As a Baby Boomer (Leading Edge) I
have never had to make the sort of problematic choices that the previous
generation to my own had to make. I have
not been involved in a World War, I have not had to do Military Service, I have
been able to find work without problems, I have been looked after through my
educational life and in terms of medical help in a way in which I have not had
to think too hard about the financial consequences. I have, in short, been fortunate in choosing
the time to be born!
Central of course to that opening
paragraph of gloating, though not actually stated, is the reality of my
pension. I now have three pensions from
two countries: which sounds a damn sight more impressive than the reality! I have a professional pension from my job, I
have a much smaller state pension and I have a truly tiny (but welcome) pension
from Spain. The generations that have
come after my own look at my experiences and feel envy and resentment. This is an attitude that I can easily
understand, especially as the retirement age seems to be getting more and more
distant for some folk. But this piece is
not about finance and comfortable old age, it is more about responsibility.
I was far too young to have an
opinion about Suez and the criminal behavior of my government: I was too young
to understand the trauma of moving from an imperial past to an uncertain future
– and very badly managed at that; too young to understand the full import of
the Cold War, though old enough to appreciate the danger of the Cuban Missile
Crisis. I suppose that the first real
moral challenge that I felt fully engaged with was the Apartheid system in
South Africa and the United Kingdom’s culpability in the continuation of the
regime.
What did I do? Looking back on it, the answer would have to
be, not very much. I supported
Anti-Apartheid; I refused to buy or eat South African fruit; I didn’t drink
South African wine; I sent money to organizations against Apartheid; I put up
posters; I marched; I spoke against it.
But could I have done more, could I have been more pro-active? And what about Viet Nam? How much, or how little did I do to show my
abhorrence about that grubby conflict?
When I look back, I think that I was more worked up about the
Conservative government’s imposition of museum charges for our national
galleries than I ever was about a war which claimed the lives of thousands and
threatened the stability of the world!
In other words, I feel a nagging
sense that I could have done more, and should have done more, but I was
protected by a fairly comfortable sense that, in spite of a few local and
international difficulties, things would probably work themselves out with, or
without, my active help. And my
involvement was my choice.
In today’s world, with the rise
of the extreme right, the self-inflicted wound of Brexit, the reality of
President Trump, the growing obscenity of inequality in the world, the banking
crisis, corruption and on and on – it is much more difficult to remain as a
vaguely involved spectator. To do
nothing, is actively to encourage the situation to worsen: disengagement is denial.
What I am saying is that life in
2017 is the equivalent of life in the 1940s: there is an international crisis
and everyone has a part to play in attempting to ameliorate what is turning
into a national and international disaster.
You have to make a choice, in which not making a choice is a choice in
itself. It’s the same as it was living
in Northern Ireland during the Troubles: the situation was dangerous, and if
you had knowledge that might help the authorities then you would have to accept
that your duty would put you in danger.
In just the same way involvement in the Word Wars that my parents and
grandparents had to endure, put them in danger too. Dangerous times, and god knows we are living
in dangerous times now, call for positive action.
We can see that the growing
opposition to Trump and so-called policies in the United States and around the
world is an active statement that many people have accepted their
responsibilities to hold power to account.
This is one of those times when inaction is the deadliest action of them
all.
So, what am I doing, this time
round? Well, it basically comes down to
reading the Guardian, shouting at the television, watching American late night
political comedy on YouTube and typing futile screeds against the fading of the
light!
Stuck (by my own choice) in a wealthy,
sunny corner of Spain it is easy to forget that the rest of the world is going
through a crisis and, in some ways, this period of time is a little like the
so-called Phony-War before the actual war of 1939-45. My Dad was in London when war was declared
and remembered the sirens sounding soon after the announcement and . . .
nothing happened: no enemy planes, no bombs, nothing! Obviously that quiescence was soon to develop
into the bloodiest conflict that the world had ever seen, but the immediate
result of the challenge to German Nazi power was nothing.
You might say that quite a lot
has happened over the last few years.
The banking crisis has weakened economies, and the paucity of cells
filled by the perpetrators of one of the greatest pieces of financial fraud and
duplicity ever has weakened the very concept of democratic accountability. Governments have poured public money into the
banking sector with the result that the very bankers who caused the crisis are
now even more secure in their inflated pensions and high lifestyle. Bonuses are back, the stock exchanges are
booming and people are getting poorer.
This should be a time when implementing the ideals of socialism is seen
as something that can take people out of poverty and make a fairer society – instead
of which we see the politics of inequality and prejudice trumping any
humanistic ideal.
You might think that, as a
retired person with a secure pension, I am one of those people ‘sitting pretty’,
but I am most certainly not. As a
British national living abroad in an EU country, I have seen the relative value
of my pension fall by some 20% as the reality of Brexit gets closer and starts
having a real effect. I have the threat
of punitive action by the government in which I reside when Article 50 is
finally invoked and I find myself as a foreign citizen, living in a state which
can, at a moment’s notice cancel my healthcare, and revoke my right to stay in
the country that I now call home. And
that is just the local, Spanish situation.
Let us not consider the full ramifications of the Oaf in the White
House!
We are all (including the country
of origin) living in what the Chinese curse calls “interesting times” and what
we do in response to those interesting times will define the conditions of development
for the next generation, or indeed the next generations. We all have to step up to the plate and ‘do’
something.
