Europe is not just a continent but a state of mind

When Michael Gove and Boris Johnson said ‘nobody feels European’ they were speaking for themselves. I do feel european. I grew up without a sense of one particular national identity, and have spent most of my life trying to avoid one

Gove, born in Scotland, may genuinely feel ‘British’, but he looks and talks like an archetypal Englishman, albeit of an older generation; Johnson, for all his cosmopolitan roots - American-born and with Turkish ancestors - favours the blustering bonhomie of claret and clubland London.

I was born in Northern Ireland. At the age of six I was put in a short-trousered suit, an orange sash draped around my neck and held the tassle of a banner of King William crossing the River Boyne as we marched to Finaghy Field on the outskirts of Belfast to honour the Protestant ascendancy.

I did it not out of any conviction - I was six - but because the bands were fun, and because my grandfather, who had been an Ulster Volunteer and then fought at the Somme, was a master of an Orange Order lodge. It was what was expected of me.

Later, in my teens, enthusiasm for the Twelfth of July parades waned, as I realised ‘King Billy’ was just a local drunk in fancy dress struggling to stay on his horse, and that those martial tunes barely concealed an undercurrent of sectarian superiority enforced by the threat of violence.

I and a few friends retired to shelters on the blustery beachfront far from the crowds, smoked a joint if we could get hold of one, and told ourselves we didn’t really hate Catholics. How could we? We hardly knew any. When I finally did get to know some, I realised we had lots in common. Religion never entered our discussions: we talked about sex and drugs and sport.

So what nationality was I? I had cheered on England as a child in the 1966 World Cup final, but only because there was little alternative. Despite the legendary George Best, Northern Ireland never got anywhere. ‘Northern Irish’ was more a negation than an affirmation, a definition of what I wasn’t, not what I was.

I had a UK passport, but in Northern Ireland the adjective ‘British’ was laced with sectarianism, an identification with the Protestant ascendancy I socially belonged to but had nothing in common with. As soon as I turned 18 I had my first chance to vote almost immediately, in a referendum, on the border between ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ Ireland.

With a heavy teenage heart I spoilt my ballot: we all knew the six counties of ‘Ulster’ had been gerrymandered back in 1920-22 to guarantee a pro-Union Protestant majority. Nothing much had changed: the referendum was a con-trick intended to reinforce the status quo, not to question it.

My next chance to vote, as it happened, was also a referendum: whether or not to remain in the Common Market, the embryonic EU. I was 19 and voted enthusiastically ‘yes’. Our accession to the EU - Britain and Ireland at once - seemed to create a new alternative to ‘national identity’: European.

The myth about ‘Brits’ being bad at languages has never seemed to apply in Ireland. My grammar school taught French, German and Russian - I did them all - and a few of us took Spanish ‘O-level’ on the side at the local girls’ school.

By the time of the Europe referendum I was at Oxford, in the midst of a brief flirtation with Englishness, enchanted by the architecture, punting, jugs of Pimms and stripy blazers (Brideshead was showing on TV). The linguist in me rounded my vowel sounds and for a while adopted an exaggerated ‘Oxford accent’.

Then I discovered the rest of my world. I flew to Paris and hitched through Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, our ‘fellow’ European countries. I took Interrail to Italy, Austria, Greece and Yugoslavia, got robbed, and had to hitchike home barefoot (they had taken my shoes as well as InterRail ticket, passport and money). All I had was £10, a loan from the British consulate in Zagreb, half of which they took back to pay for an emergency passport.

I got lifts from Turkish Gastarbeiter heading for Germany who fed me on tomatoes, watermelon and flatbread, and Belgian tourists who took pity on a young man dripping in the rain at a German Autobahn service station. They gave me money for the ferry fare.

When I finally got back to Britain late at night, I had to sleep in a shelter near Dover docks: not one English car would stop to give me a lift. But, despite the robbery I was convinced: Oxford was my city, but my ‘country’ was Europe. Radcliffe Square took its place alongside Place de la Concorde in Paris and the Piazza San Marco in Venice.

My first job was with Reuters, British-based but internationalist in outlook, with a German editor. I was posted to Brussels as a trainee and covered the European Commission, travelling down to Strasbourg for meetings of the European Parliament.

Later I was posted to East Berlin, was in Warsaw for the rise of the free trade union Solidarity, the first real revolt against Soviet rule, and then, working for the Sunday Times, in Prague, and Budapest to see the fall of communism, Checkpoint Charlie the night the Berlin Wall came down and Romania for the fall of Ceausescu.

By the end of 1989-90 it seemed as if a brave new world really was on the cards. Only in the distant background was there a faint, irritating rattle from the right-wing ranks of the British Conservative Party about ‘Europe’, in a tone that suggested it was a dirty word rather than something to celebrate.

I never expected it would go on and on and on. Of course, it will be said - rightly - that I am part of the ‘metropolitan elite’ so disparaged by Nigel Farage, but I started out as a working class kid from a seaside town in Northern Ireland.

In contrast, my Oxfordshire friend Roger, who is approaching 70 and drives the horse and cart for a local brewery, is an adamant ‘Leave’ voter: he has never had a passport, and never even been as far as Scotland. He voted on something he had no knowledge of and disliked because it involved ‘foreigners’. The voice of ‘Little England’ at its littlest.

The Northern Ireland EU vote went along traditional sectarian lines: Protestant Unionist Antrim and East Belfast voting Leave, West Belfast and most of the rest of the province voting Remain.

Tim Martin of Wetherspoons and Labour MP Kate Hoey were prominent Leave campaigners primarily because both are Ulster Protestants who saw the Good Friday agreement and open border with the Republic as a forerunner to Irish unification. I suspect they would welcome the return of border controls, even if it revived the IRA. The Orange order marches this coming Tuesday will be their form of celebration.

I am dismayed, but not distraught. I have had an Irish passport for over 30 years, as do both my sons, not out of nationalism or a desire for unification, which I now wholeheartedly support, but because two European passports were better than one. As long as it lasted.

My British passport is now relegated to a drawer, never to be used again, at least until they put the drawbridge up, and even then. I ‘Remain’ European, and always will.