No, ‘Allo ‘Allo! did not cause Brexit and nobody said it did
As a point of clarification before I begin: I’m not writing this to defend or promote the collection, the two editors or Prof. Schaffer. The former stands well on its own merits and the latter three require absolutely no defence from me as they have nothing to defend. I wrote this short piece because it interests me and, having a bit of a connection to it all, I find the whole thing a fascinating insight. Ultimately, it is a case study of terrible and disreputable journalistic practices.
In recent days, I was very pleased to see the release of an edited collection of essays entitled, British Humour and the Second World War: ‘Keep Smiling Through’, to which I provided a chapter. In my view (my chapter notwithstanding), it is a very fine book on a much-understudied aspect of Britain’s war. The book came out of a conference I was fortunate enough to attend at the University of Kent and I had a great time listening to fascinating and often hilarious papers. (A conference report by Dr. Ellis Spicer, can be read here.)
One of the chapters, contributed by Professor Gavin Schaffer of the University of Birmingham, looked at post-war comedy sit-coms, such as Fawlty Towers and Dad’s Army, but mainly ‘Allo ‘Allo! The central argument of the chapter, at least according to my reading, is that these comedies of the late 1960s to the late 1980s emerged at a particular juncture in post-war British history. Britain was in a period of transition, the Empire had largely broken up and, as an alternative source of economic power and global influence, Britain had its sights on joining the European Economic Community (EEC) — which she did in 1973 and that membership was put to the public in a referendum in 1975. Yet a mere three decades prior, Britain, still then a true “superpower”, had fought a global “total war” and her main enemy was Germany. Yet by 1975 West Germany was a key partner in the EEC, which Britain now wished to join.
It is interesting to consider, as the historian Alan Allport does in Britain at Bay, that Neville Chamberlain tried to keep Britain out of the war in no small part to preserve the Empire. He feared — correctly as it transpired — that even in victory the energy, resources, political capital and blood of colonial soldiers, shed in fighting another major war would spell the end of Britain’s imperial project.
In Britain, we have never really come to grips with the fact that though “we” won the war it spelt the end of Britain’s status as a “Great Power”. As such, it occupies a truly bizarre and unique place in our national psyche — that of a much-mythologised finest hour. One by one, European powers bought into fascism (or in the case of Russia, Communism), collaborated with fascist powers or were defeated by them. Britain was left, in 1940, standing alone until 1941 with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. She suffered major defeats and the end of Blighty looked imminent. Yet with some small assistance from the Americans and the Russians, plucky underdog Britain managed to turn the tables on the forces of darkness and save occupied Europe from the evils of totalitarianism. Yet this victory did not prevent the breakup of the British Empire nor England from losing to German teams in successive key football matches. The result of all of this is a certain sense of British exceptionalism and nostalgia for that final victory, a last hurrah while Britain still ‘ruled the waves’.
Prof. Schaffer’s chapter tries to unpick these knotted post-war feelings about the conflict and about Europe, as they were manifested in British sitcoms. He argues that the kinds of sentiment these shows presented were a reflection of changing ideas about Europe in Britain at the time. Further that they in turn ‘amplifie[d] some of the thinking that underpinned the decision of the British electorate to walk away from the European Union in 2016.’ It is a fine, scholarly piece of work which draws the eminently sensible and carefully couched conclusion that perhaps such programmes — still watched generations later — show that the British public ‘just weren’t ready to slip into a European melting pot’.
On the day of the collection’s publication, I was somewhat surprised to see loads of tweets saying that a historian had said that sitcoms were responsible for Brexit. That morning I had yet to read Professor Schaffer’s chapter, I did not immediately realise that they were talking about an essay in a book to which I had contributed. Once I realised what they were talking about, I was rather surprised but delighted for Prof. Schaffer and the collection’s editors, Prof. Juliette Pattison and Dr. Linsey Robb. It transpired that the Telegraph and the Daily Mail had published articles talking about the chapter. As an academic, when this happens (which is as rare as hens’ teeth), it’s great. Not only has the work gained some exposure, but so too has your university. Perhaps still more importantly, it can contribute to “impact” — a grand if nebulous term used in deciding the value of work for funding purposes.
As the day went on, it all got better and better. By the time I went to bed the majority of the British national press and even some international media outlets had carried the story.[1] It was a little unfortunate that none of the papers mentioned Prof. Pattinson and Dr. Robb, crediting their considerable efforts in putting the collection together in the middle of a pandemic, but you can’t win them all. At least the book was getting exposure!
But then, some of the stories got weird. Where the Telegraph, for example, claimed that sitcoms ‘forecast’ Brexit, some outlets started to suggest that Prof. Schaffer claimed that sitcoms were actually responsible for the British public’s vote in 2016. The indy100 and MSN both ran headlines that ‘Historian claims that classic British sitcoms caused Brexit’. As noted above, I had been at the conference and listened to Prof. Schaffer’s talk and I didn’t remember him saying that ‘Allo ‘Allo! caused Brexit. Surely, I would have recalled a claim as explosive as that? I promptly bought an e-copy of the book and read Prof. Schaffer’s chapter. He had written no such thing. As described above, what he provided was a careful, nuanced discussion of British cultural memory of the war and the place of sitcoms in reflecting and reinforcing certain ideas about Europe in postwar Britain.
Yet these couched conclusions were not what indy100 and MSN’s headlines suggested. Even more astonishingly, the Daily Star had the story on its front page with the words “Brainiac Blames Beeb Favourite for Schism” and “I shall say zis only once: ‘Allo ‘Allo! Caused Brexit” — interestingly, the actual article which accompanied this front-page splash was a sober affair which made no such claim.
Then came GB News.
Covering the story, host Patrick Christys interviewed historian Dr. Philip Kiszely of the University of Leeds asking, ‘because we basically had shows like Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers and ‘Allo ‘Allo!, that made us vote for Brexit?’ After laughing at the absurdity of the question, Dr. Kiszely replied that it was ‘a new one on me actually, I can’t really see the connection.’ He proceeded to claim that the question was ‘a classic academic take. Let’s take something completely unrelated and let’s relate it to something we don’t like’. However, ‘if you think about the 70s in a slightly more serious way then there is something there’. Indeed, there is. With no small irony, Dr. Kiszely proceeded to make several eminently sensible and learned points about British attitudes towards Europe at that time which would not be unfamiliar to those who had already read (which by that time I had) Prof. Schaffer’s chapter.
To be clear, this is not Dr. Kiszely’s fault. He was presented with an absurd question and answered it thoughtfully. His reply was clearly predicated on the assumption that this is what the chapter argued. But it was not. If some criticism of Dr. Kiszely is to be levelled it is his credulity. Would a fellow academic historian and specialist in modern Britain really make a claim so lacking in nuance that it plunges into the very depths of the laughably ridiculous? Probably not.
In GB News’ representation of the chapter, an academic — therefore naturally opposed to Brexit — had concocted some bizarre theory with which to explain the outcome of the referendum. Of course, Prof. Schaffer’s chapter did not do this and nor did it cast any judgment on the rights or wrongs of Brexit (indeed, Brexit is actually quite marginal to the piece, being mentioned only a handful of times). This was then followed by a statement by Mr. Christys contending that ‘the study kind of misses the point a little bit’. Which is ironic given his segment missed the point of the chapter entirely. Further, that:
I think Europe does owe us rather a lot … it would be quite nice to imagine just for a second what kind of state the European Union and the European continent would be in if it wasn’t for Britain. … I just wonder is Brexit actually more about the idea of Britain going “Well, you know what? We’ve saved your lives and you don’t appear to like us very much, so ‘ave that” as opposed to someone with a dodgy French accent in ‘Allo ‘Allo or Basil Fawlty saying “Don’t mention the war”.
If Prof. Schaffer had claimed that Brexit was the product of a person with ‘a dodgy French accent’, I suppose Mr. Christys would have a point. But as it didn’t, he doesn’t.
That said, in another layer of irony, Mr. Christys’ view of the war, and that from it Britain is “owed” something from the EU (and the perceived view that it has not been forthcoming) rather reinforces Prof. Schaffer’s actual point. The legacy of the war is enduring in the British imagination and national identity. Note also the term ‘we’ve saved your lives’. Who, one might wonder, is the ‘we’ in this? Mr. Christys appears to be in his early 30s and clearly was born many decades after the war came to an end. Moreover, very few voters alive in 2016 contributed to the Allied victory in the Second World War. So ‘we’, the overwhelming majority of the British electorate, are owed nothing for Britain’s role in that conflict.
Missing in GB News’ coverage of the chapter was the slightly playful tone used in tabloids like the Star. Not only did GB News misrepresent the chapter, but presented it as an example of a Remain-voting academic putting together a bonkers theory to pathologise and patronise Leave voters. While the Star may have wildly mistaken the argument of the chapter, at least they did not imply a sinister, condescending anti-Brexit-voter motive.
Again, given the complete distortion of the chapter, it is difficult to imagine that anybody at GB News, not Mr. Christys, not his guest and not the show’s producers, had read Prof. Schaffer’s chapter. Perhaps they had read the University of Birmingham’s press release which said that these ‘sitcoms give clues to why Brits voted for Brexit’ and that they ‘amplify some of the thinking’ in voters’ minds. Alternatively, they may have read some of the wider media coverage of the chapter. But they do not appear to have read the chapter itself. In other words, GB News disparaged and took gleeful offence at an argument that nobody had made.
If this is GB News’ journalistic standards when it comes to covering research about the cultural memory of the Second World War, it may explain a lot of the other nonsense its presenters and guests come out with.
[1] https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/tv/sitcoms-like-allo-allo-fawlty-30399065; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-vote-allo-allo-fawlty-towers-b2369379.html; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/04/british-sitcoms-reveal-culture-that-contributed-to-brexit-vote; https://ustimespost.com/classic-british-sitcoms-like-allo-allo-contributed-to-the-brexit-vote/; https://theworldnews.net/gb-news/classic-british-sitcoms-like-fawlty-towers-and-allo-allo-contributed-to-brexit-vote; https://metro.co.uk/2023/07/06/fawlty-towers-and-dads-army-contributed-to-brexit-vote-19077608/?ico=just-in_home_just-in; https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/classic-british-sitcoms-hint-at-appetite-for-brexit-says-historian-k82nv2wns
