Two Nations, Carrying On

I’ve just returned from six days in London at a time when my country and Britain are each in the midst of wrenching political and social upheaval.

In the U.S., the agonizingly long investigation of possible collusion between the Trump Presidential campaign and Russia in 2016 has concluded with no charges,  but for many not convincingly. In Britain, the decision by voters in 2015 to leave the European Union (Brexit) is still being hotly debated, with no end in sight.

About the only certainty in these situations is that government — that is to say democratic government — seems endangered and, for the truly pessimistic, near collapse in both the U.K. and the U.S.

These were the backdrop events to my first visit to the “sceptered isle” in many a year. I accompanied my wife, Jeanne, who was on a business trip; as she worked, I played the consummate tourist, visiting the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, Greenwich (on a Thames River cruise), St. Paul’s Cathedral, Stonehenge and Bath. These stops, plus lunches in pubs, dinners in delightful but pricey restaurants, and numerous rides in the iconic black beetle cabs or on the London Underground, enabled me to see a major global city at perhaps its most vulnerable since the Blitz. I came away thinking that London is cheekily self-confident even as it denizens express great uncertainty about its future should Brexit actually happen — if it ever comes to pass.

There is no doubt about one thing: London exudes energy and vitality. In many ways, it is a madhouse of noise, traffic, bustling pedestrians, honking horns and shops of all kinds and price levels. It is a kaleidoscope that never stops turning. It has sprouted high rise office and apartment buildings that contrast (and in some cases, diminish) the existing and aging facades of England’s adventurous past.

It is also, since my previous visit, delightfully (or threateningly) diverse. In one restaurant, we were served by a Russian, an Indian, a man who could not speak even passable English, and a maitre d’ with Cockney East end bravura. A guide at the British Museum was Polish; on my cruise to Greenwich, I was in company of a German couple, a French family, a group of Japanese — even the smallest wielding a camera — and two Swedes. The desk clerk at our hotel was Italian, the concierge was a proper mate named Ed who exuded quiet imperturbability.

Yet for many in Britain, diversity is not a plus. As in the U.S., many feel that a settled way of life is threatened by the flood of immigrants from around the globe. In the States, the fear is illegal immigrants. In the U.K., emigres from the British Empire’s colonial holdings in Africa, the Caribbean and India are perceived to be taking jobs from working-class families. We avoided bringing up Brexit with everyone we encountered. But one cabbie clearly wanted his “Yanks” to understand that foreigners were taking all the jobs, including becoming Uber or Lyft drivers. His attitudes may be extreme; it’s hard to say. But for intensely patriotic Britishers (especially those over age 65) the flow of immigrants from foreign lands continues to fuel the smoldering animosity that is hanging over everyday life in the U.K.

Without a doubt, Brexit dominates London life these days, in the same exhausting way the Mueller investigation has dominated America’s political scene. 

In the meantime, life goes on. London is wickedly expensive, with skyrocketing housing costs forcing more and more of residents to outlying suburbs and brutal commutes. In this, London is hardly different than most major cities; it certainly is true in Charlotte, a fraction of London’s mammoth size but hell-bent on reaching global status. Which begs the question: will only the richest inhabitants ultimately be able to afford urban life? Will the rest of mankind, in T.S. Eliot’s memorable phrase, be living lives of quiet desperation packed like pickled herrings on suffocating tube lines? It’s hard, right now, to see a solution.

Still, there will always be an England, as the saying goes. The well-maintained highways outside London proper are blessedly free of ad billboards. Brits can be brittle and brusque, but at the same time generous with directions and patient in helping Americans sort out British currency. Americans are rightly surprised to see that many people here continue to smoke with abandon. Smoking inside pubs is outlawed, but many patrons gather outside, pint in hand, to puff away.

And everywhere, at least to this observer, you can find whispers of the British way of life that once was and is now fading from view. The “Royals” as the Queen and her extended family are known, are a source of pride, even as citizens love to tease and poke the aristocracy. History above all is prized. London is packed with historic buildings dating back centuries, and museums of all sorts that are wildly popular. Among the artifacts at the British Museum there is a letter from a supplier of the Roman army, written 2,000 years ago, begging the army quartermaster to please pay an outstanding invoice. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. At the National Portrait Gallery, you will find a painting of Shakespeare as he appeared in his late ’20s; it challenges every notion you’ve ever had of that master of the English idiom. Among the portraits still on view is one of Sir Oswald Mosley, an aristocratic Fascist who liked to spew anti-Semitic tirades in Jewish neighborhoods in the East End wearing his own self-styled Nazi uniform. Another is of Sir Douglas Haig, the British general who in World War I sent a generation of young men to their deaths. No outrage, no endemic of grievance, as in America, threatens the removal of these loathed figures.

I made a special effort to visit St. Paul’s Cathedral simply because of how struck I had been as a youngster at the photograph of the church’s magnificent dome emerging from the smoke of a Luftwaffe bombing raid. It is still there, and likely will still be there after the next Ice Age crushes most everything in its path.

Does America still have that “special relationship” with England that Churchill forged with FDR in the dark days of 1940? People still talk fondly as if it were in place today, but I wonder. I rather think, instead, that each of the partners from those long-ago days is so completely wrapped up in domestic matters that there is hardly time for even a friendly phone chat. Theresa May is up to her ear lobes . . . Our President’s mind is clearly elsewhere.

Much of what we share in common remains . . . our language, our cultural interests, our fond memories (now, sadly waning) of comrades in arms against a common foe. Britain’s future course is uncertain; can it leave the EU successfully and create a new, independent nation not yoked to the Continent? Can the United States, bitterly divided and increasingly estranged, find common ground, or are we destined to become strangers in a strange land, separate and suspicious?

These are weighty, existential concerns. It’s as if our two nations are floating in the air like balloons, needing to land but seeing nothing below but treacherous forest. In the end, however, there certainly is enough grit and determination in both countries to find a way ahead. England and America are different in many respects, but alike in the belief in the enduring strength of their people to carry on, push through and find peace and security for all within their bounds.

That’s a lot to ask for. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.