Do you have a dream?

And now for something a bit different, and which I admit I'm not really qualified to write about, but US presidential election-fever is affecting me as much as anybody. The recent adoption of "Joe the plumber" to stand as a symbol of the typical American working man interested me. It reminded me of the American novels I studied for GCSE, particularly John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. The two central characters in this story dream "the American Dream" of owning their own piece of land and being independent of others, bettering themselves and owing nothing to anybody. It's a dream that links in to the US's history- the birth of the nation in resentment at having to pay taxes to a distant government; the bold independence of the settlers as they pushed out West. America, Land of the Free- except for those who were the wrong colour, or gender, or the poor.

So Joe the plumber, a man who's dream was to own his own business, was used to typify a nation where independence is seen as a virtue; a man who is concerned about the state interfering in his life and taking his money, chimes with a nation that shares the same concerns.*

The British (well, English really) version of the American smallholder would be the yeoman farmer from several centuries ago, the man (inevitably) who owned his own farm (or a very least was a secure, long-term tenant), was self-sufficient in providing for his needs, and was free from interference from the local lords or anyone else below the king. That's a very loose description, but I'm sure you get the picture. The English yeoman was regarded in popular culture and literature as the epitome of Englishness, and the backbone of the country. Yet as a historian I can't help thinking that this was all largely a myth. While there were independent farmers, from what I know they were in a minority in a countryside dominated by tenant farmers and big estates. Most agricultural workers scraped a living working for other men who rented the land from big landowners. The countryside, far from being the idyllic, unspoilt place of pristine beauty presented to us by the Romantic poets, was in truth a place where life was hard and disaster, for most of the population, not far off.

I seem to have strayed from the point. That's the trouble when I start talking about history! The point I was trying to make was that both these dreams, American and English, reflect what today we might describe as middle-class values- self reliance, independence, a desire to be beholden to no one. It's a set of values that I associate (however wrong you may consider me) with politics of the right, with (for example) Thatcherism and the 'death of society'. Personally, I don't think it's a very good set of values- it encourages you to see your needs and desires as more important than other people's and to put yourself first rather than considering the needs of other people. That leads to the massive gap in wealth we have between the very, very rich and those who just scrape by.

So is this dream of 'going it alone' really a good one to aim for? I think we need to be careful. I admire some of the ideas of independence, but as John Donne said, "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind." We can't ignore the fact that others are poor, or disabled, or unable to look after themselves for some other reason. Perhaps it's just my Christian upbringing and values, but the idea of a community, where everyone is linked together and cares for one another, where people need not be afraid to confess their needs and failings, and where they can find help and help others is much more attractive to me than a world where everbody lives in their hermetically sealed box, freed from the responsibility to care for others but also from the joys of relationship and the comfort of knowing there is someone there to help them when things get tough. That sounds like a very lonely life. It's not one I want.

*Although later revelations suggest that Joe isn't all he seems...