An Island Retreat

          Barely a month after Brexit, the bellicose headlines in some popular newspapers are aimed at getting their readers to square up for a fight with our former allies on the mainland. Wait Your Turn! Selfish EU Wants Our Vaccines. (Express) and No, EU can’t have our Jabs! (Mail). But just who is being selfish here? Global pandemics require globally co-ordinated action, surely? Ah, but I’m forgetting: this is an island and we have an island mentality. Worse, our island is stalked by the spectre of populism and, as the press knows only too well, the first step to establishing a fascist state is to create a common enemy. Whatever the reasoning behind leaving the EU, it disregards an important fact: that one of its primary aims was the avoidance of rivalries such as led to the succession of wars that benighted us all for centuries past.

          Brexit will, to some extent, hinder the free exchange across borders of people, their ideas, customs and prejudices, which is a backward step in fostering international understanding and cooperation. To make matters worse, covid has deprived us of the one thing that could counteract the islander mentality: travel. Instead of mingling freely with our foreign counterparts, as we lately used to do, we are reduced now to distanced interactions, observations and interpretations of their thoughts and actions, all of which too easily result in misunderstandings, wilful or otherwise. This is not a new observation. Here is Lord Byron’s take on it: I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, and of the bitter effects of staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.

          On Plymouth Hoe, there is a memorial to the sailors who died in the two World Wars. Their names and rank are inscribed on bronze plates, arranged chronologically and by campaign but, being used to the imposing presence of the memorial, I have found it all too easy to walk by and not read the words. However, at the recent request of a relative, I stopped to search for a particular name – G.L. Murray, Carpenter’s Mate, killed in action 1915 - at which point the inscriptions had the intended poignant effect. Seeing those individual details, I felt not patriotism but sadness that all those people had to die in a war that could have been avoided. As well as the ranks of the Royal Navy, the tradesmen were honoured with their full titles – Blacksmith, Cook, Cook’s Mate, Second Cook’s Mate and, yes, Carpenters Mate. But, saddest of all, were the names listed under the simple heading “Boy”.

          There are many such grand memorials but, where I live, there are numerous other, more mundane reminders of past wars. Not all of them are obvious but, as I acquire new pals and acquaintances, I learn more. The headland opposite us is now a park, but the massive stone walls that surround it are pierced here and there with blocked entrances to the network of bomb-proof tunnels leading to a wartime command centre below that remains intact since its decommissioning in 1958. The small beach next to the slipway is known by the locals as Commando Beach and leading down to it is a steep gully, trash-filled and overgrown, all that remains of a railway built to take ammunition from the armoury to the boats.

          I do hope that all this infrastructure truly is redundant and yet, as I sit here patiently awaiting the call for vaccination, I watch two warships leaving the port. They are flying the flag of Spain. Perhaps their friendly stopover at Plymouth has been curtailed in case of hostilities over the procurement of vaccine. Wars have been fought over lesser issues.