I voted against the UK joining the Common Market in - when was it? - 1973? That brought me a bit of grief, as you can imagine: 'Ho, ho', colleagues said, 'She's happy to teach their languages and have her holidays there but she doesn't want to join the rest of Europe.' In fact, of course, my reasons for voting against joining were quite different. I'd lived in France just a few years before. I'd visited most of western Europe while I was there and since my return to the UK, I could see the gulf in attitudes between the UK and the Common Market and I wasn't convinced the Brits understood what this Common Market thing was all about.
For a start, the Brits really didn't understand the reasons for having an EU.
Firstly, it was to avoid having another European war, like the two they'd already had, which left millions of people in mainland Europe dead, displaced and homeless. Left every national economy in debt, mostly to the USA. And left a legacy of hate and distrust that was going to be hard to recover from. The UK haven't been invaded and taken over since 1066 and we can't grasp the horror of watching a foreign army march into your country to set about commandeering your factories and houses, stealing your food and deporting your able-bodied people to slave in factories and mines elsewhere.
Secondly, after 1945, the European economies were only going to recover if they worked together. Yes, Europe got 'help' from the USA, largely in the form of loans and leases. Despite our claims that the USA was our friend, US industrialists and financiers did very well out of the second world war and payments on their loans left most of Europe in desperate straits. Real recovery could only come if Europe pooled resources via trade deals that reduced the costs of raw materials and manufactured goods. And they did it. There was a wee element of jealousy involved: I can remember people coming back from visits to Germany in the 60s asking 'So who won the war then?' Well, the Allies won the war, but in economic terms the Germans won the peace.
Thirdly, there's the matter of empire. France, Spain and, to a lesser extent, Germany all had empires and had to discard them, sometimes at the point of a gun. But only the Brits saw themselves - and I'm afraid for some Brits this is still the case - as top dogs, entitled to special treatment because they used to have an empire. People who leave the UK to live and work in other parts of the EU are not migrants, according to us: they are ex pats, decent people all, pretty rich and unlikely to be benefit scroungers in whichever country of the EU they settle in. But people who come here, especially the Poles and the Romanians and citizens of the Baltic states, are seen as being inferior to native Brits and they are definitely on the scrounge.
The UK wasn't a team player in 1973 and it still isn't. We still think of ourselves far too often as leader of the family of the Commonwealth, ignoring the fact that some ex-colonies hate us and more and more are toying with the idea of ditching the monarchy and the Union Flag.
We also see ourselves as having a 'special relationship' with the USA, the last superpower in the world, whereas the reality is that the UK is just an aircraft carrier for the USA and NATO. The UK (in particular, Prestwick) is where US planes flying kidnapped, untried prisoners to Guantanamo on 'extraordinary rendition' could - and did - stop to re-fuel. A sad comment on a country that fought so hard for the law of habeas corpus. The UK apes everything the USA does: the USA swings to the right politically - we follow; capitalism goes wild over there, ending in a financial meltdown - it does here too; social democracy is described as some form of communism over there so 'welfare' is attacked - same here.
I'm not looking forward to the EU referendum campaign. Those of us in Scotland have already been through this. We have the most rightwing press and tv news services in the world and the lies and distortions we saw in the Scottish referendum have already begun to litter the pages of the so-called 'free' press. The Tory party is tearing itself apart; Labour is a mess; who knows where the Lib Dems stand? The SNP and the Greens are powerless in Westminster. Scotland may find itself leaving the EU because the campaign to stay in won't be able to organise itself in time. And it matters to Scotland: we are still a trading nation - 60% of all our trade is with the EU.
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