Europe’s dog days

Essential equipment for the Brit abroad

DESPITE THE impact of the recession on consumer spending, hundreds of thousands of people in Wales have either been, or will soon head abroad for their main annual summer holiday. Indeed the main family break, despite being a relatively big ticket item, may prove to be more recession resilient than a host of other expenditure. Recently published research from the Foreign Office and travel industry found that spending on holidays lags several months behind, and that many remain determined to have at least one holiday this year.

For most who venture overseas, the near abroad remain the most popular destinations. Spain remains the most visited, as it has for decades, with France in a strong second place. What has changed, imperceptibly but irrevocably, is our collective experience of these near neighbours. Those 30 and 40-somethings (author included) can probably recall pictures of their parents at the airport, Dad dressed in a good suit, Mum in a smart frock. Flying overseas was a big deal in those days; today it is merely the somewhat unpleasant thing we have to do to get to where we are going.

But before we congratulate ourselves on our modern cosmopolitan mores, favourably contrasting our affection for recherche regional cuisine with the Black Forest Gateau and Piesporter beloved of our parents’ generation, it is worth reflecting on how sticky some of those sixties and seventies attitudes have proved to be. When you were last in France or Spain and spotted a feral or merely unaccompanied dog, I’ll wager you entertained at least one brief thought about whether the animal was rabid. In fact, incidents of rabies (in dogs, anyway) in France or Spain nowadays are almost unheard of; you’ve more chance of being bitten by a rabid bat in Scotland, and I don’t suppose you worried about that when you last went to Edinburgh, did you?

Then there’s the question of the drinking water. Go on, admit it – you stuck largely to bottled water this summer, didn’t you? This is despite the fact that the supply of drinking water is largely as clean in Spain and France as it is in Wales (though with slightly different bugs, it can take a day or two to adjust). Certainly, continental Europe (a description itself laden with hidden meaning) has nothing to compare to the Washington contaminated drinking water crisis of a few years ago, but I’d bet this didn’t cross the minds of the tens of thousands of Welsh who headed over the Atlantic this summer.

But nor should we feel inadequate for harbouring irrational public health anxieties about our near neighbours. The government’s efforts to keep rabies from our shores was one of the great public information campaigns of the 1970s and 80s (and that in an era of legendary anti-fireworks and road safety public information films). Through a series of increasingly scary poster and TV images, the concept of a British fortress against a world populated by frenzied hounds was indelibly etched on the minds of a generation. While mainland Europe may have succumbed – or so we thought – we British could keep our islands free of the dreaded disease. Nor should we be surprised that a generation descending on the Med only to immediately come down with dicky tummies should pass on dire warnings about the state of the drinking water.

And even if some of our attitudes belong firmly in those early excursions to the Costa Brava and Majorca, does it matter? It might, if such attitudes continue to condition our view of further European integration. In the post-election post-mortem that followed this year’s European Parliament poll, it was almost taken for granted that anti-EU minor parties would once again do well. This is despite the fact that the vote took place against a backdrop of unprecedented disgust in Westminster and, here in Wales at least, a system of government which while gradually gaining credibility, still displays shallow roots.

Despite this, the results bore out a rejection of the European project. In fact, if you count a Conservative party pledged to revisit the Treaty of Lisbon, a majority of votes in June’s elections – 50.4% – supported parties committed to either withdrawal from, or to radically reconfigure relationship with, Europe. And before the hoary notion of a pro-European Welsh populace is wheeled out, that figure was only a shade under 40% here. Absent the disquieting notion that we don’t wish to be governed, it appears that even during a crisis of legitimacy, very many people would still rather do without the European Union.

For pro-Europeans, which in Wales includes a growing collection of Welsh soveriegntists, this is a depressing proposition. But when trying to counter opposition to the very idea of a European Union it may be that integrationists are looking in the wrong places for arguments. As much as we like to believe that the debate about Britain and Wales’ place in Europe revolves around lofty questions of accountability and governance, it may also be the simple and mundane sense of difference that is at work; dodgy-looking two point plugs might be as relevant as Qualified Majority Voting reform.

The government-sponsored propagandists of the 1970s may have succeeded a little too well in their task; not only did they keep rabies from our doors (Scottish bats notwithstanding) they may have inculcated a sense of difference from “the continent” which may endure for at least another generation, and may yet slow the Welsh and British march towards a closer European Union. We may have escaped dogs that foam at the mouth, but we have gained a political class for whom the odd bout of rabid anti-Europeanism is warmly welcomed. It seems like a poor trade.