Thursday was a truly American-centric day. Not only was it Thanksgiving, where one lucky turkey escapes the massacre of its kindred birds at the behest of the President, but it was also the 49th anniversary of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
John F Kennedy was shot whilst riding in his open topped motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on the 22nd November 1963. The moments leading up to and immediately following his assassination caused uproar and ripped the heart out of America. The USA was still in its infancy as ‘leader of the free world’ and had recently gained the upper hand in the Cold War, following a terrifying piece of brinkmanship by JFK who, in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, went eyeball to eyeball’ with Khrushchev, until Khrushchev ‘blinked.’
There have, of course, been a huge number of conspiracy theories spouted about the death, from the “impossible shot”, “magic bullet” and “multiple shooter” theories, all of which point to different aspects of the shooting and suggest that the given verdict, that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot the President from a nearby building, is the wrong one. One of the alternative theories is put across by Robert Holmes in the excellent A Spy Like No Other. In the book, Holmes theorises that Oswald was, in fact, acting in lieu with rogue KGB agents who were desperate to get revenge on Kennedy for humiliating Khrushchev and Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But what of the overwhelming emotional fallout of the Kennedy killing? It is difficult for us British to understand the effects of the assassination. Kennedy is one of four American Presidents to have been killed in office. Imagine, for a second, if David Cameron was killed whilst on a visit to Exeter. Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t quite have the same dramatic resonance. It would be shocking, terrible for his family and a horrendous event to occur, but I don’t think the after effects would be anything like as global or as politically damaging.
There are a few reasons for this. The first is that the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not the head of state. In the UK it is the Queen, not the Prime Minister, who acts as the head of the Church and as the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The US President is America’s political and military leader, as well as their public figurehead, and is an embodiment of the phrase “all of one’s eggs in the same basket.” So the death of the Prime Minister would not leave such a vacuum of responsibility.
Similarly, if the Queen, who is our head of state, was to die then, although there would be no nominal leader of the Church, Army and State, there would be few ramifications for the political world. The decisions to wage war, to call a general election and to hire and fire cabinet ministers would still be carried out as normal. The only similar scenario to that of 1963 America would be if both the Queen and the Prime Minister were to die in the same event. An occurrence which, hopefully, does not seem very probable.
Another reason may be that, traditionally, British Prime Ministers are “first among equals” in their government. Even amongst such strident conviction politicians as Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, there were always other prominent party members lurking in the wings that the party could rally behind. This is reinforced by comparing the two electoral processes. In Britain we tend to focus more on a party’s ideals – as opposed to its leader – than in America, where the President is directly elected.
Or perhaps it is the preconception that Americans are a lot more prone to polarisation when it comes to tragic events. Pearl Harbour, JFK and 9/11 were each described as a ‘loss of innocence’ and led to Americans splitting the world into a bizarrely simplistic “us and them” approach. They circle the wagons and seem to favour a “with us or against us” mantra. Britain is more likely to place the event in the context of world events, rather than the solipsistic view favoured by America. When set beside Britain’s own bloody history of the Somme, the Blitz and 7/7 there are more than just a few similarities to America’s, yet less of the public hype. ‘Blitz Spirit’ is still mentioned occasionally, but it is telling that the most famous phrase associated with those terrible years, and one which adorned the boarded up windows of shop fronts was: ‘Business as usual’.
Then again, Princess Diana’s death saw a huge outpouring of national grief, if limited political change. Maybe our changing place in the world, and the advent of a new media prone to hyperbole rather than the Great British Understatement means that we too are becoming far more prone to national emotion. Here’s hoping the Queen and Cameron take care when meeting up for tea and scones.