Salut!

On Brexit, the entente cordiale and becoming French

 

First things first. I did not decide to seek French nationality (in addition to, not in place of, British citizenship) solely because of Brexit. As my article (below) for The National explains, there were other compelling reasons that date from half a century ago.

But Brexit, a monstrous project that has already brought a stream of bad news and will doubtless go on doing so, finally pushed me to go for it. My thanks to the editor of The National for consenting to republication at Salut! of my work for the paper.

First things first. I did not decide to seek French nationality (in addition to, not in place of, British citizenship) solely because of Brexit. As my article (below) for The National explains, there were other compelling reasons that date from half a century ago.

But Brexit, a monstrous project that has already brought a stream of bad news and will doubtless go on doing so, pushed me into finally going for it. My thanks to the editor of The National for consenting to republication at Salut! of my work for the paper.

 

 

 

 

 

Seizing an opportunity between lockdowns last year, I had brought another long stay in France to a close and returned to London as a Briton. After several months in the UK, I have now made the opposite journey as a French citizen.

There is nothing too dramatic about this change of status. No one has stripped me of the nationality of my birth. As the official at the French consulate in London put it – when she presented my declaration of French nationality and warned me to "guard it carefully" – I am still British.

What dual nationality means, in selfish practical terms, is that I am once again free to roam the 27 EU countries at will. I can live in France without worrying how long I stay and how long I must then stay away from all EU territory before being permitted to return.

But it naturally goes deeper than an embittered personal rejection of Brexit. My acquisition of French nationality has a gold-plated finish, secured by coincidence rather than design in the same year that my French wife and I celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

It is not a step that ever occurred to me as a product of small-town northern England, where youthful awareness of France was limited to wallowing in the cloying melancholy of Francoise Hardy’s songs and ruing a family budget that put a school trip to Paris out of the question.

 

In an adulthood spent nipping between the two countries and living and working in both, an unmistakable connection to France has developed. Given my close attachment to the French side of my extended family, the wonder is that I did not cross the bridge years ago.

People have all sorts of reasons for possessing, and often treasuring, double nationality, or for seeking it in later years. For many, perhaps most, sentiment is more important than mere convenience. The Patricks and Siobhans born of Irish parents in Britain and other English-speaking parts of the world are likely to grow up feeling at least as Irish as anything else. Karim or Rachida, in their Parisian banlieue or provincial French town, will cling fiercely to Algerian roots.

To an open mind, it is surely the most natural and respectable of expressions of individual identity. Logically, problems should arise only in those rare cases where allegiances born of dual citizenship assume the combative edge, and even hatred of host countries, that can lead to extremist thoughts or acts.

Not everyone, of course, sees the innocence in, for example, preferring the culture or football team of a parent’s geographical origins to those of country of birth and upbringing.

In 1990, Norman Tebbit, an early populist of the British right who served as chairman of the Conservative party and at several ministries, devised what became known as the "Tebbit test". He argued that, which cricket team people from ethnic minorities supported was a barometer of whether they were “truly British”; a “large proportion of Britain's Asian population” would fail the test, he told the Los Angeles Times.

If that seems an absurdly harsh condition of Britishness, consider the spluttering outrage caused when the French anthem La Marseillaise was roundly jeered by a few hundred Tunisian supporters before a France-Tunisia football match in 2008. From the right of French politics, then president Nicolas Sarkozy led a chorus of indignation that would not have sounded out of place in a pantomime. He even spoke of the need to abandon games in such circumstances and, neatly overlooking the likelihood that most of those barracking the anthem were born in France, suspend future fixtures with the countries concerned.

It may be just as well that England face Germany and not France in the last 16 of the European Football Championship. I would no more boo an anthem than players taking the knee, but divided loyalty might have caused me to fail the Tebbit test.

The climax to the process of obtaining French nationality takes different forms. An online report of such an occasion in south-western France tells of people from nearly 40 different countries singing La Marseillaise together, led by the mayor, and in some cases making short speeches.

An acquaintance recalls another group ceremony, with pre-Covid-19 celebrations at the same London consulate where I sat, socially distanced by a Perspex screen, and discussed the formalities of my gesture with a solitary official. In the dossier, the official handed me a friendly if impersonal letter from President Emmanuel Macron describing France as "proud and happy" to welcome me as a new citizen.

Did I step from the building feeling more French than an hour or so earlier? A little. Less British? Not really; Brexit had already posed a stiff enough test to my sense of national identity. And I still feel more saddened by the outcome of the 2016 referendum than alienated from all those who voted Leave. The impulses of a majority of them had little to do with xenophobia or outright racism and everything to do with a belief – nonsensical as I find it – that "throwing off the shackles of the EU" would smoothly lead to the "Sunlit Uplands", which campaigners had promised. Remainers and Leavers will forever disagree on whether those with uglier motivations were numerous enough to swing the result.

At one of those huge and entirely futile anti-Brexit demonstrations in London, I spotted a banner held by another dual national. Adapted to refer to France and not Belgium, the slogan sums up my feelings precisely: "Fifty per cent British, 50 per cent French, 100 per cent European."

 

 

'Brexit is the plague that will still be infecting Britain when Covid has gone. It spreads unnoticed because neither government nor opposition shows the smallest interest in finding a vaccine. The public doesn’t blame them because it is sick of hearing about the sickness. I understand why. I am sick of writing about it. But given that the Labour party won’t hold our leaders to account, it remains a matter of democratic propriety to remind voters that the Brexit movement lied to them.' - Nick Cohen, The Observer 

 

Bob Dylan at 80. An eloquent tribute to the iceberg genius

 

Today, as we have relentlessly and quite rightly been reminded, is Bob Dylan's 80th birthday.

A woman he once loved, Joan Baez, passed the same milestone in January and a British singer and musician from whom he learned a little, Martin Carthy, was 80 on Friday. Other notables born in 1941 range from the US politician Bernie Sanders and Swedish actress Ann-Margret and music industry figures including Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and Neil Diamond.

A good case can be made that the life and work of Dylan have had a greater impact on the world than any of the others I mention.

In a fitting climax to our Dylan at 80 series, Salut! Live wishes the rock'n roll beatnik bard a happy birthday and presents this compelling appreciation by my friend, Bill Taylor, a fine writer, photographer, supporter of Sunderland AFC and, like a former SAFC manager, Roy Keane, a lifelong Dylan fan ...

         Looking more like Vincent Price than Vincent Price, the iceberg that is Bob Dylan turns 80 on Monday.

         Cool, hard, diamond-bright and, just as 90 per cent of an iceberg is underwater, what you see with Dylan has always been a good deal less than what you get.

         Plus, just as an iceberg’s lifespan is as much as 3,000 years, Dylan seems to go on forever.

         His so-called Never-Ending Tour, an ongoing series of concert dates, began on June 7 1988. Even allowing for an inevitable pandemic hiatus, that’s monumental.

 

                                                            Bob Dylan's oil painting, Midnight Caller

. Image by Rowland Scherman

Covid-19 Diaries: Toronto (36). When boys cry

The 36 is just the number of Bill Taylor's lockdown musings that have appeared here. He posted many more at his Facebook pages and, with his agreement, they re-appeared selectively and lazily at Salut!

 

Bill's description of an emotional cocktail of sadness, relief, weariness and maybe hope, after a year of Covid despair needs no protracted introduction. But as well as making us believe, at last, in the possibility of closure, he quotes from a wonderful (Scottish, Bill) song of parting. Different versions of The Parting Glass were discussed in recent edition of the Cover Story series at Salut! Live ...

 

 

Covid-19 Diaries: Toronto (35). Did a year of lockdown really make Bill look like Steve Bannon?

 

For several weeks last year, Salut! published the lockdown diaries of friends and acquaintances from around the world. Those from Bill Taylor in Toronto kicked off the series and accounted for 34 of those that appeared here (many more went on to his Facebook pages without Salut! lifting them). It seems right to return to Canada for an anniversary edition to which can be added birthday greetings ...

 

 

What did YOU do in the Great Lockdown, Daddy?

 

A year in the trenches. If this was World War I we’d still have another three to go.

 

But it isn’t (though it might be WWIII), which should be a consolation. All that mud, for one thing, and the dry-cleaning business not what it used to be.

 

This isn’t just the lockdown’s first anniversary, it’s also the month (though not the precise date) in which I find myself embarked, willy-nilly, upon my 74th year.

 

A faded red-letter day at best, all the more so because it was also the day last year that Mike Babad, one of my dearest friends, died.

 

It becomes more and more apparent that I’m putting down roots in my fourth country. England, the US, Canada. And now here I am, irrelevantly dwelling in L P Hartley’s “the past… they do things differently there”.

 

Incapable of playing the later editions of Trivial Pursuit because I don’t get one in 10 of the cultural references.

 

 

La Réunion: an Indian Ocean model for modern Islam at France's oldest mosque?

Far away in the Indian Ocean, the island of La Réunion has French overseas territory status that makes it as much a part of France as Paris, Normandy and the Côte d'Azur. The minaret of the mosque dominates the heart of the capital, Saint-Denis, and offers a warm example of making le vivre ensemble - harmonious relations between Muslims and non-Muslims - work.

Researching this story made me want to return to an island I have visited once, on holiday. The results of that research are published today by The National, UAE - click here to see how it appears, with great pictures, at the newspaper's website- and the editor kindly permits the reproduction of my articles here ...

More than 9,000 kilometres from Paris, the stained-glass windows of the Noor-e-Islam mosque bear the colours of the French flag, a symbol of hope in the troubled history of France’s attempts to assimilate its large Muslim population.

The design reflects the gratitude of the mosque's founding fathers for official approval of the house of worship at the end of the 19th century. It also highlights an attachment to the French republic.

In the name of battling separatism and rejection of the state, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, is pursuing policies to uphold secularist values against what he calls “political Islam”.

In seeking a working model, he would do well to study the community in Saint-Denis, capital of the volcanic Indian Ocean island of Réunion.

Photo: Thiérry Caro

Photo supplied by the mosque

 

In this far-off French outpost, prayers at the oldest mosque in France are said in French as well as Arabac. There is no overseas influence or funding. Annual running costs of more than €1.3 million (Dh5.7m) are met from donations and income from shops adjoining the mosque and other properties it owns.

The imam takes responsibility only for worship with administrative functions undertaken by a management committee elected every three years.

“It’s a very good example of the capacity of a mosque, school and religious institute to be in perfect understanding with the French republic and its values,” Chantal Manès-Bonnisseau, Réunion’s chief education officer, told The National.

“It is one of very few such examples in France and the achievements are due to a number of reasons.

"Imams are recruited on the island and trained by the Islamic community itself. Leaders of this community are attached to the idea of being completely independent of foreign funding.”

Ms Manès-Bonnisseau acknowledges that the affluence of many from Réunion’s Islamic community, including long-established entrepreneurs, is in contrast to the lives of most Muslims in mainland France.

But she feels their guiding principles, “completely in touch with the spirit of the republic", are not reliant on wealth.

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The association that manages the mosque also runs an independent school that is recognised by the state and attracts some public funding.

There are nearly 300 primary and middle school pupils and expansion is planned.

“You couldn’t guess it’s a private Islamic school,” Ms Manès-Bonnisseau said.

“The girls are not veiled and when I visited in December, there was Christmas tree.”

The ethos of the mosque finds an echo at a theological institute at Le Tampon, an hour’s drive away, where 60 trainee imams learn about French history and civics, as well as studying the Quran.

All 32 imams leading prayers on the island are natives of Réunion, whereas a common complaint in mainland France is that too many are born outside the country.

After a French history teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded by a Chechen refugee outside his school near Paris last October, Réunion’s branch of France’s Muslim Council immediately published condemnation of an act of “unmitigated horror that disgusts our humanity”.

It is a far cry from fears that the religion operates apart from French society.

The relationship between Islam and the republic is rarely out of the news, not solely because of terrorist attacks that have hit France for decades.

Last week, a poster appeared at the entrance of the Sciences-Po campus in Grenoble accusing two professors of Islamophobia.

The gesture was condemned as “an attempt to intimidate” by Frédérique Vidal, minister for higher education.

Ms Vidal was last month the target of a petition by 600 academics demanding her resignation over a planned inquiry into “Islamo-leftism” in universities.

The phrase is used by France’s far right to denounce what they perceive to be an alliance between “fanatical Islamists” and the left.

The example of Noor-e-Islam has won recognition from influential sections of the French media.

Photo supplied by the mosque. With thanks to Igbal Ingar (see story)

Its leaders make no claims of special achievement but tell The National that there is no conflict with French laws.

"We do not pretend to be a model for Islam in France,” said Igbal Ingar, president of the management committee.

“The history of the Muslims of Réunion and those of metropolitan France is not the same.

“However, elements in our operation could be taken up at national level and we can say Islam is fully compatible with the laws of the republic, and we have been proving this for decades.”

Mr Ingar says that without foreign involvement, there is no possibility of pressure to adopt “religious orientations that don’t correspond to our practice of Islam”.

The mosque was financed by Gujarati traders who settled on the island, 550km east of Madagascar and 175km south-west of Mauritius.

The original building, replacing an informal place of worship that operated from the early 1890s, was completed in 1905, 21 years ahead of the Great Mosque of Paris and a few days before France passed its keystone law separating church and state.

A petition to the island’s French governor, leading to permission to build being granted in 1898, promised it would be "surrounded by walls and arranged internally in such a way as to spare the susceptibilities of other denominations".

As-ad Mogalia, the imam, is comfortable with a “complimentary” arrangement that frees him “to focus on the main objective, the exercise of worship, allowing me to be more available to the faithful”.

He says the mosque’s approach could easily serve as a source of inspiration to others, although he hesitates to claim it is the only viable model.

“For it to work, all stakeholders must have the same goal: to act sincerely in the interests of the Muslim community while respecting the laws of the country,” he said.

“As an imam representing the Muslim faith, but also as Réunionese and a French citizen, I am proud my island’s Islam finds such a favourable echo at local, metropolitan French and international level.”

Meghan and Harry, the wickedness of newspapers and the hypocrisy of broadcasters

 

Back in 2011 and 2012, at the time of the Leveson inquiry and report on press standards, I wrote a lot here about the issues raised. Oprah Winfrey's cosy chat with neighbours in a part of Los Angeles reserved for the super-rich has reopened the debate.

On LBC radio, Sheila Fogarty fulminated on the evils of the tabloids. And who was presented as villain-in-chief? None other than Piers Morgan, somewhat better known as a broadcaster than a newspaperman since his last editorship ended in dismissal in 2004 in the row over allegedly faked photographs showing mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British troops.

His new offence? Saying he did not believe the Duchess of Sussex's responses to the unchallenging questions asked in the interview, including her account of having suffered mental health problems to the point of contemplating suicide.

Since Morgan has no known medical expertise, it was arguably a meaninglessly insulting attack. And it was made on the telly!

I am an old, mainly print journalist who is proud of his trade. But it should be obvious from what I have written at Salut! and elsewhere that I make no defence of tabloid (or broadsheet) wrongdoings.

In fairness to Fogarty, she did squeeze in some praise for the tenacity and good work of newspaper journalists. But she is guilty of the same hypocrisy I have highlighted. It is worth reproducing one of the pieces I wrote here in 2012; most of my points hold good eight years on ...   

By Josep Renalias - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

David Graves, exemplary reporter, and now his wonderful widow, Diana. RIP

 

Diana Graves was laid to rest beside her husband, David, at Hanwell cemetery, west London on March 1 after a sad but uplifting funeral at the beautiful St Barnabas church in Ealing. Deeply moving tributes were paid by both sons and Heather Mills, a former colleague of David's (and mine) and close friend of Diana's.

 

Diana Graves was perhaps known to only a few Salut! readers, generally those who knew her late husband, David, a great colleague and friend.

Diana died on Sunday (Jan 31), far too early, after battling pancreatic cancer for several months. She had contracted Covid while in hospital for the tests that unexpectedly revealed her much more serious problem but I am not aware that the virus played any part in her death.

Diana remained philosophical, brave and even optimistic despite knowing the gravity of her condition. She broke the news to me in a hands-free call I took as I drove through glorious vineyards in the south of France. She was eager to talk and full of hope, speaking with great determination about reviving her idea of an evening out we'd planned - Diana, my wife Joelle and our friends Stuart and Jenny Higgins - until different travel arrangements and then lockdowns intervened. She was adamant it would one day go ahead.

When we spoke again, after my return to the UK, Diana was still a bundle of confidence and joy, excited about work to update the family home in Ealing, only a coupe of miles from ours, while she stayed with a sister in Shropshire. To my immense regret, we did not speak again.

Joelle and I are devastated by the news and our daughters, Christelle and Nathalie, share the pain now felt by Diana and David's boys Oliver and Nathan.

This is how, in 2007, I remembered David's tragic death on the fifth anniversary of it happening, and how I had witnessed Diana's magnificently dignified handling of the wretched task of telling the boys.

By all means check the link  and see the kind words left by readers at that time about David. I will not transfer the comments here as this, essentially, is about Diana. RIP two great friends

 

Diana, left, with her sister, Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                               Photo of David courtesy of the Telegraph

Have a merry Boris sort of Christmas

 

 

All but cancelled, Christmas Day 2020 is upon us.

Salut! wishes all its readers as happy a festive season as events make possible and prays, or would do it it did pray, for a less troubling 2021.

 

Maybe we should try to find the bright side of grim happenings.

Macron, radicalisation and fighting Islamism without demonising Islam

By and large, Emmanuel Macron (photograph from the Elyseé Palace's official website) strikes me as being the best president France has had in decades.

 

I realise that isn't saying a great deal and certainly see that he has flaws: he can appear arrogant and dismissive of ordinary concerns and is, for such an intelligent man, occasionally clumsy with words. The charge of Islamophobia is absurd but some of his statements, during the recent controversy over the republication of cartoons Muslims find offensive, have been ill-judged. But he generally acts with a firmness, clarity and level of honesty too often lacking among modern political leaders. 

 

It is also important to recognise that the context of his recent declarations is the bloodshed and misery caused by hideous terrorist atrocities, even though it is utterly wrong to blame Muslims as a whole for the horrific crimes of those who claim to be acting in Islam's name. Now, Mr Macron and his government must act with care to demonstrate that their response to extremism is not capable of being misinterpreted. I explore these issues in my latest piece for The National, which the editor kindly permits me to reproduce here ... 

 

Scoop: a reporter's reporter who made his mark unbribed and untwisted

 

 

 

One of the first books about journalism I read was Evelyn Waugh's classic novel, Scoop. And 82 years after it was published, Scoop is back.

This time, the author is not the long-dead Waugh but the much alive Terry Pattinson. Closer to 80 than 70, he not only rattles off a stream of gags and one-liners on Facebook but has found time for a hugely entertaining book charting his rise (or descent?) from the Blaydon Courier to Fleet Street.

From those honourable origins in local paper journalism in the North East of England, he went on to work for the pre-Murdoch Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror.