Jenny Williamson's War - part 1

Where to start this tale? Where did it all begin? It's a question I've asked myself a lot since I decided to write this down. There are many points that I could have chosen. I could have started it back during the early 2000s when a world wide recession hit, when businesses where going under, unemployment was rising and living standards started to fall. They'd been hard enough days for me and my family, scraping by on a food budget of a pound a day per person for more than a year. It had been hard, there'd been days when I wondered how I'd keep body and soul together, despite bringing in a full time wage. The only difference was we expected it to end, that the economy would turn the corner and good times would be here again. And slowly it did. However in its wake the political parties espoused a policy, that soon became a near cult like dogma, of austerity.

It was in this climate of austerity, and the despair and desperation that it caused, for it seemed to take the most from those with the least, leaving families homeless and reliant on food banks for their survival, that some saw a chance for political and monetary gain. They could harness this directionless anger and hopelessness for themselves.  Maybe I'm being harsh on them, but what followed was based on misdirection and lies. Perhaps they'd honestly thought that what they were doing was for the best, maybe they even believed the stories they wove about Europe being the cause of all our economic and social woes. Even now all these years later I'm not sure what is worse; cold blooded ruthlessness that would allow them to use those with the least as tools of their own destruction or fools so consumed by their own self delusions where they saw themselves as great economic saviours.  Whatever their preceived goal at the time what followed spiralled out of their control, the consequences of which will be felt for generations to come. 

So perhaps I should start it in the day of the vote itself of how people couldn't believe there would anything other than overwhelming support for remain. Or perhaps I should start the morning when I woke up to the news that we were to leave Europe.

 I still remember what my then eight year old son, Jamie said to me. He said that it was silly because our country was in Europe and that we couldn't move it because it would be too heavy because countries are made out of rocks which was why islands don't float like icebergs. Although if we could move the UK out into the Atlantic would we then become Atlantis. Because it would be cool to come from Atlantis. He then spent the rest of the morning until it was time to go to school pretending to be Aquaman.  I remember thinking how nice it would be to still have that kind innocence. Yet at that point I still had hope there would be some kind of well ordered plan, that the effects of leaving wouldn't be catastrophic. That was a kind of innocence too I suppose.

We hadn't realised quite how awful things might become at that point. Even those most critical of the vote and the result didn't give voice to anything like what finally occurred. So perhaps I should start a few months later, when the threat of leaving without any form of deal in place was growing. Even then with the days fast running up to when we would finally leave the common market when anybody pointed out that negotiations were not going well, that the whole things was a disaster, that it wasn't too late to stop, they were called remoaners. They were painted as traitors by a good portion of the press and anything that went against a positive view of Brexit was called project fear and was derided. As time went on a good number of the things that so called project fear had predicted were proved to actually be true and things were quite possibly worse than even they had suggested. 

Even then the warnings were ignored.  There was a quasi-religious, cult like element to those wanting Brexit at any cost.  That somehow their belief in it would somehow negate the fact we'd be seriously damaging our economy. They were adamant that any problems were caused by foreigners or remoaners who was traitors. Europe was being unreasonable by not letting us keep all the benefits of being in the EEC once we'd left. Even when the government began drawing up plans to stockpile food and medicine incase a deal with the EU could not be made it didn't seem to bother them. A vocal minority even began to proclaim that it would bring us together, reignite the old Blitz Spirit, that we would all be happier and healthier with ration books, obesity would decrease and it would save the NHS. Predictions that it would cost us and the economy so dearly that it would take us fifty years to recover did not dull their fervor, they still called it project fear or a price worth paying to be free of Europe.  

Perhaps then the best place to start is that first day after leaving. How when the country didn't collapse on the stroke of midnight into some Mad Max-esque wasteland the hard line Brexiteers declared that they'd been right, that the remoaners had all been liars and needed to shut up forever. That fact was things were never going to fail in the first five minutes, and Brexiteers and Remainers alike knew this. Lies and fake news were the order of the day, and trying to stay informed using tabloid newspapers was a losing battle. 

This then is when I'll start this tale. When most people woke up to what had happened, what could happen and the knowledge that it was now much too late to anything about it.