“Keep calm and drink tea,” reads a sign at The Corner Shop on the Marietta Square, which specializes in British delectables like lemon curd and Cadbury chocolates. It’s fine advice, said shopkeeper Yvonne Blackman the day after her countrymen voted to split with the European Union.
“Tea mends everything,” said Blackman, who has lived in the United States for eight years and was pleased at the news from across the pond.
“I think it’s a good thing,” she said. “The fear people have is the fear of the unknown.”
That fear rattled global financial markets and drummed Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the campaign to keep the United Kingdom in the EU, out of a job. Throughout metro-Atlanta, British expatriates and others with ties to UK said Friday they were startled by the landmark vote. Some supported the outcome. Others were more apprehensive, especially about what the bold move could mean for their bottom line.
“I’ve just seen my stocks devalued 20 percent overnight and the pound plummet to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar,” Stuart Jolly said. “It wiped 35 percent off any money I want to bring to the United States.”
A U.S. resident since 2014, Jolly lives in Suwanee and works in retail Duluth. Back home, moving freely throughout Europe was key to his business success.
“I had a global role looking after clients in most E.U. countries and traveled extensively,” he said. “I couldn’t have done my job with out the freedom to travel and supply goods and services without barriers to trade.”
The “leave” vote, Jolly believes, was rooted in concerns over surging immigration.
“The government should have stemmed migration, especially refugees receiving housing and benefits,” he said. “I thought we would remain. I was hoping it would be close and therefore a wakeup call for the government. Looks like it will truly shake things up now.”
Shane Stephens, Ireland’s Consul General in Atlanta, said the Emerald Isle doesn’t intend on letting its fluid relationship with the UK falter.
Still, they are bracing for change. Irish citizens currently enjoy virtually no border or trade regulations from the UK while both are in the EU, but that may be a thing of the past.
Still, Stephens said the reasons Ireland and the UK have worked well in the past are going to continue to bind them together.
“They’re our closest neighbors and closest of our friends and I don’t foresee that changing any time soon,” Stephens said. “It’s simple on that front.”
Ireland has been a vocal opponent of the UK leaving the EU and Stephens himself gave a speech about it alongside Atlanta’s British Counsel a few weeks ago.
For Bethany Miller, the vote feels like a longing for the past.
“I was born in Scotland so I had very similar feelings when there was the independence vote in 2014,” said Miller, who now lives in LaGrange and works for a healthcare company.
“I think a lot of folks long for post-WWII Britain, but the fact is, it’s not just the UK that has changed, it’s the whole world. Leaving the E.U. isn’t going to take things back to 1960s or ’70s Britain.”
She keeping calm, though.
“Is it the worst thing in the world? Probably not,” she said. “But I think some citizens made the decision to leave based on the past, not the future.”
At the shop where she works in Marietta, Blackman said the vote could have a domino effect. She predicts Scotland, which voted down an independence referendum in 2014, will revisit the matter and perhaps choose differently next time.
But she thinks the prevailing Brexit “leave” vote will ultimately prove beneficial for Britain.
“Its growth will get better,” Blackman said.
About the Author
