We are here because you were there

This evening I met up with six other people with whom I used to work in an Oxford refugee charity. It was interesting to discover that the older members of the group are, like me, increasingly disengaged from news, politics and especially activism. We try to hide from ourselves how little we have succeeded at improving, despite a lifetime's worth of energy. I was heartened both that some are like me and some continue the struggle.

Apart from the personal, today was, unlike Monday's 'party', the actual 80th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Europe. The erudite and accessible Gary Younge (previously Guardian journalist, now Professor of Sociology at Manchester University) had an article in the Guardian which crystallised some of the reasons why what happened on Monday repels me.

In 1941, Winston Churchill travelled to the USA where he and US president Franklin Roosevelt produced the Atlantic Charter, championing 'the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live'.

When questioned afterwards in the House of Commons whether he really meant 'all peoples', he replied, 'We had in mind, primarily, the restoration of the sovereignty, self-government and national life of the States and nations of Europe now under the Nazi yoke, and the principles governing any alterations in the territorial boundaries which may have to be made. So that is quite a separate problem from the progressive evolution of self-governing institutions in the regions and peoples which owe allegiance to the British Crown.'

So 'all peoples' didn't include the majority world who are a 'problem' and 'owe allegiance'.

I walked home from the pub through all that history: the descendants of the 'colonial subjects' who were requested to plug Britain's labour shortage after the Second World War, those who migrated here because of disputes generated by colonial border-drawing, those who've landed on these shores after fleeing wars created by abuse of power and injustice cascading down the generations, and a fair few of the imperious upper class, summoning friends in public school accents to come and have some of the 'ethnic' food.

Oh... looks like I haven't quite given up on politics after all.