ON BECOMING A CITIZEN

I do not really know to what extent the electorate of a country actually believes their vote influences  how their government performs. Indeed, to what extent do the citizens of a country actually feel they have a direct connection with how their country is run?

For the last 50 years I have been a citizen of the United Kingdom. I was effectively given sanctuary by the UK during the first 10 years of being in the UK, before officially becoming a British Subject. Having voluntarily become British, I was officially informed by the United States government, that my US citizenship had been withdrawn and that I was no longer entitled to the rights and privileges accorded to citizens of the United States. The pro forma letter sent to me read like a rebuke and a warning that my actions were depriving me of the very substantial safeguards and protections my being an American citizen provided.

At that time my country was seeking to prosecute me for failure to respond to the call to join up to the armed forces, under the selective service system. I was a draft dodger. It was not the most patriotic of decisions. There were obligations required by law to fulfil certain duties towards one’s country. I was, under the laws of the United States, breaking that law.  The only excuse I can offer is,  at the time I had made that decision there were several hundred thousand other young men who had made the same decision. Draft cards were being burned in public view at political demonstrations across the country. The United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War was being condemned across the world. From 1966 on, public opposition was growing and by 1968 anti-war demonstrations and general political unrest was rife everywhere. This went on through to April 1975 when that conflict officially came to an end.

I had left the United States in 1965. I had already been for a physical for induction into the armed services in 1962,  but at the time I was classified as being unfit for military service. Some time later, whilst I was in the UK (I think 1967) I had received notification to attend an induction centre for another physical for reclassification. I ignored the request. In 1972 I applied for British Citizenship which was eventually granted in 1975, at the end of the Vietnam War. The paperwork involved took time. Why? I’m not sure, but in 1975 I signed an affidavit of loyalty to Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs and successors according to law. I did not swear by God, but truly declared and affirmed. It was after this that my US citizenship was withdrawn and I was still under threat of being prosecuted by the United States for my refusal to attend another physical for reclassification. So much for safeguards and protections. On January 21, 1977,  newly elected President Jimmy Carter signed a pardon for draft evaders of the Vietnam War. He apparently referred to it as the ‘single hardest decision’ of his campaign. So, I am pardoned. I cannot say that my decision not to return to the United States for reclassification was the single easiest decision of my life, as it was a decision made by default. I just ignored the letters. Too much else was going on.

I had voted in the 1964 general election in the United States. Lyndon Johnson, who had been elevated to President as a result of Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, was facing Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. On the back of the sentiment surrounding the assassination Johnson won 44 out of the 50 states, including the District of Columbia. He’d won 61.1% of the vote. The country was solidly Democratic. A huge endorsement from the public. At the time, very few of us knew just what was going on in Vietnam, but over the next four years, the escalation and the incessant news and television images, revealed an undercurrent of dissension and outrage. It was not just the anti-war sentiment but an entire cultural change that was festering all over the western world as well as behind the iron curtain.

There was a hardening of conservatism in much of America as well as an accompanying discontent among my generation of Americans. As a result of the war and persistent social unrest President Johnson withdrew from politics and Richard Nixon was the next elected President carrying 32 states out of 50. The country was seeking respite and the return of some kind of order. For some bizarre reason it was felt that Richard Nixon was the answer. Indeed, in 1972 Nixon garnered 49 states and over 60% of the popular vote, all the while trying to conceal his peculiar methods to retain power which amounted to an extraordinary abuse of power. He got his comeuppance and resigned. There followed vice president Gerald Ford’s ascendency to the presidency, and an extremely close presidential  election in 1976 bringing Jimmy Carter to office. The country was clearly exhausted. The war was at an end with a reluctant acceptance of defeat, a turning away from perceived corruption towards a possible return to decency and a breath of fresh air, in the guise of someone apparently guileless and willing to listen and compromise. “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President” was his constant refrain. Still, conservative America had a patriotic voice, hence his first most difficult single decision to pardon draft evaders on his first day in office. It was without fanfare, but a simple pardon with a view to reconciliation and healing of social wounds.

Now I had played no part whatsoever in the elections of 1968, 1972 or 1976. As a United States Citizen up to 1975, I could probably have voted in ’68 and ’72; however my vote would have been for nought given the swing towards Richard Nixon. As a voting citizen, during those ten plus years I felt no connection whatsoever with the government of the United States. I did not feel in any way that I was a fugitive who had broken the law. It was merely circumstance along a road less traveled by. The pardon in effect allowed me to pay a visit to Los Angeles in 1978 as a British Subject with an old fashioned blue British Passport wherein it was requested that I be “allowed to travel without let or hindrance” in foreign countries. I flew on a Laker Airways cheap flight which was not very crowded . I even had three seats to myself on the return flight, so I was able to stretch out. What ever happened to Freddie Laker? He was rather like a Jimmy Carter to air travel.

In the fifty years since I became a British Subject I have made four short trips to the US. Two to Los Angeles, one to New York and one to Sharon, Connecticut. I cannot say that these visits  instilled in me any desire to return to live in the United States. They were fun but and the people I frequented are lovely decent intelligent individuals, which is more than can be said for their federal government.

So why is it that I am more outraged by the  current assault on democracy in the United States than by some of the decisions taken by the Labour Party, which I support? I am upset by, or rather, dismissive of the Conservative Party and Nigel Farage and Co are deeply disturbing; however, none of that reaches the despair and anxiety I feel when it comes to the current administration in the United States. It is not as if there are no like minded people in the United States. One only has to comb through YouTube podcasts to find support.

I cannot say that anything I add to political and cultural discussion in the UK has any more effect than comment on the situation in the US. My vote here seems to be just as ineffectual as my no vote in America. Is a citizen’s life so completely separate from the government that administers their environment and their every day existence? Is it all down to us and them? How did we get here?

So far as the UK is concerned, the Romans came in 43AD and brought a bit of civilisation and governance of a sort. They left and various Anglo Saxon Kingdoms sprang up and governed from about 410 AD. Since then, over 1500 years, a variety of societies have governed in Great Britain culminating in the parliamentary democracy we now have under a constitutional monarchy. During that time the nation’s ups and downs have evolved into a multicultural country with an extraordinary variety of people such as native born locals, immigrants and refugees from all over. I suppose, in the light of my circumstances, I too became a refugee, allowed a fresh start and an education. I have personally never endured discrimination. Even during some dark times, I cannot claim to have suffered much. Do not get me wrong, the UK is not paradise. There is plenty of discrimination, bigotry and small mindedness to go around. The political right is every bit as insidious in creating as much disruption as possible. There are even those who willingly support the likes of Donald Trump. It is however the nation that produced the enlightenment and the very essential principles of the rule of law and human rights. There would have been no American or French Revolution without the likes of Hume, Smith, Locke, Paine et al.

Nonetheless the government is some other beast, seemingly separate from the population. Institutions have their own identity and independent existence which effectively makes them something apart.  Although made up of average citizens, who operate the civil service, are elected to local government offices, or employed in law enforcement, or the health service, the institutions seem separate from the public they serve. They behave, at times, as if in conflict with the people they are meant to serve.  It’s just people helping other people, yet once part of the institution the staff loose their personality and become part of the mechanism. How are we meant to connect if we are absorbed in the apparatus. When there are failings, committees are appointed to investigate and provide conclusions for lesson’s learned, which somehow are very rarely learned. The repetition of phrases like “institutional racism” I have heard over the last 50 years is ongoing.

I come back to my question, do the citizens of a country actually feel they have a direct connection with how their country is run? Is it through the ballot box? Or is it through demonstrations in Trafalgar and Parliament Squares or Whitehall outside Downing Street? Or is it now through campaigning on the Internet? Whatever it is, it causes me no end of anxiety. How foolish is that?