The Britain of our youth was intolerant, now we find Farage intolerable
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Version 0 of 1. When I heard Nigel Farage's comment that many people over the age of 70 feel uncomfortable about homosexuality, I had to check my watch to make sure it was 2014, not 1954. It seems Ukip is up to its familiar tricks of cultivating a spirit of intolerance and hoping hate will supplant common sense among the senior citizens of this country. I was not surprised to see Farage seeking to attract the elderly voter by appealing to an older person's nostalgia for the world of their youth, when life may have seemed less complicated. Unfortunately, those days were rank with prejudice and class division. It wasn't a Call the Midwife world where poor and middle-class neighbourhoods embraced diversity. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s there was a great deal of bigotry towards anyone who was marginalised: new immigrants, the Irish, women, the poor and those who were openly gay. I was lucky that my family, although poor, was enlightened enough to know that the hatred preached from the pulpits or espoused in the tabloids, was utter rubbish. Still, there were many back then who embraced racism, sexism and intolerance towards gay people, because it was easier to hate the newcomer, or the person who didn't fit in at the working man's club, rather than look at the real reasons their communities suffered poverty and lack of opportunity. Fortunately, times have changed in Britain. We are certainly a more tolerant nation when it comes to race, religion, and sexual preference. No matter how much some within Ukip think intolerance can be packaged and sold to seniors as a legitimate policy platform, it won't work. Most of us, whether young or old, are inoculated against the old hatreds and the politics of fear and division. No speech from a Ukip member, or its leader, can ignite long-forgotten prejudices that many older people learned in a time when diversity was despised, rather than embraced as part of a nation's greatness. Ukip and its ilk can stir up intolerance and backward thinking, hoping seniors will succumb to intolerance like a bout of shingles. I don't think it will work, even though there are older people who would prefer Britain to return to the emotionally stultifying era of their youth. Despite that nostalgia for the good old days, many seniors realise this is just looking at history through rose-tinted glasses. So I am perplexed with the notion of a large majority of over-70s who are uncomfortable with gay people and, by inference, civil and sexual rights. If they are, then they are deaf to the modern world and out of step with their children and grandchildren. Life is tough enough when one gets older. I don't think anyone would want to make it worse by isolating themselves through bigotry. This modern era has many faults and a fair share of new prejudices, but it at least promises (if it doesn't always deliver), the freedom to love and live in dignity, without fear of social or government interference. The majority of seniors do not feel uncomfortable with homosexuality, just a vocal minority. Unfortunately, Ukip preys on those who won't evolve and become better citizens through interacting with modern society. It is Ukip's modus operandi to create political stereotypes because it thinks that is the way to win elections. So it paints the average British senior as a lover of dogs who hates gay people and thinks Europe a den of financial inequity. The problem is that the more Ukip paints these ugly pictures, the more people start to believe Farage's view of our British landscape as populated by two-dimensional citizens, who think with neither their hearts nor their heads, but with their prejudices. It is time that not only seniors, but the young too, reject these portraits of Britain. We are not a nation of haters, scroungers and malcontents. We are a nation of diverse people, whose potential and talent can only be nurtured through respect and understanding. |