Through A Glass Darkly

"Returning to England feels like journeying back to the 70s". So ran the headline of a piece by Hadley Freeman in "The Guardian". What a difference three months can make, because that was all the time she had been away. Spies, snow and student protests. When you've been away an awful lot longer, there is something reassuring about the protests; reassuring that the clock can be turned back to show that students, indeed the British, haven't lost their capacity to protest.

In the 70s we fought the cuts, marched in solidarity behind our student leader, he who went on to become "Two Pizzas", i.e. Charles Clarke. It was peaceful enough. Not all protests were. Brutality was pretty much to be expected by police for whom there was an almost total absence of trust. Gene Hunt was accurate in every way, bar one; he wasn't bent.

Protest seemed to be abandoned after the Poll Tax. Apathy through complacency took over, so much so that Iraq caused just a dribble of demonstration. The good old days have returned. But ...

Despite the ease of communication and access to information, not being over there, as in not being in the UK, makes it somewhat unreal. It's as though you are watching a documentary; it's somewhere else. You're a part of it but not. It's fascinating to observe, but that's all you are - an observer, and from a distance.

You look at it as through a glass darkly, without the benefit of the reality of being there. In a way, it mystifies. Mystifies that protests in London can seem to be so important; can be written about or spoken about. Why do we care, over here, about what happens over there? Not being over there, we have no ownership of the issue, just as we have no ownership of Cameron or Miliband, of Kate and Wills, even of Man United or Spurs or what the rotters of the remove at FIFA do to England's bid.

It's a false being. One of "Corrie" and "Eastenders". Over there is a soap as much as it is a documentary; it is no longer real, but we pretend that it somehow is. We talk about it, write about it, argue about it. But who cares over there what is thought over here? Why, in truth, should anyone over here care what anyone over here thinks about what happens over there? The answer probably lies in the fact that no one over here much cares about what happens over here, so over there retains its importance.

The false being is such that neither over there nor over here is real. Over there is through a glass darkly and over here is through Alice's looking glass, stepping through a mirror to an endlessly sunny garden but which is, in reality (if it exists), just a dream. Or so it sometimes seems. Over here is where it is forever paradise, until reality bites.

When you are away for a time and you go back over there, what do you encounter? There is the order of the landscape, the enduring beauty of the English countryside, the politeness. And other things endure. Everything changes, well, no they don't. Take That are still there, or rather are back again. Phil Mitchell's puffy face is still there. Aggers and Test Match Special are still there, replaying the legover, schoolboy giggles with Johnners.

Amidst this order, this unchanging over there, shifts have occurred. You only have to land at an airport to be aware of them. The machine guns, the ominous signs as to it is against the law for this or that and the even more ominously monikered Border Agency, the sense of underlying paranoia.

And it is like journeying back to the 70s, when there was the paranoia of The Cold War and The Troubles and also that created by the protests of students and at Grunwick and which paved the way for battles with the "enemy within". The focus of the paranoia is what has changed, and it is breeding something nastier than the Gene Hunts ever were. Or at least this is how it seems. Because without being over there, you cannot truly know. It is all through a glass darkly.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.