{"id":4291,"date":"2020-10-30T14:32:34","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T14:32:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carolinegourlay.co.uk\/?p=4291"},"modified":"2020-12-10T16:22:11","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T16:22:11","slug":"do-we-need-more-blitz-spirit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolinegourlay.co.uk\/do-we-need-more-blitz-spirit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we need more blitz spirit?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Blitz spirit. There’s a topic I doubt people expected me to write about. But it’s been gnawing at me, ever since Maureen from Barnsley<\/a> was hailed as the Voice of the Nation for saying that we needed to show more blitz spirit during the pandemic. As a concept, I find it both psychologically fascinating and rather irritating. My guess is that responses to the question fall into two* camps:<\/p>\n *I guess there could be a third camp of “What’s blitz spirit?” in which case I assume you’re either not familiar with the UK (in which case welcome to the British psyche) or very young (in which case dig out your GCSE history books. It’ll be in there somewhere).<\/p>\n Whichever camp you’re in, I’d encourage you to read on (of course I would) as I think it’s a bit more nuanced than you might think.<\/p>\n The spirit of the blitz is one of our most enduring national myths. I don’t mean myth as in made up (though it may be); I mean myth as a collective story we tell ourselves about our past and our identity. It’s a stirring tale about how we stood together in dark times and, no matter what Hitler threw at us, we prevailed. It speaks of a resolute and resilient character. It has clear resonance in a global pandemic.<\/p>\n Who knows? Historians would suggest probably not<\/a>. Certainly there was a well-documented surge in crime, including murders (you don’t hear much about the Blackout Serial Killer<\/a>, do you?), widespread looting of bombed houses<\/a> and even the theft of jewellery from the bodies<\/a> of blitz victims. What people remember is the camaraderie, the bedding down in tube stations, the singalongs which happened too. In the end, it almost doesn’t matter how much of it is true. Once it reaches national myth status it has a life of its own and for some people it resonates very strongly.<\/p>\n Maureen from Barnsley spoke with the credibility of someone who lived through the blitz. Frequently the reaction people get when they say “We survived the blitz\/won the war\/defeated Hitler” is “No you didn’t Gary. You were born in 1958”. This misses the point and it’s where the psychology comes in.<\/p>\n For people with traditional values, who tend to be lower on the openness dimension of personality, a sense of belonging and group loyalty is very important. They see a continuity between themselves and their ancestors. People who are higher on the openness dimension are more interested in change, see less continuity with the past and feel less group loyalty. I’m firmly in the latter camp with all the other citizens of nowhere<\/a>, derided by Theresa May. But since 2016, when I wrote about the psychology of Brexit<\/a>, I’ve tried harder to understand the mindset and motivations of people who think very differently from me.<\/p>\n Recently, for example, I found myself quite moved watching a history documentary in which a Native American man described how the Cherokee came to the aid of European settlers as they pushed west in the early 19th century: “They’d have died if we hadn’t helped them”. He clearly saw himself as part of this group despite being born about 150 years later. It made a kind of sense to me, so why be dismissive of people who feel some ownership of blitz spirit even though they weren’t there?<\/p>\n And yet in the pandemic that sense of national pride seems to have been hijacked by people who have forgotten what the war was actually like. They see it as a betrayal of blitz spirit to show concern about the virus or accept any constraints on their lives.<\/p>\n This is how “we” demonstrated blitz spirit at the time:<\/p>\n We knew lives were at stake and of course we were afraid. Being resolute wasn’t about downplaying the danger or pretending it didn’t exist (“It’s just a few bombs, Doreen. I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about”). If there was no real threat, there would be no need for blitz spirit. Neither do there seem to be reports of people in areas which didn’t get bombed claiming the whole thing was a hoax (“You can’t trust that Path\u00e9 news. I’m sure they use the same footage every time”).<\/p>\n\n
What is blitz spirit?<\/h2>\n
Is it true?<\/h2>\n
“We survived the blitz”<\/h2>\n
The real<\/em> blitz spirit<\/h2>\n
We recognised the severity of the threat<\/h3>\n
We did what was necessary<\/h3>\n