The Effect of Living Abroad

When I was a child I was brought up in a house and an area that took patriotism as read. The prevailing idea was that there was no country as good as England and that you must support it come what may. It was something I was happy to go along with in everything I did. Note that I said England not the UK. My Dad and his friends made no secret of the fact that they disliked the Celtic nations and saw the Irish as terrorists to the person, either active or supportive. Our Scout Troop was a very patriotic organisation and I was never really put in contact with anyone who felt differently apart from at school.

It was with this patriotic feeling that I made the decision to join the RAF. It is ironic, then, that it was there that I found the first indication that there was a very different side. So many of my fellow recruits came from areas where manufacturing industries and mines had been closed down by Margaret Thatcher’s government and these teenagers had nothing for them at home so they were looking towards the armed forces as a job not a virtue. I realised then that I had been misled by the people and culture around me.

The real break from patriotism came in the mid 1990s when I took a job in Japan. I realised that they did so many things differently, but that, despite what I had been told, a good proportion of them were much better than the UK. It was a bit of a eureka moment I suppose, and the more I looked into it the more ridiculous I realised that patriotism was. By the way, I don’t just mean British patriotism, I mean any country’s patriotism. Japanese patriotism was just as ridiculous and as based on unrealistic ideas as any other form of patriotism. When I returned from Japan, the majority of my friends didn’t want to hear that Japan was better than England in any way, anymore than the Japanese wanted to entertain the idea of England or Britain being better than they were.

Why should we accept that we are somehow better than anyone else based on accident of birth? What is a country anyway, apart from a random border made up by human beings that really bears no resemblance to the land around it? Why do Scotland and Wales have the borders that they do? Actually, those borders have changed throughout the centuries. Looking further afield, the British left their Empire and created countries that bore no resemblance to the people living within them, creating the setting for decades of conflict.

I have lived in four other countries in my adult life, Japan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Australia. The latter contains the cricket team I support in all versions of the game, something that started in 1989. That was the year that an incredible Australian team came over and played cricket that was absolutely brilliant to watch. I instantly swapped to supporting Australia against England and that has never changed since then. When I was living there I got the chance to watch my cricketing heroes and to this day, those heroes come from a land down under, not from England.

Do I feel pride when I see English or British sports people doing well? Yes, to some extent, but nowhere near as much as I did in my younger days. The only English team that stirs my patriotism are the Lionesses, but that is because of how much they have overcome as a result of their own country ironically! Women’s Football was banned by the FA for 50 years for no reason other than it looked likely to overtake men’s football. Everything that the Lionesses have achieved is despite their country not because of it.

Patriotism is quite often negative, poisonous and disruptive and now that this is the current form of patriotism in every country I can think of, I want nothing more to do with it.