Why I Am European, #1

HEARD ye o' the tree o' France,
I watna what 's the name o't;
Around it a' the patriots dance,
Weel Europe kens the fame o't.
It stands where ance the Bastile stood,
A prison built by kings, man,
When Superstition's hellish brood
Kept France in leading-strings, man.

Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit,
Its virtues a' can tell, man;
It raises man aboon the brute,
It mak's him ken himsel, man.
Gif ance the peasant taste a bit,
He 's greater than a lord, man,
An’ wi' the beggar shares a mite
O' a' he can afford, man.

My parents are pro-European; today they are semi-retired and divide their time between Dundee and Andalusia.  Growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was always their ambition when they reached retirement to move to rural France to retire.  I think to some extent that was the zeitgeist of aspirational retirement at that time; we certainly listened to a many talking books in long car journeys with just that theme.  Nevertheless they lived the dream as far as they could.  We would always holiday in Gîtes.  Over the years I got to see a lot of rural France.

The first Gîtes I stayed in was in a quiet rural part of Pas-de-Calais, a place with an unusual name, Hermelinghen.  The village then housed an auberge that was rarely open.  Locals said that the proprietor had had a bereavement and was an alcoholic.  It had a kirkyard, and it had the empire of Monsieur Alphonse, an old man who I had few conversations with over three stays in his peasant/capitalist empire.  I was a very young teenager, and my French was poor.  My dad's French however was and remains excellent, so we always knew what was going on.

La Voix du Nord:

Chaque week-end, ils sont des centaines à venir goûter
au pittoresque des trois circuits partant d’Hermelinghen.

M. Alphonse inherited his farm from his father.  It consisted of white grape vinyards which were sold in bulk to the local bodega to be homogeneised to produce a low quality table wine.  It was not hugely profitable.  But there was space, and an ample amount of it.  What he did with it was to demolish one field of the poorest vinyard, and turn it into a caravan and camping site.  Pas-de-Calais is fairly near Paris, so that was a very sensible plan.  The local area is full of beautiful countryside and *very* fine dining  (I've never eaten better than in rural France).  As tourism flourished he used the revenue from this business to transform a number of derelict farm buildings into Gîtes (by British standards Gîtes are highly affordable, with costs per night similar to youth hostels, but they're better, much better, and higher profit than campsites).  As his empire expanded, and he received repeat business, he increased the size of his campsite, demolishing another field.  Now his remaining grape vines were the best ones he had.  He used the money from his burgeoning business to invest in them.  By the time of our first visit he was producing more income from his wine than he had when he inherited the farm, and it was of a quality.  He'd launched a political career, becoming Le Maire.  A man in his 60s, he seemed full of plans.  I'd love to find out what happened to him twenty years later.  I did a search for this article, and while I could not find much out about him, I found Hermelinghen is at the centre of a major rural cycling route that's recently been established.  I wonder if he or his progeny had a hand in it?  The peasants of France really can make a kirk or a mill o it.

I'd studied the French Revolution in primary school.  Our primary school in Dundee, Craigiebarns, had a head teacher who was an ex operatic singer.  We were chosen to perform a piece by the Scottish National Opera.  We trained for what seemed like forever.  I played the role of one of the new patriot soliders.  We sang La Marseillaise.  This gave me the frame of reference as a young lad to understand quite why a farmer in rural France could have the opportunities Scottish farmers can't afford to dream of.  Geography at school and a focus on rural development and human geography and diversification and the barriers faced by tenants provided another piece of the puzzle.  As the years went on I visited much more of rural France and many, many Gîtes.  I will always be grateful to my parents for this.  It is an anchor of my European identity.  As well as teaching me about rural life in a warmer, much much freer country, it also taught me a very great deal about international affairs and Scotland's position as a colony, which in better days once played a far nobler role in international affairs.

I recall when we rocked up to a Gîte in Picardy, in our clapped out white Peugeot saloon car, with family friends Carol and Steve, the proprietor, behaving rather stuffily showed us how various metres and appliances worked.  He was quite perfunctory, and somewhat dour, almost miserable, with warnings and so on.  Walking across the courtyard, back to his farmhouse rather quickly he wished us a pleasant stay until our return to England.  We told him we were Scottish.  He stopped, and turned around.  His face melted.  He came forward to greet each of us, smiling.  At once he insisted we attend his house tomorrow for a soiree.  It was night and day.  I recall the soiree itself with great affection.  The language barrier made the occasion more about body language and facial expression, as only my dad was fluent in French.  Nevertheless it was a genuinely pleasant and hospitable experience, and we considered it an honour. I was still quite young, but to see this dour hulking proprietor transformed into a friendly diplomat is a memory that will live forever in my mind.  This is a legacy of Scotland's role in international affairs, particularly as *good Europeans* a role we have not had for 310 years.  It remains able to make dour men smile.

I can and will bang on about this point, because I have this experience more times to remember since then.  However we need to remember we are a country which embraced Europe more fundamentally than most of the pro-EU countries in the EU, just as our 'compatriots' in England embraced ultra Nationalism, race hate and myths of superiority and dominion over others.  Just because we are lashed to England by forces of our own self-doubt promulgated by our own domestic reactionaries, as England travels down a reactionary path towards humiliation, xenophobia and self-destruction, we must never forget that *we are Europeans*, first and foremost.  We are not servile little sub-Brits who hate the world.  I hope one day our English brethren can dispose of their superiority complex and embrace their position as a leading European economy, and a country long linked to France, Rome and the Baltic states, but the best way we can encourage this sensibility is by leading the change.  We are the world, and all men are brothers.  Globailisation and universal brotherhood has been the national mission of the left in Scotland ever since we began to try to undo our semi-colonial status.  The seed of rebellion in Scotland is the seed of the Tree of Liberty.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.