Ten years on from the Brexit referendum I need to reaffirm my Europeanness. Like so many others of my generation I was lucky to be able to benefit from the opportunities offered by Britain’s close ties with Europe, even before we joined the European Common Market (ECM) or the European Union (EU). The principles of Britain in Europe were laid down long ago with Winston Churchill’s effort to form a “United States of Europe”, and the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949.
In this article I have tried to set out the key moments in my life which have made me a thankful and committed European.
Danish roots
In 1950, as Jonathan Lund Hill, I was born a European with my Danish godfather, Frank Lund, giving me my second name. Frank was a Danish volunteer training as a fighter pilot with the RAF alongside my father. He sadly died before my fourth birthday.
Growing up in Northern England, moving to Belgium
Living in Cheshire we had many European friends – the Heijbrooks were Dutch and Asa Allen at the local hotel was Danish. My father worked for Dr Wolff, a refugee from Germany. I went to Manchester Grammar School, which was one third Jewish, including many refugees from Europe. Manchester had a history of welcoming German merchants and industrialists in the 19th century, so refugees fleeing Hitler in World War II naturally gravitated to Manchester. Anglo-German Manchester by Janet Wolff describes how Manchester became a magnet for Germans outside London. This video by Aidan O’Rourke explains the close ties Manchester still has with Germany.
At 13, we moved to Brussels, my father becoming Nuclear Attaché to the then ECM. Although I went to boarding school in England, my sister went to the same European School in Brussels as Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen. We learnt French rather than Flemish since the Walloons were in charge at that time.
The start of a German relationship, furthering my education
At 17, I went as a Werkstudent to the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching, near Munich. This was my introduction to Germany, particularly Bavaria. I tried (but failed) to get to Prague before the Russian tanks crushed the Prague Spring.
At the University of Sussex, I was one of very few European students and was famous for knowing what a pizza was as my parents had by then moved to Ispra in Italy.
On graduating in physics, I worked for the Institute of Hydrology in the UK on their iconic Flood Studies Report, and environmental data analysis in Kenya. I then did an MSc in hydrology under Czech-born Professor Pavel Novak at Newcastle University, where I met my Scottish wife.
Kickstarting my career in Germany, continuing it back in the UK
My first job as a hydrologist was with Ingenieurbüro Wersche in Oldenburg, northwestern Germany, designing drainage for Oldenburg and Hanover. We quickly improved our German, northern German being easier for us British to understand than Bavarian. Oldenburg had an international club with other Europeans but no Brits, except for a tank driver whose tank had stopped there at the end of World War II.
I came back to the UK to work for pre-privatisation Southern Water in Hampshire. Our main project was the Candover Pilot Scheme, which tested pumping water out of the chalk hills and augmenting the flow of the River Itchen for Southampton’s water supply.
Africa and the Far East
Then I was off to Malawi on British and UN aid projects, working with Norwegians, Dutch, and Italians. There was also a large Portuguese community fleeing from the civil war in neighbouring Mozambique. Our first daughter was born in Malawi, and we had difficulties ensuring that she received full British citizenship. Malawi hit the headlines with a book (2009), then a Netflix film (2019), and finally a musical (2026), The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, which I saw at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
My next move, in 1982, was to a Danish company in Copenhagen but it was too expensive to live there so I worked for them on water projects in the Far East. I added Danish and Malay / Bahasa Indonesia to my languages. The Danes say that Danish isn’t a language but a throat disease. The colonial legacy of the Dutch in Indonesia was marginal whereas the British had left their mark everywhere in Malaysia.
Teesside to Bavaria
Back in the UK I had a cancer scare and retrained into IT before working for ICI in Billingham. ICI had the best German wine cellar in England, courtesy of the German chemical company, BASF. By 1986 there was no future in fertilisers at ICI, although ICI did have a reactor making artificial protein, which once the legislation was in place they then sold, going on to become the famous Quorn brand.
A visit to my old boss in Oldenburg made us think of living in Germany again, and we moved to Munich working for a US company. I was encouraged to travel within Germany to understand regional variations – Bavaria is very different to, say, the Rhineland. We pioneered SAP software projects in Austria, France, Belgium, and the US. We worked very efficiently as a small European and American team. We set up a service centre in the UK with staff speaking 17 European languages. However, our main project in the UK met with resistance and an attitude of ’not invented here’; a warning on Brexit perhaps?
As a family, we decided on total immersion in the German culture, despite a large expat community. Our girls initially went to German schools and later to the European School Munich. Both girls are fluent German speakers, as is my wife, who also had to learn Bavarian before working as a nurse. We took holidays to Yugoslavia (just before the breakup), Italy, France, and Spain. Our friends were from all over Europe. We witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then reunification, which many Bavarians were sceptical of.
Back to a UK base but working in Europe
For family reasons we returned to the UK in 1996, living in the Cotswolds, Yorkshire, Warwickshire, and the Cotswolds again. I had many European clients and projects, including in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic – but also Eastern Europe – Ukraine and Russia (before President Putin closed the door). Each of these countries was trying to find its identity within (or, in the case of Russia, against) Europe.
Around the millennium I worked with the European glass industries of Pilkington in the UK, Società Italiana Vetro (SIV) in Italy and Flachglas in Germany. They found it difficult to work together and were eventually taken over by the Japanese Nippon Sheet Glass Co. (NSG) – a missed opportunity for European co-operation. In contrast, Germany and the UK worked well together to create Müller Dairy (UK) Ltd, with its famous adverts featuring Joanna Lumley and other British stars.
Continental beers
Much of my work involved breweries. Leuven (Stella Artois) in Belgium was predominantly Flemish because in the 1960s the Catholic University of Leuven was split, the Flemish part (KU Leuven) staying in Leuven and the French part (UCLouvain) moving to its own new town, Louvain-la-Neuve. Bremen (Beck’s Brewery) in northern Germany was a thriving city state in the Hanseatic tradition but was fighting to retain its shipbuilding business. In Bremen, English was not as widely used as in Munich so we had to work more in German.
Something brewing to the East
Mergers and takeovers were rampant in Eastern Europe. In Ukraine (2007) the tensions of having a powerful Russian neighbour were a portent of the 2022 invasion, after which all the AB InBev breweries had to close. In Russia (2006-07) I worked with breweries in St Petersburg, Perm, and Omsk. Because I always had an interpreter, I never managed to learn Russian. With the impending return to power of Putin, my work in Russia was increasingly difficult and unprofitable. The following years were with British clients and sadly little European involvement.
Retirement – fighting for Europe
After retiring in 2015 we retained our European friendships, but my wife’s health prevented us from travelling. In 2016 I founded an action group, Cotswolds4Europe, which is a local grassroots pro-European campaigning group based in the Cotswolds, formed to advocate for the UK’s membership in the EU, and participate in anti-Brexit demonstrations. However, we could not stop the UK from leaving the EU. In 2020 I was founder editor of an online newspaper, West England Bylines, one of ten regional outlets in the Bylines Network, all delivering quality citizen journalism. During my four-year tenure as editor, I published over 1,000 articles on many diverse topics. I continue to contribute occasional articles, such as this retrospective.
So, all in all, a truly European life. We must rejoin the EU as soon as we can. In particular, our young people must be given the opportunities I had to work and travel around Europe.
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