Economics Research Community Seminar – Dr Eric Melander

Title: Brexit and the Blitz: Conflict, Collective Memory and Populism

Date: 31 January 2024

Time: 13:30-14:30

Location: NUBS.2.14

If you would like to attend, please register using the following link:

Brexit and the Blitz: Conflict, Collective Memory and Populism

Speaker: Dr Eric Melander, University of Birmingham

Abstract:

On 23 June 2016, the electorate of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Britain’s relationship with the European project has a long history, and deep historical factors may have played a role in shaping the outcome of the referendum. I show that the experience (and collective memory) of bombing during the Second World War is one such factor. Combining geo-referenced data from wartime intelligence reports and district-level results of the EU Referendum, I show that districts with a greater number of bombing events exhibited higher Leave vote shares. This pattern is robust to controlling for other salient predictors of support for Leave and to using technical details of Luftwaffe technology to instrument for bombing. Collective memory is an important moderator; bombing predicts Leave vote shares only in districts where war graves from the Second World War are most prevalent. The same is not the case for war graves from the First World War. Lastly, evidence from individual-level surveys reveals that WWII-rooted Leave rhetoric was effective in swaying voters in high bombing intensity areas.