"A House Divided Cannot Stand"

As the virus spikes again I am reminded of two ancient verses that we would all do well to remember in these times. The first is believed to have emerged during the Great Plague in London of 1665 and is known to all children – "Ring a ring a roses":

“Ring-a-ring-a-roses

A pocket full of posies

Atishoo, Atishoo

We all fall down”

The second, written about 40 years before the Great Plague is by the, poet, cleric, politician, scholar and philosopher John Donne one of the greatest minds not only of his generation but of any generation in British history – we ignore the words of Donne at our peril. In 1623 in his “Meditation XV11” Donne famously wrote:

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

for I am involved in mankind.

And therefore send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

As we – and the rest of the world - fumble in the dark against Covid 19 we would do well to remember these two verses, for they have message of particular relevance for we British.

Their message is simple and unarguably correct. It is a message that if we, as individuals or as a nation, are to survive the next few years we have no alternative but to take on board a simple truth: we are all interconnected, we are all part of the same thing; what happens to one, can befall another. In the children’s verse “We all fall down” an illness, such as bubonic plague or modern day Covid, is not only a symptom but by a sneeze we receive or pass on that illness to others. And this happens because we are all part of the whole, closely involved with one another; people in Stuart England didn’t understand the exact causes of the plague but they did know it was allied to people living closely together and that those who lived in the poorest conditions, where they were squashed close together and in the poorer areas - most notably in the east end of the capital - were most at risk. If our experience with Covid 19 has taught us anything surely it is that the virus is the same and it passes amongst us because we are so interconnected and interdependent. To deny our oneness – as, for example, many anti-maskers do - with the rest of humanity is to deny reality. If we are to survive as a species we need to recognise this – stand united as a society, understanding the need to protect ourselves in order that we can protect others; put simply, “Atishoo, Atishoo, We all fall down”. And, John Donne puts the same message across in a different way. We cannot distance ourselves or remove ourselves from the wholeness of humanity – we are all part of the same great spectrum of life – “every man a piece of the continent” and as such each of us has a responsibility to not only ourselves but to others because we are all “involved in mankind”; the Bible put it another way we are “our brother’s keeper” – responsible for all and to all. It is what is called “the common good”.

This “oneness” or “common good” is, I believe, important and it is an idea that has been increasingly lost in recent years. As we have increasingly struggled through the last few months as the virus has taken hold its impact has, in my view exposed our society's weakness; we have been found wanting.

In 1858 on the run up to the Presidential election Abraham Lincoln made one of his most famous speeches in his bid for the presidency. He was talking of his country’s great divisions on the matter of slavery and famously quoted Gospel of St Mark (3:25): "And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand”. Lincoln and St Mark were not wrong and if we in the UK are to come through the existential threats of Covid and Brexit we must remember those words and the words of John Donne and “Ring a ring a roses” – we are all part of the whole and once we lose sight of the common good and become divided our “house” will surely fall.

We in the UK, however, do not in recent years have a good track record so far as working and standing together for the greater good. Our Prime Minister likes to extol the virtues of a time when perhaps we did stand together – the Dunkirk spirit, the Blitz generation and so on – but I wonder if that is still true today?

Sadly, it is my view that, as a nation we have in recent years consistently failed to understand the message of these verses. From the time of Thatcher we have increasingly opted – through the ballot box and as a society – for division and inequality. The Thatcher era and the years following promoted the “I society”, the individual and his wants rather than the “We society” and “the common good”. The get rich quick society based upon individual acquisition and status rather than industry and cooperation has increasingly been the defining feature of our national life. The result has been increasing economic, educational and social inequality so that today we have one of the most unequal societies in the world and also one of the most divided. We have a society in which although we are all at risk some, as in London’s Great Plague, are more at risk than others because of their relative poverty or place in society. This lunch time I read that one of the major charities providing for the homeless and especially rough sleepers has criticised the government for suggesting that night shelters should be reopened as winter approaches. At first glance this seems bizarre but the charity, “Crisis”, has a point – they know that the homeless and rough sleepers are very vulnerable to Covid and putting them together in a night shelter is a highly dangerous policy. The charity, not unreasonably, want vastly increased government spending to address the problems and ensure safe accommodation for these people. The government, of course, are reluctant to go down that costly avenue. For as long as I can remember, as we and our politicians have chosen cheapness and popular policies such as low taxation as vote winners we have seen hospitals in crisis over each winter, we have seen ambulance call out times lengthen, police and fire brigades being put under enormous pressure as resources have been cut back. And now as Covid sweeps the world, we are reaping what we have sown; we have been found out. To coin that well known aphorism or cliché (choose your descriptor) the virus has caught us unprepared, with our proverbial “trousers down”. As a society we should be ashamed to have our faults shortcomings exposed in such a way – showing to the world that for the past 40 plus years we have chosen the quick buck, the easy fix, the cash in our pockets, the “I want” rather than the “We need” society and all can now see the consequences. Our basic services were already running on empty through years of underfunding and crisis management; and the consequence now is that we do not have enough PPE, or ICU beds, or safe accommodation for the homeless, parts of our nation are more heavily subject to the ravages of Covid than others because of relative poverty, and our key workers are being subjected to trials and expectations that are quite out of order in the sixth richest country in the world.

There is, too, a paradox in all this. Since the time of Margaret Thatcher and as the individual wealth of the few has grown so the need for the very institutions that the many - our fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers - dreamed of and fought for: a decent welfare system, health care, close ties with other nations in order that peace as well as prosperity would reign have been increasingly marginalised. We have forgotten, and many (especially in the Tory party) often actively disparage, those policies and institutions – high quality local government, taxation to fund high quality health care and social welfare, well funded local and national provision for good infrastructure etc. – in favour of lower taxes, profit, everything on the cheap, and the nebulous and vacuous buzz word “choice” as if this was the most important virtue or ideal in the world. In the post Thatcher years as the square mile of the City of London became the richest place on earth, young Oxford students David Cameron and Boris Johnson, who would both become our Prime Ministers, burnt £50 notes in the front of Oxford street beggars as part of their student "fun", and "the family silver" - our great institutions and companies - were sold off to private investors and hedge fund managers while the money rolled in........ and unforgivably, rolled out. But our profligacy left a tainted legacy - we didn't put aside anything for a rainy day; we spent and borrowed but didn't invest, rebuild, restock and prepare; we wasted the years of the good harvests and when the virus struck the metaphorical granaries have been found empty. All was well for both us as individuals and for the whole nation while the money kept rolling in and palms were greased but then the financial crisis of 2008 came, austerity bit, a virus cut through society and in three months Brexit will be upon us - and we have and will be found out. The virus has shown Thatcher's economics and the post Thatcher financial world to be a failed policy and a failed idea; buzz words like “choice” or “outsourcing” are scant consolation when there is no place in an ICU for your Covid suffering grandparent or your own critical cancer treatment is put on hold because resources have to be devoted elsewhere or your children cannot be in school or you are unable to pay respects at the funeral of a loved one.

In short, what we are witnessing is exactly what Abraham Lincoln and St Mark suggested - the falling apart of the “divided house” and it is not a pretty sight. Since the time of Margaret Thatcher we have lost the notion of the common good and preferred instead the individualistic, get rich quick, vacuous and celebrity driven society and Covid 19 has found us out. In 3 months time Brexit will be upon us and that too, will, I have absolutely no doubts, find us out still further. We will discover in the harshest of ways two things of which John Donne reminded us. Firstly that we cannot cut ourselves off from the “continent”, the oneness of society, be it politically, socially, economically or metaphorically and secondly the dread awful implications of Donne's final sentence will, with absolute certainty, come to fruition: "send not to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee" - because we are part of the whole, indivisible with the rest of mankind as individuals we cannot escape the consequences of our individual and communal actions. As the impact of Brexit and Covid 19 combine, quite frankly, those consequences do not bear thinking about. I have often mused over the past few months that some good might come out of our current woes - that as a society we might be brought to our individual and communal senses and that we can reimagine a better way of doing things where the common good is the sole justification for action. But in truth I am pessimistic; I am swayed more by the words of 18th century poet and social campaigner Oliver Goldsmith whose poem “The Deserted Village” was a devastating critique of the attitudes, excesses and inequalities of his day when he prophesied ”...ill fares the land the land To hastening ills a prey When wealth accumulates, But men decay.”