A Bond Is Broken

"Civic strength comes allied with, and founded on, good governance."

My Dad died last summer in the UK. I spent some of his final days with him during his stay in the hospital — subject to the Covid restrictions and all the rigmarole that entailed. He'd been ill for some time, yet the onset of his final decline took me by surprise. I suppose we all expect Mum and Dad to be around forever.

But don't worry, this is not a grieving piece. Instead, I wish to use what happened to him to illustrate a point; the breaking of the social contract.

Some of you may ask what is the social contract and why is it relevant here? Philosophers will argue the details, but in essence the social contract is a set of rights and mutual responsibilities we have among ourselves as citizens. Some of these rights and obligations come to us in the written law, while others emerge from the culture as norms of behaviour and values. The social contract asks things of us, and we get something in return from the state.

At the most basic level, we agree to obey the law; in return, the law protects us. All societies have ‘a social contract’ in various forms because cooperation and cohesion break down without it. We are all dependent on each other — if the petrol truck driver opts out, we get no petrol. As philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 to 1679) put it, life without the social contract is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."

Hobbes held the sovereign as the pinnacle of the social contract, with everyone agreeing to support the King or Queen of the day on the basis they led and protected the nation. These days, for the most part, we have substituted politicians for kings, although the same process is at work.

I arrived back in the UK four days before Dad suffered his final stroke. Early that June Sunday morning, he complained of a cold swollen right arm. In my ignorance, I suggested calling an ambulance. My mind was still in Hong Kong mode, where for the most part the police, ambulances and hospitals are well funded. When you call ‘999’ they turn up and quick.

Mum said driving him to the local community hospital would be best. She already knew we'd struggle to get an ambulance. So off we set in my car.

We waited about an hour to see a doctor. By all accounts that was fast. The doctor soon assessed that Dad needed urgent medical care at the local infirmary. Again, I suggested an ambulance. The reply came, an ambulance wouldn’t be available for three hours. On a Sunday morning! Shouldn't this be a quiet time with adequate cover available? The doctor was insistent, “Drive your Dad to the infirmary, we will tell them you are coming.”

Thus, with my elderly mother holding Dad on the back seat, we took the 40-minute drive to the infirmary. In the meantime, my sister was en route and waiting to assist.

On arrival, Dad saw a nurse and underwent triage — then listed (again) as a priority case he waited six hours to see a doctor. During that time, he struggled to sit up while held in a crowded corridor surrounded by drunks, drug addicts and remnants of Saturday night violence. Not very pleasant.

Eventually, a doctor examined him and on he went to the severe stroke unit — a title that told us everything we needed to know. He died nine weeks later.

For sure the care he received once on the ward was exemplary. But I'm still asking why it took so long to get there and start his 'urgent' care. Something went wrong.

Only now can I reflect on these events to observe this episode as a microcosm of a failing Britain. That Sunday morning, the social contract between my Dad and the state fractured.

The state reneged on the deal. And, no, I don't mean I expected Dad to live. But I did expect a basic level of care and prompt attention from the outset. That didn't happen.

Even by the yardstick of Margaret Thatcher, who claimed, “There is no society” I reckon my Dad passes the test of having done the right thing. Thatcher’s statement, often taken out of context, asserted that people are too quick to pass their problems to the government; too quick to talk of their entitlements instead of their obligations. She had a point.

Dad’s score card is unblemished. He served his country in the RAF, paid his taxes, raised a family, always held a job and never took benefits. He worked repairing cars with his hands and taking stuff apart to rebuild it. He obeyed the law. His four surviving children emerged as adults with strong community values, and each made a success of life. Dad fulfilled his part of the bargain.

I know millions of others are in the same or worse predicaments. Horror stories abound of the elderly lying on floors for hours awaiting paramedics. Meanwhile the police are not turning up to deal with crime and other public services are failing.

In the 1980’s Dad told me, "The establishment will look after us as long as they need soldiers. Once the Cold War is over, they'll drop the working class. They only need us to fight their wars."

At the time, I thought this cynical and trite. Yet on that Sunday morning, when the moment arrived for the state to front up, they were missing.

When Otto von Bismarck pioneered state pensions and social security in late nineteenth-century Germany, in private he was candid enough to admit he strived to ensure the people's loyalty. His policies didn't come from a desire for the commoner's well-being. No, he wanted people fit and healthy to fight for the nation.

The UK only came around to universal health care after World War II. Churchill commissioned the 1942 Beverage Report that first proposed the idea, offering hope to a war-torn Britain. Yet, Winston rolled back his support after the war, citing costs. It was thus left to the Labour Government in 1945 to make the NHS come alive. And with that, the NHS became the most tangible aspect of the British national social contract.

Another more general illustration of the faltering social contract comes from Boris Johnson and his Nos. 10 crew. In response to Covid, Johnson imposed a draconian lockdown on the nation enforced by a suddenly animated police force.

He then proceeded to break the very rules he imposed. So while he denied people the right to hold the hand of a dying relatives, he swigged champagne in Nos 10.

Add to that fast-track processes for purchasing PPE that favoured Tory donors, and the stench of corruption hangs in the air besides that of hypocrisy. No surprise then that Britain continues to slip down the corruption league tables, falling seven places last year.

As the NHS struggles with over seven million people on waiting lists, it's beset by strikes. Hailed as heroes during the Covid crisis, nurses, doctors and ambulance staff are now framed as greedy. No wonder they are up in arms. This reversal echoes my Dad's view that the politicians will turn on you once you've outlived your value to them.

I don't intend to address the intractabilities of the NHS. Nor is it much worth taking a tour through the malaise of British policing, the military and assorted other public services. Nowadays, the institutions seem to divide their time between celebrating their woke agenda and apologising for something. None appears focused on their true original purpose.

Brexit has not helped, nor does pretending the nation is a world power. That claim doesn't stand up when you can't even control a 21-mile-wide stretch of water called the English Channel; doesn’t stand up when you have aircraft carriers without planes; and doesn’t stand up when selecting people based on gender and ethnicity instead of merit. The list goes on.

Still, I don’t see impending collapse, with a resulting Mad Max landscape. Instead things will get crappier bit by bit.

Yet, I suspect those who experienced the slow run-down over decades perceive poor public services as normal. Instead of boiling like the proverbial frog, they’ve been frozen into inertia as their democracy failed them. Along the way the media cartel has failed them, and for sure the politicians on all sides.

Civic strength comes allied with, and founded on, good governance. That bedrock provides the solidity which is vital for societies to work. Yet, in modern Britain, the torn fabric of good honest governance is flapping in the wind.

All I can say is hold tight to your loved ones and hope that none of them desperately needs the swift aid of the state. It may not be there

Sad isn’t it. I leave you with Vera Lynn.