, avoids a hard border; but it also accepts FMoP, pays a contribution and is part of the Single Market - all rejected by the hard Brexit group, who want Norway+++ (all the benefits without the responsibilities). Also, there are not the political complications with its neighbours which apply to N. Ireland and, to a lesser extent, with Scotland.
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