Am I Becoming A Brexiteer?

On a typical weekday evening when all scheduled programmes were taken off air simply because the powers-that-be decides to hold the Six Nations Rugby Final on a Friday evening instead of a Saturday afternoon, we made our own decision to switch to the BBC iplayer. Not that I was totally uninterested in rugby - I prefer to watch rugby rather than Association Football. That is Soccer to all American readers. The Final was between France and Scotland. I guess that anyone with a trace of common sense would conclude that either France or Scotland would lift the trophy. Not so. If Scotland wins this game, then the trophy would be lifted by Wales, who didn't make it into the finals.

Six-Nations Trophy - won by Wales, 2021.

Confusing? Maybe I should be, but again, for a game which is played among posh boys attending fee-paying private and public schools, we plebs wouldn't understand, would we? Indeed, Scotland did defeat France by a narrow margin, and so all the Welsh celebrate with jubilation.

And so, what did we watch on the BBC iplayer? A movie based on a true story. The movie was called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which tells the story of a young Malawian teenager, William Kamkwamba (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) who saves his family from poverty due to the deforestation of the land for industrialisation. And the son's dream was against the wishes of his father, Trywell Kamkwamba, who was hostile to his son's ideas and even gave him a beating.

When the boy was escorted by his proud father into his bedroom, my heart fell, as he saw, for the first time in his life, his school uniform arranged neatly across his bed. It was identical to the uniform worn by any English schoolboy. Not surprising, as Malawi was a protectorate of the UK for 73 years between 1891 and 1964. Therefore, his new set of clothes would include a tie - to be worn at school even within a tropical region. But his wearing of the uniform was short-lived. His family was unable to keep up with the school fees, and he was eventually expelled.

But during his short spell at school, he saw a dynamo fixed to a bicycle belonging to one of the teachers. And from there, he crept into the school library (after he was expelled) to find a book on how electric power was generated. Eventually, he developed within his active mind a way to salvage his family's welfare and fortunes during a time of drought.

His solution was a windmill, which he designed and built with the help of his friends. Once fully erected, and as the sails rotated by wind power, this turned the wheel of a bicycle on which the dynamo was attached. This charged the batteries which powered an electric pump, itself found at a local dumpsite. This pump drew water from a well and irrigated the field on which the family would grow their own crops - even during a drought.

The beatings the boy had received from a sceptical parent turned into a tight hug from a believing and very grateful father. Even the school staff came to visit to inspect the windmill. Both Alex and I were taken aback - feeling rather aghast, really. This was a true story. It actually happened - an intelligent young black teenager and his incredible active, optimistic and reassuring mind, who can shame the so-called "civilised" minds of some English public school students. 

As the family was sliding into poverty and hunger, yet it took a bright teenager with an imaginative mind to turn around his family fortunes. Despite having formerly been expelled from school, he did end up at university - Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. What a contrast all this is to a report I read in today's Daily Mail.

The report, from two journalists, Paul Bracchi and Clara Gaspar, centres on two schoolgirls, Izzy Myatt, a former pupil of the James Allen School for Girls, and Georgina Edwards from the same school, who were both sexually harassed by the boys of the neighbouring Dulwich College, a prestigious public school. According to their testimonies, the frequency of such misogyny has normalised into a culture of its own which was kept under cover - that is - until the recent rape and murder of Sarah Everard after being abducted from Clapham Common by a Metropolitan police officer, Wayne Couzens. This had motivated many of the girls to bring into the light this kind of misogyny to the public's attention. The kind of harassment that had taken place among public schoolboys was not only at Dulwich College, but also at Latymer Upper School, St Pauls, Eton, and Westminster, among others.*

It is this type of misogynic culture which had made me look upon this glorious country with an element of embarrassment. Then to add the 1993 killing of Stephen Lawrence by a gang of white racist youths, along with the institutional racism among the Metropolitan Police dating as far back as the post-war Windrush generation entering the UK on June 22, 1948. With such imperialistic history associated with the UK which many an Englishman holds with pride, I find the concept of European Union membership an excellent idea, in a sense being one in a kind of international family.

The real William Kamkwamba

The same nation that dipped its hand into black profits during the slave years, denouncing the Negro to that of a mere animal, and then having the audacity to show African children how to dress smartly for school - wow! That beats me! Hence my sense of disappointment when William Kamkwamba, a son of a family of farmers, was shown the uniform for the first time. I know this is just me, and most likely alone in such thinking, I'll admit that.  But when considering that the tie was worn by the criminal fraternity. Ron and Reg Kray, for a start, of the notorious East London gangsters, wore suits and ties during their active career of crime. The killers of Stephen Lawrence wore ties as they walked from Court as acquitted men, due to a lack of evidence from the racial-motivated Met Police, who also wore ties. Then not to mention the Mafia and other corrupt business tycoons who normally wear ties.

Then you wonder why I thought that this Malawian teenager wearing an English-style school uniform would corrupt his innocent mind, hence my disappointment. Thank God it didn't!

Back in the early 1970s, I voted for the UK to enter what was then the European Common Market. The EU, which grew out of this, was meant for all nations - all 28 of them, to allow all trades to flourish easily between them, along with the ability to settle in any country within the EU. On top of this, the issuing of the EHIC medical card, allowing for free healthcare across Europe, had mitigated much anxiety over the possibility of falling ill while on holiday or business. Furthermore, the Schengen Agreement allowed a traveller to enter different countries without border checks. Thus, when we crossed into Belgium from France on the Eurostar in 2019, the train didn't even slow down. What a contrast to 1973-1975 when the train stopped for a long while at the French town of Modane for individual passport checks before crossing the border into Italy. Schengen has done away with such delays, but how unfortunate that the UK was never part of it.

And thus, with a closer tie to my ancestral Italian home, I have always been an ardent Remainer. And I get annoyed whenever I read the words, Remoaner, Remidiot, or Remainiac (although only the first word was commonly used.) And should I be surprised as such words were coined up by the smug Brexiteer whose gloat over the other side's loss would have been shamed by the likes of young Kamkwamba?

My crushing disappointment after the 2016 referendum was never allayed. Even at present, there's that lingering wish that we had stayed in the EU and carried on enjoying the benefits such membership would have offered. But it's more recently, with the present vaccine fiasco, that I'm wondering whether we had done the right thing to leave the European Union. Whether we would now benefit economically or not, or whether trade tariffs would get in the way at our ports, this is not the point. The Concept of EU membership, to me, is magnificent. Just as the idea of internal combustion is the best way to get a vehicle moving without involving horses or bulls. But if the car breaks down, you don't question the concept of the internal combustion system. Instead, you fix or replace the engine.

Three principal leaders have brought the whole of the EU into bad repute. Ursula von der Leyen, who is President of the EU since December 2019, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Emmanuel Macron, has each hesitated to allow the rollout to go full power while, at the same time, threatening the exportation of the vaccines into Britain, hence heightening the risk of a rise in infections over here while our own rollout slows down as a result.

I won't hesitate to admit that the UK had done extremely well with the vaccine rollout compared with the bloc. I think the main contribution to this was instead of hesitating, as the EU leaders did, we signed contracts with various companies for the import of vaccines as soon as the pandemic began, long before any vaccine was developed.

I'll be clear:

Due to a crisis in the vaccine rollout, voting to leave the EU in 2016 was the right thing to do.

But that doesn't make me a Brexiteer. It doesn't make me a patriot. It does not make me a Royalist or even a supporter of the Monarchy. It does not make me believe that the English are superior in nationality, race, moral, religious or civil ethics. It won't change my bloodline from Italian to English. Neither would I ever embrace the delusion that England is God's country (this claim is for Israel only.) Rather, I'm pointing the finger at the bad leadership under which the EU is suffering.

As I'm aware of the incorrigibility of the human heart, the presence of sin and the need for atonement, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Therefore, it's no surprise that such behaviour arises from these leaders - the feeling of jealousy, and envy towards Britain for first voting to leave the EU and then setting contracts in place while across the Channel, the leaders over there baulk over the safety of the vaccine and hesitate.

The dynamo used by Kamkwambo

However, instead of sitting smugly on our sofas and with arrogance, gloating over Europe's misfortune, perhaps we need to follow the example of William Kamkwamba and make efforts to assist Europe in the manufacture and distribution of the vaccines - and that done in compassion and gritty determination - even when faced with opposition. Together, we need to fight this virus and make efforts to save the lives of these Europeans, as they are too made in God's image, just as William Kamkwamba is made in God's image, as we are.

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*Daily Mail Newspaper, Saturday, March 27, pages 10-11.