Letter from Great Britain – 06-20-20

“The Financial Jigsaw” has been serialised here and now is replaced by this weekly “Letter from Great Britain.”

NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected].

One website about the UK is always worth reading because the author, Dr Richard North, is an experienced health professional and provides useful information on a daily basis.  http://eureferendum.com/

Here in UK we are mandated to observe the 2 metre (6 feet) social distance.  This is crazy as it is forcing our pubs and restaurants to stay closed because they can’t make a profit at 30% occupancy.  Boris says that he is reviewing the measure and expects to offer more guidance soon.  For the present hospitality in general remains closed with little prospect of relief at least until July. Thus we remain glued to the Tube while all hell breaks loose around us as ‘Black Lives Matter’ attack everything we value and have valued in Britain.  Perhaps it’s all about our WW2 experience all over again?

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited endless comparison to WW2.  Private labs have been likened to “Dunkirk little ships”; food bank support to “blitz spirit”, and even the queen equated the pain of self-isolation with wartime evacuation.  What lies behind this seemingly near constant evocation of the War in Britain is not consensus, however, but contested views of what the war meant. To this day, this is something that cannot be settled in British politics.

Take, for example, the idea that Britain had a “good war”. This view was set out most famously by the historian AJP Taylor, who concluded in his bestselling history of England:

    “The British people had set out to destroy Hitler and National Socialism – “Victory at all costs”. They succeeded.  The British were the only people who went through both world wars from beginning to end. Yet they remained a peaceful and civilised people, tolerant, patient and generous.”

There is much here that on the surface rings true. The war is an easier history to manage for the British than many other nations, who have to wrestle with questions of collaborating with Nazi occupiers.

At the same time, however, there is plenty of half-truth in the image of Britain’s “good war”. Britain was there at the “beginning” but not if you count the Nazi annexation of Czechoslovakia earlier in 1939.  It remained “civilised” and “peaceful” at home, though not in India, where it used violence to suppress the independence movement.

Most of all, despite Britain coming out on the “winning side” (thanks mainly to America), it was a loser if judged in terms of shifts in relative power – a bit-part player in the new era of super-power competition between the US and USSR.  Such contrasting interpretations and inconvenient facts mean that the debate on the War is unlikely to end.

We therefore remain condemned to view eternal repeats of war films ad nauseam on TV and witness a continual round of memorial days from Dunkirk and D-day recently to Victory Europe and the Holocaust revisited. – I, for one, am sick of all the BS and crap that makes out how Great is our Britain.  Perhaps there are good reasons for our youth to challenge the status quo as the current spate of protests indicate – but defacing and removing statues is not the way to go.

Britain’s two main political parties were, for much of the post-war period, first and foremost nationalist political parties committed to the idea of a united British nation state. Their competition, however, was not just over who controlled the state but whom or what exactly is ‘The Nation’.  The answer to this question is frequently found in the memory and imagination of WW2.

This leads to the final reason why British politics is so encumbered by the history of the war. The country that was rebuilt after WW2 was different to the one that entered the conflict in 1939.  As the historian, David Edgerton has argued, this was a country with a new national welfare system, new national institutions (National Health Service, British Rail, National Coal Board etc), and a new more national form of capitalism – one more focused on domestic production and consumption and less orientated around international finance.

Despite apparent continuities (like parliament, empire and the monarchy), Britain was in many ways a new nation by the time Churchill returned to power in 1951. To sustain it, this new nation required new national myths and found them in the experience of WW2. Therefore, asking Britons not to be encumbered by myths of it is like asking Frenchmen not to invoke their revolution or Americans to ignore the declaration of independence – not impossible but exceedingly difficult.

The easing of lockdown restrictions in England means that from last Monday tens of thousands of non-essential shops can reopen after an enforced three-month shutdown.

Just one in five English stores has traded through the lockdown, according to an analysis of more than 600 town centres by the Local Data Company.  The relaxation of restrictions will increase that figure to 70% as household names ranging from John Lewis and Primark to Currys PC World and Waterstones reopen with Covid-19 safety measures in place.

Fashion retailers were forced to write off a season as a result of lockdown but Primark is returning with a bang on Monday, opening all 153 of its stores in England. Marks & Spencer, the UK’s biggest clothing retailer, will also reopen shuttered clothing departments as well as its outlet stores.

Shoe shops are also opening their doors again with a whole new season of footwear on offer. Shoes tried on in Kurt Geiger stores will be quarantined for 24 hours before another customer can try them on, the retailer says. It is opening 24 of its 57 stores on Monday, but is being cautious and only allowing one customer in every 15 sq metres of space – double the government guidelines.

You won’t be able to try on a Nike tracksuit or Adidas T-shirt in the changing rooms yet, but JD Sports is pressing ahead with the opening of all 309 of its English stores on day one. Every branch will have a “host” on hand to manage access and answer any customer questions about new safety protocols. Returns will be separated from other stock for 72 hours to reduce coronavirus transmission risk.

A first wave of John Lewis branches will open on Monday, with shoppers asked not to try on clothes and to use disposable covers before testing sofas as part of a new safety regime. Rival Debenhams is also opening more than 90 stores, with House of Fraser set to return during the course of the week.

Working from home has resulted in an online sales boom for tech stores but some UK consumers have struggled with new laptops and desktop computers.  Currys PC World is opening 131 stores with an initial focus on helping with tech queries. New signs will advise customers to ask staff for a demo rather than touching the tech in store themselves. The shops are also offering a free recycling service for old tech.

Now that UK has left EUROPE I will comment on relevant EU – UK events as they arise:

“The Euro-Zone was already in deep trouble before CoVid-19 hit, the weakness that started in 2017 never ended. In the fourth quarter even Germany narrowly escaped recession. This could be blamed on the Brexit or Trade War but it goes beyond that, they abandoned all structural reforms in 2014 when the ECB started its quantitative easing program (QE) and expanded the balance sheet to record-levels.

In 2019, almost 22% of the Euro Zone GDP gross added value came from Travel & Leisure, a sector that will unlikely come back anytime soon. Add this to weak exports and a banking sector that is totally decimated and everything points downward.”

http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2020/06/eu-economy-traveling-along-same-worn.html

To be continued next week.

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Author: Austrian Peter

Peter J. Underwood is a retired international accountant and qualified humanistic counsellor living in Bruton, UK, with his wife, Yvonne. He pursued a career as an entrepreneur and business consultant, having founded several successful businesses in the UK and South Africa His latest Substack blog describes the African concept of Ubuntu - a system of localised community support using a gift economy model. View all posts by Austrian Peter