Camping Labirinti Zorgi Latvia
20 September 2015
Dear friends A View from the Baltic Republics Autumn 2015
Labirinti, the name of this amazing campsite some
30 miles south of Riga along the Via Baltica, is the Latvian word for the noun
'labyrinth' whose adjective 'labyrinthine' is a good description of what is
attempted in this email.
Here is something of a Polemic which is the result
of experiences during our fifth visit to the Baltic Republics. The factors
include the history of this region's occupation by successive waves of Germans
and Russians, the considerable development here since 1990, the looming Russian
threat, the current movement of migrants in the Balkan countries with the
consequent closing of open borders and the threat to the Schengen Agreement,
the resurgence of socialism in the UK while SYRIZA faces defeat in Greece, and
my own memories of taking refuge from war.
The mood we are picking up here in Latvia and
earlier in Estonia (and Finland) is of people relieved not to be a target for
the many migrants heading north through Europe. The Baltic Republics are still
recovering from the devastations of the Second World War, followed by 45 years
of incorporation within the Soviet Union. In the 25 years since that empire
collapsed, the three Republics have made great progress. They have all joined
the EU, NATO and more recently the Eurozone. Like the thick layers of new
bitumen on the old crumbling roads, these changes are not ephemeral: they are
designed to last and take a lot of heavy use.
On our first visit in 1999, there were closed
borders with no-man's-lands, complete with convoluted exit and entry procedures
that culminated in 2-hour queues. Imagine this on the borders between
Poland-Lithuania, Lithuania-Latvia, Latvia-Estonia and Estonia-Finland (see the account of our 1999 journey from Finland to
Poland via the Baltic Republics). Today all these frontiers are open: there is
just an information board at the border, alongside the high-speed road. The
people don't want to lose that freedom and return to closed borders, something
they see happening to equally hard-won progress in the Balkans.
There is already a sharpening tension here, since
all three countries border Russia and all three countries are home to
substantial numbers of Russians and Russian-speakers. With a total population
of just over 6 million, the three countries contain one million Russians. They
make up almost half the population of Estonia's and Latvia's capital cities,
Tallinn and Riga. The Estonians, only about 1 million strong in their own
country, have struggled for centuries to maintain their culture and their
Finno-Ugric language in the face of successive German and Russian occupations.
NATO has strengthened its presence in this part of
the Baltic, very much aware of the tactics of encroachment and fermentation of
internal dissent used by Russia in Eastern Ukraine.
Given the struggle to reach and maintain their
present level of development, the local people we have spoken to cannot see why
economic migrants from outside the European Union should benefit from all their
skill and hard work. They believe it would be better for migrants to stay in or
near their own country, to take part in its struggle and its future
redevelopment.
Earlier this year we journeyed back to the UK from
Greece via Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and Germany – a route
now made familiar in every news broadcast. Then the borders were open and
welcoming. On entering Macedonia we were required to pay €55 for 15 days of
vehicle insurance, but the apologies were profuse. The UK has the most
restrictive motor insurance policies of any country in the EU: everyone else,
automatically covered by their own insurance, had only to show their passport.
Now everyone is inconvenienced and restricted by
checks at all the borders on that journey and there is a real risk that the
freedoms endowed by the Schengen Agreement will be abandoned. All this is
happening when only 20% of the migrants reaching Germany are from Syria; twice
as many (40%) are economic migrants from the non-EU Balkans – Albania, Bosnia,
Kosovo, Macedonia and even Serbia. Most are fit young men, joining in the rush
for benefits and jobs in the heart of Europe, when they are much needed in
their own countries.
I am reminded of the mass destruction, death and
injury perpetrated by the Germans on many countries throughout Europe between
1939 and 1945. 'Migrations' took many forms: escape from advancing enemy
troops, escape from the carpet bombing of cities, deportation to extermination
camps in eastern Poland, enforced slave labour in Germany, Germans displaced
from the countries they had occupied, people displaced in the movement of
national boundaries, and prisoners of war returning home when they were finally
released.
Only the Jews had to actually leave Europe and
found a whole new country in a hostile desert. The great majority of displaced
people remained within Europe and ultimately returned to where they belonged.
They took part in the recovery and rebuilding of their countries, after 1945 in
the West and 1990 in the East, with America holding back the Russians in those
intervening 45 years. This phoenix-like rising from the ashes led to the
astonishing achievement of the European Union.
As a young child, I was part of this process as an
internally displaced refugee during World War II: given refuge from the bombing
of the North Sea port of Hull, the second most devastated of any UK city. I was 'evacuated', being returned home when
the bombing eased. Only 6,000 out of the 91,000
houses in the city were undamaged by the end of the war. There was no
'refuge' other than the air-raid shelter, or evacuation from the city. People
stayed and they fought back and they won and they restored the country. Indeed,
life in Britain improved with the reforms introduced by the Atlee government in
the immediate aftermath of war (see our article on this subject): the NHS,
pensions, social security, nationalisation, reform of the education system.
The latter gave Margaret and me (as well as Jeremy
Corbyn) the benefit of a free grammar school education: a benefit still easily
outclassed by any public school boy or girl! The class system still rules and
Jeremy has much to do or, like SYRIZA in Greece, will he yet sing to the
capitalists' tune?
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