I can’t claim to be an expert on American politics but I have followed with real interest the Presidency of Barrack Obama. Firstly, in 2008, with incredulous enthusiasm and, during the last Presidential campaign, with a mixture of dread and hope. There was so much excitement after his first election that  people were bound to get disappointed especially as the man had to lead his country through the worst economic climate since the Great Depression while also finding a path round the minefield laid for him by the newly elected right wing Tea Party Republicans. I learnt about the Boston Tea Party at school but even so, when I hear the phrase tea party, I tend to think a lot of air-headed small talk conducted over teacups. Maybe that’s really where that Republican name came from. Well, they aren’t so happy these days and the Republican Party, after counting their votes at the last election,  has begun to see that those Tea Party folk were not really their friends either. I, of course, don’t have a vote in American elections, I’m British and my vote, like many others at the last election, floated in mid-air when the nation decided it didn’t really want any of the politicians on offer so we ended up with the wobbly and ineffectual Conservative/Liberal-Democrat Coalition government that is leading the UK towards an unprecedented triple dip recession while it furthers a petulant and damaging foreign policy that manages to combine grandiose dreams above its station with the narrowest of blinkered vision about the country’s relationship with its friends and neighbours.  Maybe seeing the wreckage of our last election is why I took President Obama’s re-election to a second term so seriously. I too had my disappointments with his first administration but, I wanted the American people to give the man a chance and to see just what he could do when he knows he can’t stand a third time.

His immigration policy speech last night was just the kind of thing that raised my hopes. He may have  kept the details to a minimum but he made it quite clear that action was going to be taken with or without bipartisan support (and the newly chastened Republican Party seems to be looking for anywhere where bipartisanship can redeem their tarnished reputation as the nasty guys). As with the gun debate and in his support for equal rights to marry, the President is not going to let this go.  Immigration is an emotive issue in the USA, as it is here in Europe, but it will remain a problem until politicians are brave enough to sort out the confusions, inequalities  absurdities and tragedies involved when large numbers of people want to move from one country to another regardless of the law. His vision for a change in the American Immigration system remains tough on border control (he has deported more illegal immigrants than any other American president) but he is not anti-foreigner like those Tea Party radicals or like some of our anti-Immigration lobbies in the UK who have just decided that they don’t like Roumanians and Bulgarians because they might start coming to Britain as the European Union expands.  Obama is certainly not, like some of Britain’s keep Britain British brigade, racist either. He is ideally positioned, as America’s first black President, to see the inspirational side of immigration as much as its many problems and tragedies. He said, last night: ‘It’s easy sometimes for the discussion to take on a feeling of “us” versus “them.” And when that happens, a lot of folks forget that most of “us” used to be “them.” We forget that. It’s really important for us to remember our history. Unless you’re one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else. Somebody brought you.’

John Addison (1844-1928)

Like so many Europeans, my family has a branch that emigrated to the USA in the 1850s in search of a new life and new opportunities. One of them, John Addison, who arrived, as a child, with his parents, applied for American citizenship as a young man at the beginning of the American Civil War so that he could enlist in the Union Army – he served under General Sherman until peace was declared. He was just one of millions of American immigrants who committed to a new nation and became an integral part of it and, in his own way, helped to build a country where slaves could be freed and their descendants could one day become president.

Miron Grindea (1909-1995)

My first job, here in Britain, was working for the now legendary bilingual (English and French) literary quarterly magazine ADAM International Review, employed as a general literary dog’s-body by its quixotic, volatile and inspiring  editor, the Roumanian immigrant, Miron Grindea who, as a Roumanian Jew, settled in London in 1939 and made it his home for the rest of his life – a mutually enriching experience for him and his newly adopted country.

ADAM International Review – one of the editions I dogs-bodied on.

My time working with an internationally-minded bohemian and his circle of often persecuted artists and writers was an enriching experience for me too as a young man, at around the same age my ancestor was when he fought in the American Civil War. I learnt that I was more than just a product of the country of my birth even if I didn’t share John Addison’s bravery. When I hear all this talk about preventing Roumanians and Bulgarians coming to Britain, I think of Miron Grindea and that great tragedy that spread across mainland Europe in the 1930s and 40s  that meant that he was one of the lucky survivors from a time when feelings of Nationalism erupted in hatred and genocide. I like to think that my immigrant ancestors enriched their new country as much as hundreds of years of immigration as enriched Britain. That is not the immigration problem, the problem is making immigration fair, controlled and equitable. President Obama may have a lesson for us all. I hope so.

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I have visited the USA many times, had a good time there and I am lucky enough to have a number of good American friends so it has been both a surprize and a pleasure to find out as reported last week that a branch of my family left England for the USA in the 1850s and brought up a large family of cousins for me – well maybe not with me in mind exactly but I am happy about this my new American family link.

Even though my father was a military man himself, fighting in both the First and Second World Wars, he often said that he would do anything to prevent his children being called up to the army even if that meant leaving the country. He said that he had seen enough of war to never wish it on his children.

I have always seen war as a failure of diplomacy but as much as I would have liked to have been a pacifist, I believe that war was necessary in 1939 after a half century of diplomatic failure led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.

I am not an expert on American history but I suspect there too a peaceful solution could have been  found between the North and the South without the appalling loss of life that came with the American Civil War (1861-65) but whether diplomacy would have led to freedom for the black slaves or not, I cannot guess but I suspect not. Slave emancipation appears to have been a secondary consequence of the Northern Union’s victory over the Southern Confederacy but emancipation was a great moment in history even if it only marked the beginning of another 100 year struggle towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964.   I was moved this week to learn that one of my American cousins enlisted as a young man of 20 in the Unionist army under General William Sherman (1820-1891).  John Addison (1844-1928) who was born in England sailed to America with his family as a child but between 1864 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, he was in Sherman’s army for the famous or infamous March To The Sea which is generally accredited with leading to the surrender of the Confederacy after its torched earth policy destroyed  the railroad and the industrial and agricultural infrastructure of Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah.

It is not my place to conjecture about the American Civil War other than to lament its dead and to honour the bravery of many of its soldiers on both sides. Opinions differ on whether the March to the Sea was a liberation for the black slaves or merely a new episode in their hardship but I have to admit to a moment of pride if that brave young man, my American cousin, did his bit, no matter how small, that led to the the abolition of slavery in the USA.

If nothing else, my family’s involvement in some of the toughest moments American history justifies my affection for and belief in that troubled country. I am also only too aware of the relatively peaceful and easy life I have led in comparison to my military ancestors. Maybe a life made possible by their actions. Can we not though, remembering all this warfare, plead with the diplomats to do their job in creating a peaceful future.

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