One reading of the survey we published last week on
people's attitudes to the EU could make for very worrying reading.
Analysing by social classes the response to the
questions set, it could be read as saying that students were generally
for membership but workers were against.
There is potential for mischief here. As we get closer
to the referendum it is the duty of the country to avoid anything which
may lead to a chasm springing up between the social classes, and
especially such a chasm along social lines.
There is also the beginning of another fracture: a
generational one. Youths were seen to be generally more in favour of
accession while the older, especially the 50-something males were
against.
We can hear people around us already reacting to these
battle lines being drawn up.
On the one hand, the pro-membership forces are already
beginning to encourage more and more students to grasp the opportunities
to go abroad to study, thus hoping to lead to a bandwagon which could
draw in favour of a Yes vote the families of the students. The battle
cry here is the same one as heard in the 1980s: Ghal uliedna naghmlu
kollox (We will do anything for our children).
On the other hand the anti-EU membership have already
begun to complain that the youths have been dazzled by this EU mirage.
But what about the other youths, those who do not go to university,
those who risk unemployment, those who could join the big legions of EU
unemployed, they ask.
At the same time, it goes without saying that the
opposition made by the Labour Party and the General Workers Union
against EU membership comes from the same anti attitude expressed by the
workers in the survey. The Labour Party's strongholds and the union
strongholds coincide and a very sizeable number of them are in the 50
plus age group. A look at many union meetings would seem to prove this.
Whatever, the problem we want to highlight today is the
risk that with such battlefronts being drawn up, and with such a
divisive issue coming up, it is easy to emphasise the points of
difference rather than the points of convergence.
At this point, that is before the clash really begins,
sane people must worry about the social tissue of the country. Any
choice is divisive, and with the way were do politics here, any choice
is stark: Yes or No, In or Out. People seem to be falling into the two
camps first on political grounds, secondly on social grounds and thirdly
on generational grounds.
There must be some way through which the country is led
to accept the result, whatever that might be, through which the country
will still look upon itself as one country whatever the result, and the
country will still emerge as the real winner whatever the result.
If we do not take care to do this, we may well end up
with half a country the morning after the referendum.
