Terry who..? 19 10 17 (10) 2025 2 4

For the present the English are deciding what kind of a relationship they want in the future with the European Union but for me personally I guess I parted company with them already more than 30 years ago... Though I still have British citizenship I don't think anything could induce me to return there to live for I felt the Brits have lost their way in the world and I could no longer be a part of it.

Born into the working classes of England with great grandfathers who were of either Northern Irish, Southern Irish, English or Welsh extraction, in a manner of speaking you might say I had the right to decide where in the British Isles and Ireland I should wish to belong, but I guess I too opted to leave my native shores and move out...

It is said their current political crises is the most serious since the time Robert Peel repealed the corn laws in the mid-nineteenth century, in conjunction with the potato famines of Ireland of the 1840s, when the population was decimated: famine taking a third, migration accounting for anther third, and leaving a third to carry on, roughly speaking 9 million in total.

I was 20 when I first left Britain's shores and took a job in a foreign country: the Finland of the 1960's, where I got to mix with a cross section of other nationals from eg Germany and Austria in addition to the majority of course who were of Finnish origin, both Swedish and Finnish speaking. Finland benefited from my services as did the British companies I worked in upon my return to UK: for the one bought its raw materials from the other whom of course appreciated the supplier-customer relationships that were involved. 

So my chosen career of Paper-making coupled with studies in Chemistry Physics and Mathematics flourished as Pulp-making, Viscose-making and extrusion, were added to the list of industries I had worked in, with other odd stints in Basic and Vat Dyes development as another pertinent industry was also added, as I progressed from the bottom rung of the industrial ladder to finish on one of the uppermost rungs as a Consultant in my own Consultancy Company. And in the process got to chair an International Committee and be elected its President to serve a term.

After my first 6 weeks of employment working abroad I was invited to return there should I need a job and so for the next 5 years spent almost a half my time so employed. and when my future British companies all appreciated the experience I had acquired from such gainful employment.

Aged 29 I returned to work in the town in which I spent my childhood and where it just so happened I joined a company that also employed a fellow classmate from my Junior Technical School, the son of a farmer whose farm was located to just north of the town, and Terry as he was called had joined this same company directly from leaving school a year after I left to enter industry. Terry as he was, and maybe still is, called never went anywhere but belonged to the group of people, British people, who know just about everything there is to know about everything. To the lessor mortals Terry used to hold forth espousing his views at the morning 10 am coffee break and then again at the 3 pm tea break in the afternoon. On one memorable occasion he asked the gathering to “Just name one country in the world where a Republic works!” And when from across the room outside his gathering I offered “Finland” his response was instantaneous with the words: “Why don’t you f*ck off back to Finland..!? Which is what I did, hahaha!!!

The moral to this story is two-fold: as someone less than a true Englishman from the outset I was open to trying out new things mixing with people other than Brits and not only having a great deal of fun in the process but making a success of my life, whilst Terry who never went anywhere, except when the same company made everyone redundant some months after I had left of my own volition, Terry went ½ mile down the road to his next job, a stick-in-the-mud but someone who knew in his deep-seated xenophobia that the English represented the best of all possible peoples, and always had to the extent he had no need to engage with my suggestion for I had already lost the plot in his world-view… That was before UK opted to join the EU and for 42 years benefitted. Now the xenophobes are in the ascendency once more as they fight to opt out: good luck to them as they continue their downward spiral in a world where nationalism no longer has a workable place, again in my humble view!