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  After Brexit: A healing process

After Brexit: A healing process

| CHARLES MARQUAND
Published : Oct 18, 2016, 12:39 am IST
Updated : Oct 18, 2016, 12:39 am IST

It is now nearly four months since nationwide referendum in which the United Kingdom voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union.

It is now nearly four months since nationwide referendum in which the United Kingdom voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. Two weeks ago Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the British government would give formal notification to the EU of its intention to do so by the end of March 2017. Under Article 50 of the EU Treaty the negotiations on the terms of the UK’s departure are then supposed to take no longer than two years. By the middle of 2019, therefore, the UK could cease to be a EU member. Brexit will be complete.

For those like me, who campaigned fervently for the UK to remain in the EU, the past 100-plus days have been bewildering and difficult. For an individual who suffers a trauma there are supposed to be periods of denial, anger, bargaining and depression, leading finally to acceptance. A collective trauma is of course different, but the first four stages roughly describe what many — myself included — have gone through.

On the afternoon following the morning on which the referendum result had been declared I recall meeting fellow campaigners. We were dazed. It seemed we were living through a nightmare from which would abruptly awake, bathed in cold sweat and relief. Looking back I know that we were in a state of shock; shock that by a tiny majority the UK had voted to inflict on itself a grotesque wound. Had just under two people in a hundred voted differently, the result would have been for the UK remain a part of the EU.

The shock passed, leading to the next stages of the grieving process. For me the depression took hold about a week after the result. My wife and I attended our eldest daughter’s graduation from Durham University. The ceremony took place in the cathedral, a splendid and imposing building over 900 years old. The graduating students and faculty members wore academic dress, varied and colourful since many of the academics are graduates of other European universities and have degrees and doctorates from all over Europe. As the ceremony progressed it struck me that Durham had been a centre of learning for nearly a millennium, first as a centre of religious learning and then as a secular university. In this Durham is far from unique. Many European universities have their roots in the Christian Church, monks and priests being the first academics. For many centuries the Church was the only point of civilisation in a dark and backward continent. Priests had communicated and travelled across Europe to contribute to debate and to learning, without regard to origin or nationality. As Europe became more secular the universities took on the Church’s role of nurturing pan-European intellectual endeavour.

Many times in European history the pan-continental intellectual community has been threatened, bullied and oppressed; most recently by the Nazis and the Soviets. Each time universities have managed to re-establish a European intellectual community. The European Union is now central to that republic of letters. Its structures and principles both underpin it and sustain it. To name a few; the free movement of persons, one of the EU’s fundamental freedoms, permits academics to live, work and research throughout the continent without the need for visas, permissions or any other kind of bureaucratic consent. As before, all that matters is the quality of the academic’s contribution, regardless of nationality or passport. The EU provides significant funds, enabling the Europe to be a world class centre of research. Its Erasmus programme allows students to study freely in universities outside their countries of origin. The students benefit enormously from being able to experience university life outside their countries of origin; but they also learn that their peers in other European countries are not so different from them.

Now the crass nationalism of the quitters threatens to wrench British universities out of the vibrant European intellectual community. And for what We are told that those who voted for the UK to quit the EU were revolting against a monied elite which had dominated national life for too long. Yet those who enter British academe do not enter it for the pay. The pay is not high. They do so because they esteem the education of the young and the furthering of human knowledge: noble values. Those values have been traduced by an act of ignorant vandalism.

I know that I am not alone in feeling this deep loss. During the summer a close friend of mine holidayed in Valencia, Spain. Valencia has some fine 15th century architecture. As in many Mediterranean countries there is a culture of drinking wine with a meal eaten outside. In many ways it is culturally a long way from beer-drinking, rain-sodden England. Historically, Catholic Spain has always been opposed to largely-Protestant England. Yet these are familial differences; deep and fierce as only family differences can be, but also intimate. As my friend sat with his family in one of Valencia’s squares, eating dinner, he realised that this was his patrimony too; and it was going to be taken away from him — from us — in a fit of vulgar chauvinism.

So while we may have gone through the first four stages of grief, we have not reached the last stage: acceptance. And we won’t, and why should we Of course the UK will remain geographically a part of Europe whatever happens. But the EU represents the best and only practical expression of Europe, European culture and European values in a world dominated by large blocs. In leaving the EU, in a deep sense, Britain denies itself; but it also denies to many of us who we are.

The writer is a lawyer and a keen observer of European affairs, and works in the UK and France