Sitting in my garden the other evening, with a nice glass of wine and some rather delicious minor munchies, listening to some Barbra Streisand, I was struck by a line from one of Streisand’s songs (Here’s to Life if you really want to know): ‘There is no ‘Yes’ in yesterday’. It perfectly summed up my response to an article I had recently read in The Telegraph (6 July) entitled: I Voted Reform Because I Want My Country Back. Written by Charlie Bentley-Astor, a recent University of Cambridge graduate, the article deeply disturbed me but I couldn’t quite say exactly why… until I heard this particular line from the song.

Written by someone who voted Reform in the recent UK General Election because she ‘wants Britain to forge its own path again,’ Bentley-Astor believes this will happen under Reform but not Labour. I quote: ‘When I think of the England to whom I pledge my life, I think of the England of my childhood. I think of birthday parties in village halls and of summer fetes. I think of woodland and hours spent fashioning swings and sling shots. I think of the shade of churches. I think of rattling buses. I think of skinned knees and cricket played under the baking sun and red telephone boxes and duck ponds… it is in these remembrances that Reform has fashioned its vision for Britain’s future.’ For Bentley-Astor a vote for Reform ‘is a testimony to a different memory of Britain – when children could play in streets in security and freedom and there was a well-turned-out policeman on every street corner.’ Although Bentley-Astor must be considerably younger than I am she reflects an opinion that I have heard from a number of people of my generation (and others). An opinion that reflects a longing for the past, for days when everything seemed different, better, more comfortable, and so on.  Like George Bowling in George Orwell’s novel Coming Up for Air, they long nostalgically for days long gone, and situations that no longer exist, wistfully recalling perceived halcyon days that probably were never actually as they remembered them, and are certainly never coming back again.

I would suggest that there is a whole other side to Reform (and other right-wing parties gaining growing popularity in the Western Word), an extremely dangerous fascist side, that we all need to be aware of and not get succoured in by as many did in pre-WWII Germany. The following famous quote by Martin Niemöller, a German pastor and theologian, imprisoned for his opposition to Adolph Hitler, should be compulsory annual reading for all: ‘First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me… but by then there was no one left to help me.’

Accepting that there may be those (such as Charlie Bentley-Astor) who are genuinely attracted to Reform (and its like) by nostalgia rather than fascism, it remains that nostalgia – and in my view that is actually what Bentley-Astor’s article is all about – can be a very dangerous thing. The dictionary defines ‘nostalgia’ as ‘a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past’ or ‘a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past.’ Apparently, the term ‘nostalgia’ was coined by Swiss physicians in the late 1600s to signify a certain kind of homesickness among soldiers. Today we recognise that it encompasses more than just homesicknesss, and if we take nostalgia too far it becomes sentimental or indulgent. Whether triggered by a photograph, a memory, or a treasured possession, nostalgia evokes a particular sense of time or place. We all know the feeling: ‘a sweet sadness for what is gone, in colours that are invariably sepia-toned, rose-tinted, or stained with evening sunlight’ as someone once put it. At times such feelings can be genuinely comforting… but for the most part they are dangerous creating an illusion, a fantasy, of days that are long gone and never coming back again that hinders us from living positively in the real world.

Nostalgia is essentially the theme of George Orwell’s novel Coming Up for Air, the folly of trying to go back and recapture past glories, and the easy way the dreams and aspirations of youth can be smothered by the humdrum routine of work, marriage, and getting old.  In the novel George Bowling uses money he has stashed away to fund a ‘trip down memory lane’ revisiting the places of his childhood in Lower Binfield. He recalls the pond with giant fish, the lovely old pub in the town centre, his welcoming family home, and the girl he fell in love with all those years ago. But when he arrives, he finds the place unrecognisable. The pond is now a rubbish dump, the old pub a posh hotel, his family home a teashop, and the old girlfriend so ravaged by time that she is almost unrecognizable and utterly devoid of the qualities he had once adored. The days he fondly recalled were long gone and would never return. Intriguingly the only thing that remained unchanged in Lower Binfield for George Bowling was the Church and the Vicar (read into that what you will).

The truth of the matter is that despite Harold Macmillan’s opinion that ‘You’ve never had it so good!’ the 1950s that some of my generation long to return to were actually not that good… particularly for those of us who were not from middle-class homes. I know because I lived through those years. Memory has a tendency to play tricks on us and we have a propensity to remember the good and forget the bad. Nostalgia is the historian’s biggest enemy. Cultural memory more often than not relies on past media to inform the context of the things we think we remember. This can sanitise the past and reduce it to a mere shadow of its actual self.

Jesus exhorts us to ‘Remember Lot’s wife’ (Luke 17:32) citing the Old Testament story where Lot’s wife literally became petrified as a result of hankering after the past (Genesis 19:26). The Apostle Paul’s advice is to ‘forget the past and press on into the future’ (Philippians 3:13,14). Like an Olympian runner, he does not turn back to dwell on the past. Forgetting what is behind, Paul looks resolutely forward toward the future and a final victory lap.

Jim Binney