An Open Letter to Britain and the European Union Following the Brexit Referendum

Dear representatives, citizens, and residents of the United Kingdom and European Union

Re: National and international identity following the E.U. referendum.

I want to tell you who I am. On paper I’m a white, British, female. I’m married, I have two children, I vote in every general election and every European election. I’ve missed one local election since coming of legal voting age following the change in registration procedure (I missed the cut off by three days). I have a first class honours degree. In other words I’m pretty average, engaged but not an expert in my field or a political activist. But today that feels like a convenient mask and nothing more.

What lies underneath an English looking face, and a body that’s always lived in Northumberland? The answer; a great many things. My maternal grand-father was a Polish-Ukrainian displaced person following World War Two. A refugee, to most people. In addition, my paternal great-grandparents came to my village from Scotland after the Scottish mines began to close. Prior to that there was Irish heritage. I’m proud of my heritage, at what my grandfather and the resilience of my British ancestors. I’m as proud of that aspect of who I am than of my ‘English’ blood.

By chance, my husband has a similar story. His maternal grandfather was also a Polish displaced person. His ancestry on his fathers side is Irish and Scottish four or so generations back. Our surname is Irish. Both of us can identify as British, but neither of us can identify as English. We always believed we could move back to our ancestral lands if we wanted to because of the United Kingdom’s and then the European Union’s freedom of movement, just as our great and great-great grandparents had moved through Britain. But as it stands, our European Union membership is going, and the United Kingdom could break up if a second Scottish referendum comes to pass. We could end up trapped in a country we don’t identify with, purely because our ancestors followed work, coming to the north east to work in the pits and on the ship yards, rather than through a desire to be in England for political reasons, much as I now want to be a citizen of the European Union for economic reasons, although I have the addition of heritage.

 At the moment of our births, my husband and I were identified as British and since our childhood as citizens of the European Union. We’re descended from people who survived right wing oppression or who came to England because it was part of the same United Kingdom as their homelands of Scotland and Ireland. To me, the very fact that is my nationality, it’s what the front of my passport says, seems to preclude a change to being solely British in the event of an EU exit, or English in the event of a break up of the United Kingdom. Our nationality surely can’t be dictated by 28% of the country, flying in the face of what our birth certificates and passports say? In what other instance would someone have their citizenship or nationality stripped from them on the whim of strangers?

In other cases, such as when people move country or take citizenship in a new country, they can sometimes apply for dual nationality. With that in mind, I put forward a case for some sort of European dual nationality as I, like many others, was born into a member state of the E.U. I put forward a case for some sort of British dual nationality in the case of the break up of United Kingdom, because I was born British, not English, and of Irish and Scottish descent.

If this can’t happen, where do I belong?

Nowhere, it seems.

I will have no national identity. My citizenship will have been stripped from me. The nation of my birth may no longer exist. Because 28% of the population of Britain decided it should be so. 

Many of those 28%, who polls suggest are more likely to be retired, hold no formal qualifications, or be unemployed, did so based on whimsical notions of sovereignty and what makes Britain ‘our country’. Basically, those with least formal education, and/or least interest in the economy and job market, and/or the highest levels of disillusionment have swayed the vote by a small percentage, a percentage which may well have been counteracted if we’d asked for the opinions of the 16-18 year olds or if our leaders had managed to engage the younger voters; those people who are working apprentices, who can marry, who are in education, who are making all kinds of life choices every day, and who will be most affected by this decision.

The majority voters born before our European Communities membership voted to leave the European Union in this referendum. The majority of voters born after it voted to remain, at least according to recent polls. We want our identity protected, not for it to be taken off us by the very people who voted to keep us in the European Communities in the first place.

Currently, there is a petition running requesting a second referendum because such a vast number of people are unhappy. Many are saying there can’t be a second referendum because our departure has been voted on democratically. Only that argument is flawed, because this isn’t the first referendum anyway. Anyone over the age 59 (those who were on the electoral register in 1975) has already been through a membership referendum, and remaining won with 67% of the vote. They have already had their say. They set in motion a process that made future generations European Union citizenship, and they did so by a much higher margin than leave won by in the latest referendum. 

Is it just to deny our youth, the 16 and 17 year olds coming up, a right to express their wishes, especially while allowing those who already democratically decided the fate of future generations in 1975. Is it just to take away the citizenship of so many following such a divisive campaign built around lies, half truths, and fear? Our citizenship, granted at birth or in our childhoods, seems to be at risk partially from people voting for a past seen through rose tinted glasses, because of nostalgia for a period in time which cannot be forced back into existence as the world is not as it was forty years ago. 

They’ve voted, in some cases, to take back our country because they regret their own democratic referendum of the past. What is sad about that, is they haven’t taken back our country. They never lost it. They were always British. We make laws. We influenced European law. We have a sovereign. What they’ve done is take away my nation and my European citizenship, along with that of many, especially among the younger generations. While every member of the electorate has the right to vote, is it truly democratic to allow our citizenship to be stripped away on such a small margin, especially when such a proportion of leave voters were born British, outside of the European Union. Surely we need a larger margin before anyone can tear away something as fundamental as citizenship.

We, those born since 1975, were born into a world of inclusion, not exclusion. We were born into a land aiming for unity rather than isolation. That’s gone now. Already, a mere days after this referendum, our black, Asian, and minority ethnicity groups are being harassed in the street, cornered and shouted at, threatened. This is happening to those who are British born as well as those hard working members of our immigrant population, both E.U. and none E.U. I wonder if the only reason it isn’t happening to me is because I’m white. No one can outwardly tell that I have ‘foreign’ blood in my veins or that my heritage lies in the countries now seeking opportunities to leave the United Kingdom.

Until now, I never fully appreciated the distinction between English and British, or the distinction between being a citizen of the European Union or not being one. I voted to remain because economically and socially it seemed the best choice for myself and my children. But now, after living through this weekend, I also realise there are many other reasons I did the right thing by voting to remain. I was voting, unknowingly, for my national and international identity. For my European identity. For my heritage. I was voting to belong. And because of 1.4 million people out of a population of 65.1 million, I now feel like a displaced person in my own country.

I’m a British born European (of mixed Celtic and Polish heritage).

I’m not simply British.

I never have been and never will consider myself English, despite my language and the location of my birth.

What does that mean for me?

Where I live does not seem to be my country and that leaves me afraid that outside of the European Union, Scotland and Northern Ireland will separate and depart along with the last of my nationality. I will live the rest of my life feeling that I am in a country which is not mine, that it would be hard to leave because my Celtic roots are a generation or two too far back. I’m far from the only person who feels this, because a great many ‘British’ people identify as having mixed heritage. 

Many others identify as British European, not simply British. They too feel they have lost their nation. We’ve regained very little, but something which nearly half the voting electorate wanted to keep has been lost. Now it’s not only our immigrant and black, Asian, and minority ethnicity groups that feel threatened and unwelcome, but a vast number of white British people too. There is potentially more of our population feeling unwelcome or displaced now then there are those who are happy with the referendum result, because an elite of British Nationals, consisting of the nostalgic and privileged, and the disillusioned and ill-informed, decided it should be so. 17 million voted to leave, out of a population of 65 million, where the young, the unsure, and those who are not on the electoral roll have had no representation. Is that fair?

It’s a devastating result.

My politics are similar to many Scots, but then I’m from Northumberland. The border county. I’m almost as far from Westminster as a number of Scots. If I were in the position of the Scottish people, if my choices were stay in an ‘independent’ England or join a Scotland with E.U. membership, I’d choose Scotland. I’m disappointed that my heritage is distant enough, a couple of generations, that I wouldn’t be able to claim Scottish or Irish nationality, yet I know I don’t want English nationality, and I know I do want to be part of a European Union member state.

What a position to be in. I’m heart broken over this. Truly and deeply. My emotions are complex, far stronger than I’d imagined they would be. So, to the  British government, I say this. Think carefully about what you’re about to do. Does that 4% victory, that 1.4 million votes, really represent the 65.1 million strong population of Great Britain? Is it enough to take this huge risk and make so many of your own people feel unwelcome while also breeding resentment among our neighbouring nations and potentially causing the destruction of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

To the European Union, please remember that almost half the electorate did not vote for this. We don’t want this. We have lost our European identity and may lose our national identity, and that is devastating to us. Don’t look at us with resentment. Those who are our future wanted to remain. Those you will work with in the future wanted us to remain. We are being stripped of our international identity in order for the aging generation and the disillusioned to pursue a national identity which cannot be reinvented. Look on us with empathy, not anger, because we are as shocked, horrified, angry, and aggrieved as you. We have cried. We have shouted. We are grieving for more than many currently realise.

To Scotland and Ireland, please do not see us as your adversaries. A great many of us wanted this no more than you. Many of us are already discussing whether it would be possible to return to the homelands of our great grandparents in advance of any separation. We are with you. We agree with you. We are as aggrieved at being forced out of the European Union by the English and Welsh vote as you are.

To those over the age of 59, please ask yourself why, when you sought to do what was best for your children and grandchildren, many of you have discounted what they wanted for themselves? Why, when you will be the least affected by this, when you have already had your say and decided that future generations would be part of the European Communities, are you seemingly ignoring the wishes of the very people you decided to give European Communities membership too in the first place?

To those who voted to remain, to the young, to those with experience of the economy, of trade, of politics, please keep fighting. We have spent our lives as European Citizens, it should be our decision whether or not we want to remain as such. There has been a poll, that is all. A poll that is not legally binding. For now, we are part of a democracy with a right to peaceful protest. Make your voices heard. Defend your European identity and citizenship. If you believe in the vote you cast, or would’ve cast if you were able, then stand up and say so. Do so without inciting the hatred, violence, and bitterness which has been created by the referendum and the result. Do so using facts, rather than the lies which were so prevalent in the campaigns leading up to the referendum.

To those who voted to leave and now regret it. Make your voices heard, we are still in a democracy so stand up and shout. Write to your MPs, to the government, to the European Union. Make sure that what you believe now is considered. Thursday of last week is in the past. Our nation has changed in the space of a weekend, so if you are seeing things with fresh eyes then tell the world that.

To those who voted leave and don’t regret it, please show empathy to those of us who have lost something we treasured. Your priorities were not ours, and while you may feel you have gained something, we are grieving. Listen to what we are saying, not what you think we are saying. Don’t get offended that we are upset, angry, or afraid.

Everyone, please, don’t be afraid to defend what we’re about to lose. Today I received a personal message from a stranger who’d been reading posts I’d made on a community Facebook page. She said that she supported me and my courage for expressing my opinion. This both moved me and saddened me because expressing your opinion should never be seen as an act of courage, or as if there was something to fear in stating your view of the world. We treasure equality. We fought for it. Your voices matter as much as any other so make them heard.

I realise I’ve spoken to many people here, and speculated on the voting preferences of certain demographics, and I am in no way saying everyone in any particular demographic thinks a certain way. That would be a sweeping generalisation. I’m merely commenting on the poll results I’ve managed to find and I hope that can be understood without a reversion to the personal attacks which have been directed at me following the expression of my opinion in the last two days.

What we need to do now is move forward. We need to do so by creating a strategy based on truth and on making opinions heard peacefully, through education, through discussions, through petitions, and if necessary through peaceful protest. We need to stand against the hatred caused by this referendum, and stand up to a racist minority who are using the result to further their cause. What we do now could shape the future of Britain’s kingdoms and of Europe. Generations will feel the after affects of what we do now, so make sure we move forward with what’s best for us all, and more importantly, for our children and grandchildren.

Watch with empathy. Speak from the heart. Defend your reasoning with analysis of data. Be brave. Be strong. And remember that we all need each other in some capacity. Let’s create a world where everyone has a voice but campaigns of hatred and abuse are quickly halted.

Regards,

Carmine Raven

If you wish to show your preference for keeping E.U. citizenship you can sign a petition at https://www.change.org/p/eu-offer-european-citizenship-to-uk-citizens