Love thy neighbour
IN our village, the word ‘foreigner’ means anyone who doesn’t come from here. What’s more, ‘here’ doesn’t mean the UK or even England—it literally means from here, this village. It also means this county and reminds us how our historic divisions remain meaningful, so that ancient rivers, from the Waveney between Suffolk and Norfolk to the Tamar between Cornwall and Devon, still mark barriers that are current and in no way anachronisms. No wonder local-government reform has caused such heartache to successive Prime Ministers. We all cling to the sense of place and belonging that derives from being a Man of Kent or a Lancastrian or coming from Pembrokeshire. Logic may have created Avon, Humberside and Cleveland, although, ultimately, sentiment consigned these artificial entities to history.
Once, of course, these local rivalries were the source of serious unrest. Neighbours fought each other to defend their differences and uphold what they saw as their inherent superiorities. Today, our local sentiments are just that: sentiment. We may notice and even slightly resent the foreigner from another village or county, but his life and livelihood are not endangered. Our differences may be a source of pride, but we don’t allow them to become a source of conflict.
That acceptance has taken us centuries and has now become so much a part of our culture that the son of a Jewish immigrant could, for 13 years, successfully represent the most rural of Yorkshire seats and, this year, the neighbouring rural constituency has elected the son of Indian immigrants. That doesn’t mean Yorkshire has lost its sense of identity. It continues to promote its region over all others. Indeed, it is in part that self-confidence that enabled it to choose to be represented by men with whom it shares neither race nor religion, but whom it honours and respects.
Of course, it’s been a hard-won fight. In our lifetime, there have been many positions for which Catholics or Jews need not apply, from which class, sex or sexual orientation meant automatic exclusion and for which prejudice, often clothed in respectable argument, ensured that only ‘people like us’ were preferred. This tolerance is all so new. The last Conservative Club in Liverpool to exclude Catholics was closed as recently as the late 1980s. Golf clubs in the Home Counties that now welcome black MPS would not have welcomed them as members just 40 years ago. It was only in 1967 that we finally stopped locking up gay men.
The speed of change has been fast—too fast for some—and, as we have seen in the past fortnight, that has provided the excuse for condoning prejudice and even hatred. These events have made us recognise that our liberal attitudes are under threat. Tolerance is still a delicate plant, needing protection from the chill winds of hatred. Donald Trump’s failure to condemn the resurgence of white supremacy and his assertion that there was fault on both sides is precisely what encourages regression to old, prejudiced ways. The Sun’s language and Sarah Champion’s ill-chosen words gave a voice to those who long to condemn the whole Pakistani community for the horrific crimes of a few.
The civilised course is not easy. It is vital for our self-confidence and stability to nurture pride in locality and community, yet that pleasure in our distinctiveness must not degenerate into condemnation of those who don’t share it. It’s so easy for proper pride in particularity to turn into hatred of those who are different. It’s a temptation that we must, at all costs, resist.
‘Tolerance needs protection from the chill winds of hatred’