LONDON — Members of the Driscoll family tend not to fight. If they do, it is over whose turn it is to vacuum.
Leslie Driscoll, 55, sells hot cross buns in an English bakery in London and addresses her customers with “love” or “darling”; her husband, Peter, 54, works as a floor layer; their daughter, Louise, a 19-year-old with dyed blue hair, is a barista in a hip coffee shop.
But last week, the Driscolls fell out. Badly. They had an argument so big they did not speak to one another for days, Leslie Driscoll said. Shortly afterward, her husband went off in a huff to see friends up north, in Derby.
The source of the family drama: whether Britain should remain part of the European Union, a process often referred to as “Brexit.”
With only days to go until the referendum on membership in the bloc on Thursday, polls suggest that the country is deeply split along socioeconomic and regional lines, with many older and working-class voters in England favoring leaving, and younger and better-educated Britons, and a majority of those in Scotland and Northern Ireland, favoring staying.
As the consequences of the choice come into focus for voters, tensions are bubbling. In the case of the Driscoll family, they are boiling over.
“I completely disagree with her,” Louise Driscoll said on a recent afternoon, looking at her mother squarely in the face as they sat in a cafe. “We shouldn’t be leaving, like, an organization that has helped us more than we could ever help ourselves if we were to go it alone.”
Louise is the only one in her family who wants Britain to remain. Her parents and her 80-year-old grandfather want out.
“This is a little island,” her mother said matter-of-factly, lighting up a cigarette and letting the ash fall on her glittery sneakers. “We should look after our own first. Charity begins at home.”
“But we are all people!” Louise said. “We should help each other.”
“It don’t work that way, darling,” her mother replied, shaking her head. “If you’re born here, you pass as English. I don’t care whether you’re black, white, green or blue, or purple with pink spots on — you’re English.”
Those born abroad, Leslie Driscoll said, “have got their own governments, their own parliaments, whatever.”
Up and down the country, the debate over Europe is pitting husband against wife, children against parents, sisters against brothers, divisions unlikely to be healed easily after the referendum is decided.
The debate over Britain’s continued membership in Europe has touched on issues as varied as immigration, terrorism, the economy, London’s housing shortage and the fate of the National Health Service.
Some of these issues, like immigration, are directly related to the European Union. Others, like the shortage of affordable housing, have little to do with it.
Yet those distinctions are blurring. For many, the referendum is as much a chance to register displeasure with the country’s direction as it is an opportunity to reject or embrace Europe. The stance of some voters is being shaped by personal experience and anecdote.
There is, for example, a widespread perception that European citizens are flocking to Britain, especially from Eastern Europe, to take advantage of its social welfare system. But Britain’s welfare system is not as generous as those of many other European nations, and fewer than 7 percent of immigrants receive benefits.
Louise Driscoll voted for the Green Party in last year’s general election and was appalled that her mother, traditionally a Labour voter, had opted for the anti-Europe, anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party. (“Sorry, I know I’m a bit antiquated — can’t help it, love,” Leslie Driscoll replied, somewhat sheepishly, after her daughter uttered an expletive.)
Louise Driscoll said she understood the pressures that immigration placed on schools and hospitals. But leaving the EU worried her, she said, because it risked wrecking the economy and making it hard for young people to secure employment. It took her eight months to find work as a barista, she said.
“If I wanted to work abroad, it would be a lot easier if England was in the EU,” Louise said.
Her mother suggested that Louise move to New York, possibly unaware of the paradox that this would make her an immigrant herself.
In what sounded like a final plea, she said: “At the end of the day, the EU is going to affect my generation more than it will affect your generation. So shouldn’t it be down to us to decide whether or not to stay?”
Her mother fell silent and was thoughtful.
“I am 55 years of age,” she said slowly. “I know — I appreciate that in 50 years’ time, you’ll be here and I won’t, and you’ll have to put up with whatever’s happened.”
She paused.
“But I still want out,” she said. “Sorry.”
http://cn.nytstyle.com/international/20160622/britain-eu-referendum-families/en-us/?_ga=1.225379929.230442792.1483887339
Structure of the Lead：
WHO- England
WHEN- 2016.06.22
WHAT- go or stay in E.U.
WHY- Freedom
WHERE- England
HOW- Vote
Keywords:
1. majority 大部分
2. tension 緊張
3. cigarette 香菸
4. parliament 議會
5. division 分配
6. welfare 福利
7. barista 咖啡店店員
8. plea 懇求
9. thoughtful 貼心的
10. appreciate 感謝
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