UKIP, Dad's Army and the Matter of Britain

Jonathan Freedland has written a thought-provoking, if condescending, article in The Guardian, likening Nigel Farage, the leader of the British Eurosceptic party UKIP, to Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army. I think Private Walker is more apposite but let that pass.  (If you don't know the programme it is pointless for me to explain but you might enjoy this.)

I prefer to point out that Captain Mainwaring, Pooterish, self-important, ridiculous, was a hero, whereas his much more agreeable adjunct, Sergeant Wilson, intelligent, suave, funny and upper middle-class, was weak. Mainwaring would have laid down his life for his country. Wilson would have been a defeatist, perhaps a quisling, had the Germans conquered Sussex, at least if not carefully watched by Mainwaring. 

Actually, the real myth bequeathed by the Second World War is that fascism is still a great danger or will be in Europe in the next twenty years. Evil morphs. The nearest thing to a fascist threat today and for the foreseeable future comes from Muslim extremists, not anti immigration parties.

Going to war with Germany with 1939 was in any case catastrophic for Britain, for the country we ostensibly went to war to save, Poland, for our ally France - and for the whole world. This truth is obscured by heroic myths.

In the Middle Ages the Matter of Britain meant the legends of King Arthur (while the Matter of France meant those recounting the imaginary deeds of Child Roland and Charlemagne). In our time the Matter of Britain is the myth of Britain standing alone in the Second World War. It's curious that when we British think about that war it is not war films or stories we think of nearly as much as a comedy programme broadcast over forty years ago about a group of part-time volunteers, in a genteel resort on the South Coast of England, preparing to meet German invaders. It's about a time when Britain was still a great power, still all white, still had class distinction. Instead of being about courage in battle, or the horrors of world war, or about our country's abrupt passage from global domination to a purely secondary role, it's a myth of cosiness, a national comfort blanket, a cuddle. 

As the man says,

The Americans had Private Ryan; we had Private Pike.

John Charmley, Professor of Modern History at the University of East Anglia, more than twenty years ago eloquently made the case for Britain not declaring war on Germany in 1939 and for making terms with Germany in 1940, as Lord Halifax and Rab Butler favoured. Over time, I have slowly come to find his ideas very persuasive. They are discussed here. 

How I wish I could discuss this with my father who was called up on September 1, 1939.