As I potter about the house, I sing to myself. It amuses me that the tunes are often an inadvertent commentary on matters of the day.
Just recently, I’ve been singing Thomas Osbourne Davis’s A Nation Once Again. I know I’m in Britain and this is a 19th century anthem to Irish independence but it doesn’t seem to matter.
I started humming it when the EU referendum campaign began. I sang it louder when David Cameron spent £9 million of our money sending out a leaflet advising us to vote “In”.
But I began to belt it out in earnest when an arrogant US president came to visit and threatened us we’d be pushed to the back of the queue for American trade deals if we voted to leave the EU.
For barefaced nerve, this intervention was hard to beat – as was the letter from former secretaries of state and defence urging an “In” vote and warning Brexit would diminish our “influence”.
In fact, the last thing the US wants is a resurgent independent Britain. We provide an obedient voice in a German-led bloc which the US needs to fight its corner against Russia – a country that is not our enemy.
This is why the US has encouraged rapid eastwards expansion of the EU, fostering conflict with Russia and causing unsustainable levels of mass migration to the UK.
The US is currently negotiating the EU into TTIP, an appalling trade agreement which will fetter individual parliaments and put our country’s public services, especially our NHS, at the mercy of large US corporations.
Even right-wing Tories like former minister Peter Lilley have argued against it, warning that large corporations will be able to sue governments which act to protect their national interests.
My favourite verse of Davis’s great rebel anthem is: “And then I prayed I yet might see/ Our fetters rent in twain/ And (Britain), long a province, be/ A nation once again!”
It may seem odd to call our country a “province” but it’s an accurate representation of this country’s post-war relationship with the US and the EU. We are both a US client-state and a province of the EU.
I’m an immigrant and, I realise, a patriot. I came to this country because I hated apartheid. I admired Britain’s courage in standing up to European fascism.
Like so many in the former colonies, I was inspired by the British people’s struggle for equal human rights and democracy.
Cameron dared to refer to Commonwealth war dead as a reason to vote against Brexit. My grandfather fought in East Africa in the First World War and I consider Cameron’s words an insult.
Britain deployed its own and its colonies’ people to fight and die in two bloody world wars – among other things to prevent German domination of the European continent.
It is beyond belief that Britain has now turned its back on those former colonies in order to meekly co-operate in the latest German-led exercise in European domination.
Recently leaked German government papers have made it clear that Germany plans to “assume leadership” of a proposed European defence force which will absorb national armies.
I don’t believe the EU is reformable. Neither do I think it preserves our rights – such rights as we have we have fought for over centuries, including the right to self-determination and to elect our government.
Yet now we are governed by unelected European Commissioners. We cannot control our own borders, our infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of unmanaged immigration and we cannot plan effectively for the future.
It is time for Britain to assert its independence, forge new alliances and reshape old ones. Time to be a nation once again.
Jean Calder is a campaigner and journalist. For more of her work, click here.
Oh what nonsense. Why did Britain hang Kenya’s Mandela? Why is the world’s only recorded 100% genocide a function of our invasion of Australia? (Tasmania, 1850s). We have a lot to answer for.
It will be for democracy that I vote leave. The EU is anti-democratic in nature. When it comes to laws those who create them are wholly appointed. Look also at Greece, Italy and Bulgaria where from 2011-2014 we saw democracy overrun and technocrats appointed as Prime Ministers to lead these countries as the EU wanted them to be led.
People should have the right to chose the government that makes the laws, so that those governments can be held accountable by the people. The EU can never be held accountable and that’s why we must leave.
How did so many of my own thoughts and beliefs find their way into Jean Calder’s mind and beautifully erudite article!!?
Leaves me just to sum up and say: A vote to remain in the EU is a vote for belief that Britain is just a helpless basket case (economic problem in 1975) that cannot make its own way in the world. Are we that? Are we still that?
And to also make it clear that a vote for #Brexit is not an endorsement or vote for UKIP, it’s a vote for Britain that says if Taiwan can, if Japan can, if Switzerland can be viably successful then we can too (but cut the garment according to the cloth and stop with the world stage PR swagger that makes would-be immigrants fantasise about what is here for them!).