I took Oscar for a walk into town. We left the house in in rain. I wore layers of clothes under a full-length waxed cotton raincoat, neck warmer, waterproof gloves. Starting through Handsworth Park I peered through railings at my allotment. There's much to be done; walked out of the park, down Thornhill Road to busy Soho Road, crossed over to descend through Wavenhill Park, through Bacchus Park then, via Bacchus Road, to the Soho Loop diversion from the Birmingham Mainline canal, its turgid surface pimpled with rain, its towpath, which soon joined the larger waterway, puddled into the city centre, where, dripping, in company with a drenched Oscar, I called on Richard; not welcomed by Annie the exquisite Bengal cat that shares the flat with him and Emma.
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In the first week of May, we - Lin, I and Chris Holmes - saw Richard Pine for lunch at Harry's Taverna in Perithia. It detracted not a jot from our companionable enjoyment that, even in May after so late an Easter, we were on our own, as is often so these days, though an English couple came to sit at another table as we left. Richard reported optimistically on the discovery of a new home in Corfu Town for the Durrell School library that has been forced out of Philhellinon Street, as the daughter of its aged landlord consolidates her parent's properties. Richard, for years has stayed and worked two days a week in the little bedsit space at the School's Philhellinon premises. He's missing that base for the moment and so the useful and - I suspect - restorative routine of a 30km weekly bus commute between village and city. Richard is never loquacious - or perhaps sometimes, in prose, when writing about the great Brian Friel. We talked about many things, gossiping about the Corfiot cosmopolis - Greek and international - of old island signorini in their last retreat living in the mouldering remains of grand estancias while others exercised their talents in the modern economies of the world as academics, doctors, lawyers and entrepreneurs; of the juxtaposition of Lyuba Ranevsky and Yermolay Lopakhin in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard which describes, so intimately, the fate of 'old money' in a new world, how the playwright could (as does Brian Friel) forge stories by simply, as Chekhov put it, 'looking out of his window'. We roamed over the idea and importance of 'narrative' - especially the European one with its special kind of language - 'Eurospeak'. For all of us the European Union, supported by the Common Market, was about ensuring there'd never be another great European war/ It had the character of a vision and an ideal - the European Dream, Jean Monnet's vision of an escape from the continent's experiences of rabid nationalism. But Richard, who agreed that ideal, was pithy about the future of the European Union. He wrote as much the other day in the first letter written from Corfu since his recent - and in his view largely futile - spells in hospitals, here and in Dublin....
Wed 29 May 2013 The Irish Times: Greece’s Balkan identity may obliterate Brussels link - Specific regional geopolitics lurk behind the goal of a unified Europe
Imagine an EU member state where the public service relied, for its efficiency, on bribery and corruption. Imagine a state where the hospital service was so under-resourced that patients had to bring a friend or relative to undertake their feeding, washing and basic nursing. Imagine a state where shops that traditionally sold handcrafted goods now promoted Taiwanese dreamcatchers.
Are we talking about Greece? Well no, actually. These are the thoughts of novelist Donna Leon’s Venetian detective, Commisario Guido Brunetti as he walks his native city, wondering how to bring to justice criminals whom the law and its administrators protect.
But they also apply to Greece, and one wonders whether they are true of the other ‘Pigs’ – Portugal and Spain. In a sense it’s a relief to read Brunetti’s disillusionment with his environment, since it suggests that Greece’s problems are not unique. Do all Europe’s southern states really have these dysfunctional characteristics?
Troika control
That question presupposes that we subscribe to the Eurocentric view of what constitutes a responsible and efficient member of the EU and the euro zone. Greeks seem to have become passive onlookers of the troika’s insistence on austerity measures, reduction in public service numbers and the sale of state assets. Trade union activity is at an all-time low.
There is very little to alert holidaymakers to the unrest which nevertheless festers beneath the social surface. To most holidaymakers, Greece represents sun, sea, and prices that remain low. But essential Greek characteristics are the signs of differences, as any holidaymaker from northern Europe will immediately recognise, and those differences are not only what makes Greece (and of course Italy, Spain and Portugal) attractive as holiday destinations but indicate precisely why Greece finds it so difficult to fit into the euro norm.
As I wrote previously, a former Greek president, on the eve of Greek accession to the EU, pointed out the time-warp between the southern and northern states, and the fact that they had a lot of catching up to do. If, that is, they wanted to be good members of the club. Former prime minister George Papandreou tried to drag Greece into the club – and failed, because there are basic elements of Greek society that cannot be changed. Bribery and corruption may be part of this, but they are ‘normal’ rather than exceptional.
Which brings me to the basic flaw in the Eurocentric argument: that what is being lost sight of is the geopolitics of Europe’s southeast, which for centuries has been a cockpit of east/west and north/south tensions. Greece is essentially a Balkan country, with the continuing – and growing – problems of Cyprus and complex relations with Turkey. The ‘Great Powers’ which brought Greece and most of the Balkan states into existence, were exercised by the threat of Russian influence in the region, a factor which remains a player in today’s geopolitics, with Russian investment in Cyprus seeping into Greece itself.
In April, the ambassadors to Greece of the 10 states which joined the EU in 2003-2004 (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Cyprus) co-signed a letter to the Athens newspapers stressing the significance of ‘the vital strategic goal’ of unifying Europe in the aftermath of the second World War and the economic benefits of an open market. These are almost all countries still staggering from the effects of Soviet domination, with Cyprus becoming the only EU member state to have been illegally occupied since 1974 by a neighbouring force (Turkey).
Yet, as Paul Gillespie recently wrote in this paper (‘Loss of confidence is eating away at EU’), there are growing signs among the major players that all is far from well. The former Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, spoke of the “dramatically declining” public support for EU reforms and the EU itself; Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker foresaw the possibility of “a social revolution”; and France’s finance minister warned of a “loss of social and political confidence”. These have all been defining characteristics of Balkan history for 150 years, with fragmentation along ethnic and religious lines bedevilling any unity.
To stress unity of purpose presupposes common characteristics and identity of skills and resources. If Leon’s Guido Brunetti sees Italy correctly, then at least two of the EU’s southern states cannot subscribe to Eurocentrism. Greece’s Balkan situation (especially with the Turkish dimension) suggests that its current misfit with the aims of Eurospeak will continue to be the norm.