Dis-united Nations

Last week I spent a couple of days in Worcestershire, a part of the country that likes to be known as the “Heart of England” because of its geographical centrality. But there is also an unspoken implication that it is England’s heart in the emotional sense: that in this place, as in no other, beats the healthy, resolute heart of the Nation. It’s not hard to understand why. The fecund farmland basking in the warmth of late summer sunshine looks, smells and sounds like the epitome of wealthy, pastoral England. And the locals, proprietors of all this splendour, also seem to be basking – in smug complacency. Their exchanges were friendly, yet confident, and imbued with a tone that expressed a kind of pity for us visitors, burdened as we are with the misfortune of living elsewhere.

Right now I am staying in the geographical and historical heart of London, where the feeling is not so much ‘centre of country’ as ‘centre of universe’; where the heartbeat is not steady and regular but high-paced and likely to result in stress-related disease, and where England is often regarded as another country. In my experience, England comprises many different countries, each of them laying its own claim to being that special place - the quintessential England.

Definitions of nationhood are problematic, which may be why we oversimplify them: the French eat frogs’ legs, the Germans eat sausages, the English eat roast beef etc. These popular definitions belittle cultures which are rich and mature but, as simplistic caricatures, they comfort us in our belief that each nation has its own, secure and eternally defined identity. But it’s not really true, for we still live within our beloved national boundaries like separate tribes, factions and classes bound in loose alliance with others.

The division of peoples into nations is not necessarily a good idea – as any nomadic tribe will tell you. International borders are often randomly drawn, forcibly imposed or both. The motivation is always economic gain - though it may be presented as “in the interests of national security” - and is effective only for as long as the inhabitants agree on common cause or can be coerced into doing so. Borders are disputed every day, sometimes farcically – as in Spain’s outrage over Gibraltar whilst it continues to hold on to its enclaves in North Africa, sometimes tragically – as in the Middle East.

Syria, regarded as a strong and united nation for the past generation, is now mired in civil war. Some of its factions believe they represent the true Syria, some fight for a more inclusive state, while others want to abolish Western imposed boundaries altogether and establish a pan-Islamic caliphate in the region. The resulting mayhem is un-containable: and the cause can be traced back to artificially imposed boundaries.

England’s last civil war ended in 1651, since when a parliamentary system has evolved to regulate the claims of the various factions and build a semblance of national unity. But it’s a fragile alliance: social classes are diverging and polarising, the current movement for Scottish independence is heightening the debate over devolution of power to the English regions and, all the while, amoral corporations are mocking our borders with their tax-evading tactics.

I was not born in England: my mother was foreign and the family lived abroad for years. I reside in Manchester through circumstance and choice; it’s not my home-town, which means I have no relatives nearby and no allegiance to a football team. On the other hand I'm not a refugee; I'm a privileged migrant with a duly acquired scepticism of nationality. I can happily say “I'm not from ‘round here”: which, to the millions of people around the world who have been forcibly displaced by border warfare, probably sounds like smug complacency.