The London of my childhood was suburban, courteous, with a high degree of social trust. Ten miles to the east, the Capital of Empire, soot-blackened, war-damaged still exuded a strength and grandeur in its stonework and proud emporia.
There is a nagging perception that many English people nostalgic for their childhood believe that underlying the decline they've lived through are migration and race. I disagree; below is my class photo from 1968. In this class there are nine children who are either immigrants or children of immigrants, hailing directly or indirectly from Jamaica, East Africa, Yugoslavia, Lithuania and Poland (myself). That's more than a third of the class - and this is 40 years ago.
It's about nostalgia for what one's missing. Childhood in suburban 1960s London was full of certainties long gone in Britain. A job for life, common courtesy, common sense, a high degree of social trust. Returning to London these days, I mourn for what I miss from those days. Many Brits sense that same sense of loss. And this is what makes for a contrast with living in Poland. No one here feels any loss for Poland's totalitarian past. That all-pervasive shabbiness, fear, shortages of basic goods; institutions that fostered social trust torn down and replaced by the Party, people forced to betray neighbours, friends and family. (Urban) Britain has less optimism for its future than (urban) Poland. Teenage knifings, endemic obesity, CCTV, political correctness, causes and symptoms of a once-great nation's decline.
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With each new generation, what was once handed down in the common currency of the social round is expunged at birth! Decency, courtesy, fair-play, politeness, accountability, discpline, trust, etc have been swept away upon a tidal wave of relativism, so that we observe life and interact with society through a prism of tawdry ephemeral pick-and-mix granularity, where nothing really seems to matter. I haven't recognised my country for years and years and yet the country of my memory lane is as rich and as alive to me now as it was when it was being experienced -the rich seam of the memory.I can see my grandparents in my mind waving to us as we edge up the road for home in my father's old grey Morris40, as if it were yesterday. The scent of autumnal bonfire smoke wafting across suburban gardens; the trust and safety of the streets, the eye contact. L.P.Hartley opened his novel 'The Go-Between' by stating "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". It was a comment upon memory, perception, the effect of childhood experience and the deceipt of adults. It could well refer to our present and our future, where things are done very differently than they were and 'wrong' slips just that little bit further into 'right'.
Communing with the past - the state cannot take that away but slowly, ever so slowly, they erode our sense of what was right and just and that leads to social confusion and resentment. If you see someone with their feet up the seat opposite on your train - you no longer have the right to react and politely tell the person to remove his/her feet because frankly you don't want to be the next statistic. Relativism breeds the fear that hangs like a pall over our once great land. Large glass of Chardonnay, anyone? Soon be time for Big Brother.
Edward Guestling-Templeman Lethbury
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