Beorn
05-12-2009, 10:42 PM
In search of Europe: England
Euroscepticism is alive and kicking in England, the BBC's Jonny Dymond reports, as he roams across EU member states, gauging opinion ahead of next month's European elections.
In the leafy lanes around West Kirby, in the Wirral in north-west England, Conservative candidate for the European Parliament Jacqueline Foster is doing her best.
At door after door that she and her energetic team try, there is no response. "Has the football started?" she asks one young assistant. "That'll stop them coming out."
In Abbey Road she finally finds a willing victim.
"Hello," she starts off, brightly, "I'm Jacqueline Foster, one of the Euro-candidates… I was an MEP for five-and-a-half years…"
The woman in the doorway listens for a moment and starts to catalogue the ills that plague her life - potholes, the failures of social services, the sign at the top of the road that lists traffic accidents, the closure of local libraries.
Jacqueline Foster nods, listens, nods a lot more, agrees with nearly everything and after about five minutes, and after taking a key ring with the voter's husband's phone number on it (in case she needs any advice in the future about transport policy), secures a promise of a vote.
All politics, it is often said, is local. Never more so, it seems, than when Britain is going to the polls for a European election.
Travelling east across England the search is on for one person who has anything good to say about Europe. It is surprisingly tough.
Merrie England
In the rolling Cheshire hills, the village of Marbury is celebrating a Marbury Merry Day.
It is difficult to find anything more delightful, or closer to the spirit of that mythical place, Middle England. There is a coconut shy, a tractor parade, a vintage car display and even a re-enactment of a battle from the English Civil War.
Sitting next to her partner, who is in full Royalist battle dress, is Marie Pickstock, a public servant. She blames a lack of education and a highly critical media for the negativity that now surrounds the EU in Britain.
"I actually feel European," she says. "The first time that I voted was in the election that got us into the European Union, the referendum. The political statement that it was making was about working together as a continent.
"I think we've got caught up now in the whole economic thing and the whole process of 'what's this doing for our businesses and our money,' rather than thinking about it in terms of bringing us all together."
National pride
But Marie is the lone EU-enthusiast I speak to. Instead it is criticism that comes from nearly every quarter of the Merry Day fields - about Brussels interfering too much, about the perceived threat to British identity, about the financial cost of British membership.
There are the usual Euro-myths knocking about, but most of the comments are driven by a sense that something about Britain - for which you can generally read England - is under threat from a centralising, homogenising EU.
"I don't mind being part of Europe," says Lyn Bailey, sipping fizz in the spring sunshine, "but I do think that we should have our individuality as well."
Standing next to the five-inch-gauge railway, the men and women camping out in the style of the 17th Century and the dog-dressing competition, I ask whether English eccentricities are really under threat?
"No," she replies firmly. "But I think if they [Brussels] had their way they would be."
"We are being stifled," picks up her husband, Roger, "because European legislation is taking over from our English legislation and we don't want to be ruled by a bunch of people who don't understand us."
I leave Marbury with the roar of cannon in my ears and head east to the coast. The final stop is Cleethorpes and the golf club, which one bright and blustery morning is hosting a match between Grimsby Seniors and their Cleethorpes counterparts. Cleethorpes takes the day, and over a fish lunch I ask what these wise souls make of the EU these days.
The response is resoundingly negative. No-one has a good word to say about the EU.
The most common refrain is that the British were conned - that we thought we were joining a trading organisation, but it's gone so much further than that.
And there are some strong words about identity, too. Do you feel European, I asked one table of golfers?
"No, no," came one response. "British, British," came another. "Definitely not a European, no," says a third. "I'm a patriot, I'm English, I'm English through and through," rounds off a fourth.
At other tables, one or two people said that being English and European might be possible.
But the contrast with those who live on the continent was striking across the breadth of England that I had traversed.
Where continentals wear their Europeanness like a second skin, from Liverpool to Grimsby people told me that they didn't feel anything other than English.
And the hostility towards the EU in this admittedly unscientific cross-section of English society was clear and undeniable.
"We've burnt our boats now, we're in, we can't go back," one golfer told me.
That won't stop many in Britain hoping.
Source (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8045178.stm)
Euroscepticism is alive and kicking in England, the BBC's Jonny Dymond reports, as he roams across EU member states, gauging opinion ahead of next month's European elections.
In the leafy lanes around West Kirby, in the Wirral in north-west England, Conservative candidate for the European Parliament Jacqueline Foster is doing her best.
At door after door that she and her energetic team try, there is no response. "Has the football started?" she asks one young assistant. "That'll stop them coming out."
In Abbey Road she finally finds a willing victim.
"Hello," she starts off, brightly, "I'm Jacqueline Foster, one of the Euro-candidates… I was an MEP for five-and-a-half years…"
The woman in the doorway listens for a moment and starts to catalogue the ills that plague her life - potholes, the failures of social services, the sign at the top of the road that lists traffic accidents, the closure of local libraries.
Jacqueline Foster nods, listens, nods a lot more, agrees with nearly everything and after about five minutes, and after taking a key ring with the voter's husband's phone number on it (in case she needs any advice in the future about transport policy), secures a promise of a vote.
All politics, it is often said, is local. Never more so, it seems, than when Britain is going to the polls for a European election.
Travelling east across England the search is on for one person who has anything good to say about Europe. It is surprisingly tough.
Merrie England
In the rolling Cheshire hills, the village of Marbury is celebrating a Marbury Merry Day.
It is difficult to find anything more delightful, or closer to the spirit of that mythical place, Middle England. There is a coconut shy, a tractor parade, a vintage car display and even a re-enactment of a battle from the English Civil War.
Sitting next to her partner, who is in full Royalist battle dress, is Marie Pickstock, a public servant. She blames a lack of education and a highly critical media for the negativity that now surrounds the EU in Britain.
"I actually feel European," she says. "The first time that I voted was in the election that got us into the European Union, the referendum. The political statement that it was making was about working together as a continent.
"I think we've got caught up now in the whole economic thing and the whole process of 'what's this doing for our businesses and our money,' rather than thinking about it in terms of bringing us all together."
National pride
But Marie is the lone EU-enthusiast I speak to. Instead it is criticism that comes from nearly every quarter of the Merry Day fields - about Brussels interfering too much, about the perceived threat to British identity, about the financial cost of British membership.
There are the usual Euro-myths knocking about, but most of the comments are driven by a sense that something about Britain - for which you can generally read England - is under threat from a centralising, homogenising EU.
"I don't mind being part of Europe," says Lyn Bailey, sipping fizz in the spring sunshine, "but I do think that we should have our individuality as well."
Standing next to the five-inch-gauge railway, the men and women camping out in the style of the 17th Century and the dog-dressing competition, I ask whether English eccentricities are really under threat?
"No," she replies firmly. "But I think if they [Brussels] had their way they would be."
"We are being stifled," picks up her husband, Roger, "because European legislation is taking over from our English legislation and we don't want to be ruled by a bunch of people who don't understand us."
I leave Marbury with the roar of cannon in my ears and head east to the coast. The final stop is Cleethorpes and the golf club, which one bright and blustery morning is hosting a match between Grimsby Seniors and their Cleethorpes counterparts. Cleethorpes takes the day, and over a fish lunch I ask what these wise souls make of the EU these days.
The response is resoundingly negative. No-one has a good word to say about the EU.
The most common refrain is that the British were conned - that we thought we were joining a trading organisation, but it's gone so much further than that.
And there are some strong words about identity, too. Do you feel European, I asked one table of golfers?
"No, no," came one response. "British, British," came another. "Definitely not a European, no," says a third. "I'm a patriot, I'm English, I'm English through and through," rounds off a fourth.
At other tables, one or two people said that being English and European might be possible.
But the contrast with those who live on the continent was striking across the breadth of England that I had traversed.
Where continentals wear their Europeanness like a second skin, from Liverpool to Grimsby people told me that they didn't feel anything other than English.
And the hostility towards the EU in this admittedly unscientific cross-section of English society was clear and undeniable.
"We've burnt our boats now, we're in, we can't go back," one golfer told me.
That won't stop many in Britain hoping.
Source (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8045178.stm)