I remember when elections were won by leaders selling visions of the future: Harold Wilson’s white heat of technology, Ronald Reagan’s morning in America or Tony Blair’s New Britain. In the new democratic disorder nostalgia has replaced optimism as a ruling emotion. Populists recognise the power of adjusted memory. America’s Donald Trump, British Brexiters, Europe’s new nationalists — they all inhabit a rose-tinted past.
Nostalgia’s force lies in a human instinct to screen out the bad while recalling the good. The tendency, I have learnt, becomes more pronounced with advancing years. Hard times become fond moments of shared endeavour and community. With the passage of years, the terrible threat of thermonuclear war can seem like the benign guardian of a stable and peaceful international system. Materially deprived we may have been, but there was something spiritually special about being spared the instant gratification of the digital age.
Baby boomers are prime offenders. My most vivid childhood memories are of a world safe for six and seven-year-olds to roam free all day, without an adult in sight, in the urban forest of London’s Richmond Park. Jam sandwiches were feasts. We managed without bottled water. I have to dig deeper into the recesses of memory to recall asking my (Irish) mother about the sign in the window of a seaside boarding house: “No Blacks, No Irish.” The reply — “Oh, pay no attention, they are silly people” — probably hid serious hurt.