British authors say a lack of reflection is why the UK can’t turn the page on Brexit
The seeds of Brexit had been planted for decades. That was a core point raised during an intriguing panel discussion at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The session, titled British Writers on Brexit, featured American-British playwright Bonnie Greer, Northern Irish author Jan Carson and British novelist Patrick McGuinness, with the panel exploring the societal factors that contributed to the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
While the panellists said they voted to remain in the bloc, they offered various non-partisan insights on why the UK voted to leave. They agreed that Brexit was the result of a society in flux.
Greer, 70, who is chancellor of London’s Kingston University, said the UK had yet to undergo the kind of self-examination that German society undertook after the Second World War. “If you are a German of my generation there is a constant interrogation of the past, constant looking at the present and thinking about the future,” she said. “That future is about being in solidarity and always defeating nationalism and this idea of being separate.”
She said a lack of reflection in the UK created a resentment towards the EU that festered for generations. “I have told Brexiteers I will give them £100 to any charity if they tell me what in Europe upsets them enough to vote to leave. And they can’t answer because it’s not about Europe,” she said. “What is happening in the UK is a cauldron and everything is poured in it. Germans have learnt how to take such a situation and look it in the eye. The United Kingdom cannot do this and this is why we are where we are.”
McGuinness, whose 2011 debut novel The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the Booker Prize, said he eschewed discussions about how the British identity led to Brexit. “There are parts of British identity we were all once quite proud of,” he said. “These are things such as the National Health Service being free and a more or less functioning union of different nations. But now, these debates about identity have become macho. They are now about symbols such as the Queen and the pound and immigration.
“Debates about identity are important and they need to be revisited over and over. But you can’t keep defining it by what you are against or things can go horribly wrong.”
Carson is a community worker as well as a novelist and said the best way to tackle such deep-rooted resentments was by investing in the arts. To illustrate her point, she described how creative initiatives played a central role in healing the divisions in Irish society.
“One of the huge things that took our country forward and helped us engage with both sides of the debate is the arts,” she said. “This is because when you grow up in a society that is obsessed with binaryisms, you have a limited ability for empathy, to think objectively or even listen. What the arts did in Ireland was teach people how to think critically and with empathy.”
McGuinness said he believed a society’s health could always be measured by its relationship with the arts. “Just like the ancient world, all the dark forces in the modern world, such as politicians, want to limit our curiosity. They want us to stop asking stuff, like what are our neighbours doing?” he said. “When you kill curiosity, you kill imagination and eventually the public discourse.”
When you kill curiosity, you kill imagination and eventually the public discourse PATRICK MCGUINNESS British novelist