Talking to one of Manx Radio's 'Young Turks' about Nationalism

I’m up at Manx Radio chatting to Aaron Ibanez about nationalism and Mec Vannin. He’s one of the new ‘Young Turk’ reporters most of whose names I don’t know. I cut my teeth with folk like Charles Guard (now an elder statesman of the Manx Radio Board), John Moss (he of the graying hair) and Terry Cringle (probably a ghostly figure wandering the corridors).

We deal with all the usual myths about Nationalism. Is it ‘blood and soil’, do we daub roads etc. Then he raises an interesting query. How relevant is it to younger people and is it in fact just some folk clinging onto a nostalgic past. It’s a great question.

Certainly for me having spent my life since before 1963 as a nationalist there is a degree of nostalgia but I’ve no illusions about what the Island was then. Like most societies it had a lot of imperfections but all in all it was not a bad place and we would be foolish to let some of the values of inclusiveness and community we had be totally swallowed by the idols of ‘growth’ and the consumer ideal.

Anyway we should ask ourselves do we want to live in a sustainable society or one where there is just endless sustained growth.

To a certain extent our past shaped us and if that’s so why is that not ok. I think of the closing words of the historian Simon Schama in his excellent History of Britain series:

“But history ought never to be confused with nostalgia.
It's written, not to revere the dead, but inspire the living.
It's our cultural bloodstream - the secret of who we are.
And it tells us to let go of the past even as we honour it, to lament what ought to be lamented,
to celebrate what should be celebrated.
And if in the end that history turns out to reveal itself as a patriot,
well, then I think that neither Churchill nor Orwell would have minded that very much.
And, as a matter of fact, neither do I.”

Sums it up really!

Bernard Moffatt

Manx Nationalist

(First published on Mec Vannin Facebook)