My generation were great Europeans – but it wasn’t just Brexit that broke that

Outside of war, big political shifts can take a long time to have an effect. My late mother-in-law, who was born in Vinnytsia when Ukraine was still part of the Russian empire, told me that it took years for the Bolshevik Revolution to substantially change life outside the power centres. And so it may only be at the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum that the full implications of the UK’s departure from the European Union are sinking in.

Erstwhile restrictions on visiting, living, working and trading across the Channel have been gradually reimposed, with the erratic biometric border checks almost the last element to be put in place. The UK is now back pretty much to where it was in 1973, before it joined what was then the European Economic Community. I would argue that it is regressing even further back, in ways that make what might be seen as Britain’s European generation look more like an exception than the norm.

In what is my last regular column for The Independent, I want to take a look at that generation, while also asking whether there will, or can, ever be another.

Having been to school in the late 1950s and 60s, and university in the 1970s, before embarking on a career that included many years as a foreign correspondent, I could be seen as a poster child for the UK’s Europe generation. But was it my professional path that determined that, or rather the other way round?

Those of us of that era tend not to realise how greatly we were marked by the shadow of what was referred to only as “the war”, even though it was rarely discussed in detail. (And my father, as a young Bletchley Park codebreaker plucked from his Oxford maths degree, was sworn to silence until decades later.)

But my parents were determined to explore the continent that had effectively been closed to them in their youth. Their “peace dividend” entailed family summer road trips, starting with the then almost-closed East Germany, where my father had been an exchange student in 1939. We spent Saturday mornings watching the BBC’s German language primer, Komm mit!

Of course, taking long summer road trips was a privilege for a few and afforded a more direct entree to “Europe” than many of my generation had. But there was a strong European – and in retrospect, a reconciliatory – flavour to the school curriculum, which included languages, commonly French and German, school exchanges, and encouragement to explore further.

Before EU membership and the Erasmus programme, time abroad was more likely to be spent as an au pair or a teaching assistant – or, if you were lucky, on a scholarship – than on a foreign university course or longhaul globetrotting. But I spent a summer in Vienna, with weekends in Prague and Salzburg, and I visited friends in Germany many times.

And this brings me to another chance (but indicative) aspect of my claim to be part of a European generation. In my last two years at school, we suddenly acquired a “lodger”, the new German-language assistant at the college where my father was principal, who was brought to our door by a staff member explaining that she had just arrived to find that arrangements for her accommodation had gone wrong.

The upshot was that Ursula came to live with us for two years, essentially en famille, and we have been almost sisters ever since, through graduate study, jobs, marriage and widowhood.

But the gradual easing of travel, including the Channel Tunnel – can you imagine such a project today? – was also key to the growing proximity of Europe. A landmark moment was the inauguration of the Eurostar, on the eve of my stint as The Independent’s correspondent in Paris, which enabled day trips in either capital, and then made it possible to travel in a day on public transport from London to the house we had for 10 years in southern France.

Suddenly, all of Europe felt open. Travelling elsewhere usually required visas or hours on a plane. Europe was next door. My sister, who fell for both southern Italy and an Italian during one of our family road trips, has now lived in her village for more than 40 years and is a more enthusiastic advocate for all things Italian than many Italians are. I clearly remember the day when the UK and the EU recognised each other’s qualifications, automatically validating her Cambridge degree and opening the way to professional jobs without expensive resort to a notary.

If you take my extended family, I have relatives in several European countries and friends in many others. Time was when Britons were more likely to have family in the old Commonwealth or in Ireland than in Europe. That changed, and the UK’s EU membership was arguably not just a cause of that, but an effect of the postwar orientation towards the continent, which took personal, as well as institutional, forms.

Now, it is true that the UK’s European generation may reflect a narrower and more elite section of the population than I would like to concede, although that is a lot more true of the rarefied class of the “new” and aspiring EU countries. But the number of Britons with second homes, or who have permanently moved or regularly travel to the continent, makes for a sizeable contingent. The connections are many and deep.

But a tide seems to be turning. At least some of these British residents in Europe are coming back, and others are being discouraged from going by the paperwork that is now required. The school curriculum has changed, too. For years now, it has prominently featured the Second World War (my own history syllabus stopped at 1870). The teaching – and learning – of foreign languages in state schools has shrunk, with European languages in some places withdrawn in favour of Mandarin. For a host of reasons, school trips are more likely to be for sport or tourism than language exchanges. The trend was clear from before the Brexit referendum, but it has accelerated since, with Europe already seeming to recede further from view.

Now you could argue, perhaps, that in this day and age, an interest in the wider world might be an improvement on a narrow focus on Europe. I would counter, though, that a familiarity with our nearest neighbours and our inherited cultural affinity are essential for knowing our own country. This could also help the UK to finally accept where it is in the world, and its status as a medium-sized power. The years of EU membership seemed to bring progress in this direction, even as Brexit has revived all the old UK claims about wanting to “lead”, notwithstanding our current difficulties over defence spending.

This trajectory will not be easy to reverse, and I fear that any decision will be for a new generation, not least because of the trends throughout education and the new obstacles to work and travel. Maybe an eventual disenchantment with whatever Brexit still has to bring, along with what could be the long-term US disengagement, could push the UK towards Europe again, whether as the EU or in a looser association.

Whatever happens, however, seems unlikely to alter the reality that my generation has lived through a special time, when Britain has been more European in practically every way than it was before, or is likely to be in the near future.