England Then and Now: The Country My Grandparents Wouldn’t Fight For again
I come from what you’d call a patriotic family.
All my grandparents were East London born and bred, and as far back as anyone could trace, our people had been English for centuries – grafting, serving, surviving. When England called, we answered. No questions asked, no small print, no “what’s in it for me?”
My grandad fought in the Second World War. His younger brother was too young to go, so he lied about his age to join up – and he was killed. That was normal in families like ours. You did your bit, even if the price was your life.
For a long time, I just absorbed that as background. That’s what our lot did. We loved this country and we proved it.
It’s only now, looking at the state England is in, that one sentence my grandparents said to me in the 1980s hits me like a punch in the chest.
The sentence that changed how I see England
I was still young when my nan and grandad sat there one day and said, almost casually:
“If we’d known then what we know now, we wouldn’t have fought in that war.”
At the time, I didn’t really get it. How could two people who had lived through the Blitz, lost family, and raised me on stories of “keeping calm and carrying on” say something like that?
Back then I shrugged it off. Now I understand exactly what they meant – and I find it desperately sad that politicians, over decades, made them feel that way. They didn’t regret fighting with their mates. They regretted what the country did with that sacrifice.
The England they thought they were fighting for
To understand that sentence, you have to understand what their generation believed they were fighting for.
They were told they were fighting for freedom, for an end to tyranny, for “a land fit for heroes” and a fairer England when the guns went quiet. The propaganda and speeches of the time promised not just victory, but a better life afterwards – real democracy, social justice, and dignity for ordinary people.
In East London, they saw neighbours bombed out, families wiped out, streets flattened. People slept in shelters and went to work the next morning. They queued for rationed food, they took in evacuees, they did fire‑watch, and they believed that all this pain meant something.
After the war, there was at least a sense that those promises were being honoured. The NHS was created, council housing went up, and however messy it was, there was a real attempt to build a system where illness didn’t bankrupt you and kids like them had a shot at something better.
My grandparents weren’t naïve. They knew politicians lied even back then. But the direction of travel felt like building. Whatever the arguments in Westminster, the basic story was: “We went through hell so our children and grandchildren wouldn’t have to.”
The England they saw by the 1980s
By the time they said that line to me in the 1980s, they were looking at a very different England.
They’d watched industry disappear, factories and docks close, whole communities hollowed out. They’d seen unemployment, strikes, and bitterness. The sense that “we’re all in it together” had been replaced by “you’re on your own”.
They saw crime rising, streets changing faster than anyone in power seemed to understand, and a political class that looked more interested in point‑scoring than in fixing anything. The grand promises of a land fit for heroes felt a long way from the reality outside their front door.
So when they said, “If we’d known then what we know now, we wouldn’t have fought,” it wasn’t because they stopped loving England. It was because they felt the people in charge had broken faith with the England they thought they were fighting for. The elites had taken that sacrifice and, instead of building something worthy of it, had slowly chipped away at the things that made the country liveable.
The England I see today
Now fast forward to England in the 2020s.
People are struggling to get a GP appointment, sometimes waiting weeks or giving up altogether. Official reports talk about record pressure in general practice, long waits, and patients ending up in A&E because they can’t see a doctor.
NHS dentistry is in such a state that stories of people pulling their own teeth or travelling miles for treatment have become normal. Data shows that only a minority of adults have been seen by an NHS dentist within the recommended period, and in some areas as many as 97% of new patients can’t get in at all.
Housing is unaffordable for many; younger people look at home ownership like a fairy tale. Wages and bills don’t match. Public services feel like they’re held together with duct tape. Meanwhile, the same political class that stood in front of war memorials and talked about “our values” has driven trust into the ground.
Surveys now show trust in British politicians and the system of government (We don’t even have our own government) at record lows. Large numbers of people say they believe politicians almost never tell the truth or care what people like them think. Compared internationally, the UK sits near the bottom for confidence in political institutions, the police and the press.
On top of that, we see talk of digital IDs, expanding surveillance, and “15‑minute cities” coming down the line – all sold as convenience or progress, but landing in a country where people already feel watched, managed and ignored.
When I look at this England and hear my grandparents’ voices in my head, I understand their sadness in a way I couldn’t as a kid.
So what did they really fight for?
Here’s the key point for me: my grandparents didn’t fight for a logo on a ballot paper or for a prime minister’s speech.
They fought for each other – for family, neighbours, the right to live without a boot on anyone’s neck. They fought so that ordinary people in places like East London could walk down the street without fear of dictatorship, secret police, or being dragged away in the night.
The real betrayal isn’t that England has changed. Countries always change. The betrayal is that too many people in charge have used their generation’s courage as a backdrop while building a country that doesn’t live up to the values they risked their lives for.
We wheel veterans out for photo ops, play the wartime footage, and wrap ourselves in the Flag of St George – then preside over a politics that lies as a reflex, a state that struggles to provide basic healthcare, and a public sphere so toxic many people have just given up on it.
When my grandparents said they wouldn’t have fought, they weren’t dishonouring the dead. They were indicting the living.
England then and now: what’s worth saving
For all that, I don’t believe England is finished. I think there is still something here that is worth fighting for – just not in the way the political class imagines.
The NHS is battered, but people still queue because they believe in the principle that no one should be denied care because they’re poor. Communities are bruised, but you still see neighbours helping each other when it really counts: floods, fires, illness, hardship. Local teachers, nurses, carers, small business owners – they are the England I recognise.
What has to change is the way we’re governed and the relationship between “the people in charge” and everyone else. That means:
- Less spin, more truth – even when it hurts. Stop promising miracles and start levelling with people about trade‑offs.
- Real consequences when politicians lie, break the law, or treat public money like their own. Not just a bad headline and a quiet comeback.
- New ways for citizens to have a direct, serious say on the big questions – wars, surveillance, constitutional change – through things like citizens’ assemblies and properly run national votes, not just five minutes with a ballot pencil every few years.
My grandparents gave everything they had for an England they believed in. By the 1980s, they felt that covenant had been broken.
The question for our generation is whether we’re prepared to fight – peacefully, democratically, persistently – to make this country worth fighting for again.
Because if we don’t, one day our own grandchildren might look at the England we leave them and ask a version of the same question:
“What did you know – and what did you do about it?”
For further reading about everyday England: Everyday England: Then And Now