BRITISH WEEK

The Whitbread Inn in Brugge's Markt, April 1968
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I really don't know where to start with this post.

In April 1968 the UK launched a brand marketing campaign in Brugge. This followed soon after Charles de Gaulle's summary rejection, the previous November, of the UK's bid to join the EEC (now EU).

We learned in the College of Europe how the UK refused to join the budding post-WWII European movement. After all, it had won the war and these were a shower of losers. Even if the UK could not feed itself from its own resources, it had a guaranteed supply of cheap food from its exploitation of the agricultural sectors of its former colonies.

In any event, who wanted to join this club of silly Wogs still licking their post-war wounds. The UK didn't need them. All this talk of joining up and the rejections of 1963 and 1967 only showed they really didn't fit.

Hadn't de Gaulle just rejected them on the basis that "ils boivent du thé" (they drink tea). Anyway we all knew that these silly foreigners were incapable of brewing a proper cuppa and had long violated the Trade Descriptions Act by advertising "Tea like mother makes it" in their silly foreign language menus. Not alone that. They proclaimed it loudly in gaudy signs outside their bistros in an effort to tempt in any British tourist who might be silly enough to believe this unlikely and outrageous claim.

These people were clearly still in need of a bit of civilising and any question of joining them, or them joining "us", on an equal footing was premature. De Gaulle had done "us" a favour by pointing out how limited was his perception of the civilisation of a state that had once ruled the ungrateful world.

Tea, indeed.

British Bobbies

So British Week would give Johnny Foreigner a taste of what it was to be BRITISH.

Take the pub above. Beer was the lifeblood of this sturdy "nation". None of your poncey wine which simply diluted the brain.

And as for "law and order", this was maintained by your local bobby, known variously as Dixon or PC49, in patient dialogue with uber-civilised and receptive citizens.

A Good Old British Bus

And the trams that ran on constraining tracks. Well, "we" got rid of them a while back.

Why bother inventing the internal combustion engine and then constraining the deployment of your public transport vehicles to pre-determined routes. Why limit your short-term public transport response to the ever-changing needs of citizens in this way. And, anyway, one of those things would have you run over before you could hear it coming.

What a silly crowd these continentals are.

Union Jacks

This was all self-evident to those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. Saint Salvador would understand that, as from his elevated perch, he watched the Union Jacks proudly fluttering in the breeze, or limply hanging from a piece of string, as the case may be.

Well at least this way he could spend the rest of his days trying ot figure out whether or not they were being flown upside down. I have considered this point at length myself and have come to the conclusion that it depends on your point of view, and whether you are right- or left-handed.

"National" flags

And we also had the flags of the individual units of the United Kingdom. Well not quite. England is not represented by the more usual George Cross. This is left to Northern Ireland with the addition of the Red Hand. England's representation seems to hark back to its ancient kingdom and the three lions which appear on the Royal Standard.

Anyway, I'm sure the people of Brugge had no time for these fussy distinctions and, the Union Jack apart, would have been more familiar with St. Andrew's cross in view of the long historical ties between Flanders and Scotland.

I need only mention Anselm Adornes who is buried in Linlithgow in Scotland, where he was assassinated, though his heart remains in Brugge.

North American AT-6 Harvard III (Trainer)

I had this plane in a piece of 8mm movie film which I took during my stay at the College. I remembered it as a Spitfire in the Markt, which clearly, on closer, inspection it wasn't. It is neither the Markt nor is it a Spitfire. So maybe it wasn't part of British Week in Brugge. Maybe it wasn't even in Brugge itself.

Who knows, at this distance in time.

This is a North American AT-6 Harvard III and it belongs to the Belgian Air Force. The RAF did fly these things and this one may simply be an ersatz component of a true British Week.

All this is irrelevant in the heel of the hunt, with the British now wrenching themselves out of the Union, the European Union that is.

Maybe de Gaulle was right all along. With the exception of their support for the creation of the Single Market, the British have been consistent spoilers in the European Project, more concerned with their imagined special relationship with the United States than with their real relationship with Europe.

Now they are precipitously pulling out on terms that will leave all concerned much worse off than if they had never been allowed in.

Such are the quirks of history.