Hobbits meet 007

SHAKEN BUT UNSTIRRED

When I was working in the Middle East in the 1970s for an engineering consulting group with a Lebanese-Jordanian origin (Dar Al Handasah Consultants Ltd), I used to get good natured ribbing from my Arab workmates about being British / English. But, having previously spent 7 years in Australia, I was largely immune from what by comparison were very slight digs.

For example, I was admonished on the need to now change the name of the country as Great Britain was no longer ‘great’. I sometimes tried to explain the medieval geography which differentiated ‘Great(er) Britain’ from ‘Lesser Britain’ (i.e. Brittany in France) but this was really a bit too complicated and didn’t address the point they were making.

They also inquired politely ‘Why didn’t the Sun ever set on the British Empire?’ Because, it was claimed ‘God didn’t trust the British in the dark’.

Well, it has taken Britain an inordinately long time to face up to the confusion caused by the Past. It is a country that has a strange form of split personality that involves the coexistence of the famous British reserve and with an equally famous predilection for hooliganism - and one where a small and peaceful country on the edge of Europe was suddenly set upon by a Germany that questioned the fact that the unassuming British were ruling a quarter of the earth.

Well, what are the Brits then: ‘Hairy-footed Hobbits from the Shire’ or ‘James Bonds who are shaken but Not Stirred?’

In the light of this I was struck by some of the good sense in an article by Adrian Hamilton in The Independent of Friday, 26 February 2010: “Can we halt our slide to the margins?”

SLIDING MARGIN-WISE:

‘It is the collapse of the assumptions that have kept us going through the new century that should cause the greatest rethink. The "special relationship" with America has been tested to breaking point by the invasion of Iraq and the election of a new President who clearly does not believe that either Britain is special or that it is the US's most important ally in all things, at all times. A decade of continuous and unparalleled growth has come to a shuddering halt and with it the confidence that we had a unique command of finance.

Even our claim to a special global reach from our imperial past has been cast into the shade by a growth of China and India and Brazil that owes little to our assistance or involvement.

Historians, indeed, remain pretty divided on whether the empire as such ever meant that much to the ordinary Briton. The upper middle-classes certainly looked to it for position and occasionally wealth. Various parts of Britain provided troops. But the broad mass of the country had little knowledge or interest in the affairs of empire, more of trade. Certainly my father's family, engineers from the north, travelled widely in countries from Latin America to China, and brought back trinkets from them all. But empire as such was never much discussed. The world painted red was a matter of industrial dominance not military might.

The post-war years were harsh in terms of Britain's industrial and economic strength. But politically, the Cold War suited us. It kept us useful to the US as an ally who could be relied on, especially on the UN Security Council, and it kept alive the sense that Britain had special and far-reaching expertise because of its imperial past. We may not have had the troops any longer. When push came to shove Harold Wilson (wisely) refused to become involved in America's Vietnam venture. But, given that the rising economic powers of Japan and Germany were both neutered by their past in the war, Britain could still claim to be a country greater than its regional position in Europe.

And it was lucky. It was the North Sea, coming along just at the time of the energy crises of the 1990s, which enabled Mrs Thatcher to fund the economic policies which gave her, and the country, the reputation of a tough, modernising force in the world. It was the Falklands war which enabled Britain to declare a military triumph on its own. And it was the presence in the White House of a fellow-spirit in Ronald Reagan that allowed Mrs Thatcher to seem central to the final collapse of communism in the Soviet Union. She may have got the re-unification of Germany completely wrong. She was ambivalent and often confused on Europe. But in the bigger picture she was part of the winning team.

Tony Blair tried to repeat Mrs Thatcher's achievement and came unstuck. Like Mrs Thatcher, he was lucky in the economics. The end of the 1990s saw the beginning of a decade-long period of unparalleled and sustained growth, fuelled largely by the explosive growth in financial services based in London. We could afford, and Gordon Brown did, to regard Europe as a slow steam train chugging behind us.

Iraq and 9/11 changed all so far as Britain, as well as America, was concerned. The consequences of that war would be hard to overestimate. It isn't just the ramifications of the perceived failure of occupation, disastrous although they have been. As anyone who travels beyond these shores can attest, Britain is now widely dismissed – more often in sorrow than in anger – as just an American spear-carrier without any real force of its own. In the Middle East we are reviled, in most of Asia we are largely discounted.

That may seem harsh. But it is far nearer the truth than the current political discourse of "influence" and "role" would suggest. And it poses a direct question – just where and how do we see our future in the world?

For Britain, Europe has now come to be the one region where we have some kind of place and a pressing need to pool our resources on the bigger issues facing us. And if the EU is, as it is, all over the place at the moment, this at least makes it more open for us to take a constructive role in its direction.

To take an active part, however, we need to know what we're trying to achieve. In all the debate about "influence" and "power" and how we can have weight in the world, the one question that is never asked is just what we are offering.

Is it military prowess and diplomatic skill or is it the English language, skill in finance, some of the best universities in the world, or the longest experience of multi-cultures? At the moment we're busy ramping up the former and retreating from the latter. A brave politician might suggest reversing the order’.

POSTSCRIPT

Part of the issue of course is that there is likely to be a continuous relative decline of the West in general over the coming decades.

As I have previously commented with respect to New Zealand’s place in the world:

‘Stanley Fisher (The New Global Economic Geography) and Angus Maddison (extensive work for the OECD) present some interesting statistics about the reddening sun, setting on the heyday of the West.

In 1900, the West (Western Europe, USA and their ‘Western Offshoots’, i.e. Australia, New Zealand and Canada) held around 51.8 percent of World GDP. By 1950, this had risen to 56.8 percent but it fell to 46.8 percent in 1990 and 44.9 percent in 2001. It is estimated that it will have fallen to 33.2 percent by 2030’.

Extrapolating further, it falls to below 20 percent by 2070.

So let’s all get real. Maybe, as advised by Austin Powers, we have to be more careful to ‘Behave, Baby’. Though, I would like to think that everyone can gain if we can ramp up the ‘Groovy’.