A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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I write this as a long-term admirer of Lord Peter Hennessy. He is a fine historian of modern British politics and constitutional affairs; an expert commentator and communicator; and appears to be a charming and decent person. These attributes come through strongly in this short book. Relatedly, expect a slew of books about mental health – though not all of them will toe the line that we’re experiencing an epidemic of mental illness: Losing Our Minds by Lucy Foulkes (Bodley Head, April), for instance, seeks to overturn this notion, especially as applied to the young. On this terrain, one memoir stands out, having already been garlanded with praise from Robert Macfarlane: Heavy Light: A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare (Chatto & Windus, March). Those feeling more than usually apprehensive right now might like to turn to Relax: A User’s Guide to Life in the Age of Anxiety by Timothy Caulfield (Faber, January), a handbook that is informed as well as wise (Caulfield is a Canadian public health expert). You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

A Duty of Care - Penguin Books UK A Duty of Care - Penguin Books UK

Arifa Akbar’s Consumed: A Sister’s Story is about the death of her sibling from tuberculosis. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time, Craig Taylor’s follow-up to his wondrous oral contemporary history, Londoners, is long awaited (John Murray, March), and it will be interesting to see how this book reads at a point when our urban centres feel so hollowed out. At the other extreme, The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan (White Rabbit, May) is about – yes – foghorns, and promises to sit on the wobbly line (and, in this case, noisy, mournful line) between nature writing and music writing. Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ John Preston’s Fall is an account of the life and death of Robert Maxwell, pictured in 1964. Photograph: Hulton Getty One of our most celebrated historians shows how we can use the lessons of the past to build a new post-Covid society in Britain

A duty of care : Britain before and after Corona A duty of care : Britain before and after Corona

The part of this excellent Book I should like to highlight is its call for a 'New Beveridge' manifesto to transform UK Government along lines which are vitally needed now. Hennessy attended the nearby Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School, and on Sundays he went to St Mary Magdalene church, where he was an altar boy. He was educated at St Benedict's School, an independent school in Ealing, West London. When his father's job led the family to move to the Cotswolds, he attended Marling School, a grammar school in Stroud, Gloucestershire. He went on to study at St John's College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a BA in 1969 and a PhD in 1990. Hennessy was a Kennedy Memorial Scholar at Harvard University from 1971 to 1972. I have always enjoyed listening to Peter Hennessey, but admit to finding this book hard going at times, despite its brevity. However, he does very well to produce a very focused analysis of post war Britain when measured against the 5 wants. Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer. To grasp his direction of travel in this narrative of the British social experience since 1945, we must fast-forward to the end. He quotes Michael Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, with approval: “It is often assumed that the only alternative to equality of opportunity is a sterile, oppressive equality of results. But there is another alternative: a broad equality of condition that enables those who do not achieve great wealth or prestigious positions to live lives of decency and dignity.” In A Duty of Care, the historian asks whether politics after Covid can match the reforming ambition of the 1940s.You quote Nigel Lawson saying that the NHS is the closest thing we have to a religion. But to improve its performance, does it need an overhaul or just greater investment? Hennessy's analysis of post-war Britain, 'Never Again: Britain 1945–1951', won the Duff Cooper Prize in 1992 and the NCR Book Award in 1993. He concludes with the hope that the experience will lead to “a new consensus” and an agreed programme of reform, a “new Beveridge”. He suggests “five tasks” necessary for “a more equal, socially just nation funded by levels of productivity that can only come from sustained scientific and technological prowess, with a set of effective democratic and governing institutions” (p. 131). The five “tasks” (not “giants” though they are quite giant) are, firstly, much improved social care. Hennessy rightly describes how its inadequacies, in particular that it has always been charged for and means-tested unlike health care though many frail people need both, have been repeatedly criticized by official committees and others over many decades, and repeatedly neglected by successive governments including that currently in power. However, he does not discuss how already poor conditions in the care system were worsened by cuts to local funding and “outsourcing” to profit-making private companies under Thatcher and since 2010. Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’ Most of Hennessy’s previous publications have focused on the period from 1945 to 1979, which he presents as the golden age of the good chap. He is mainly interested in the centre and centre left of politics, a spectrum that extends from Denis Healey to Iain Macleod. The challenge to the consensus formed by such figures is seen as coming mainly from the Thatcherite right, with the left of the Labour Party not getting much attention. Now Hennessy has turned his focus to the impact of Covid-19. Like many who seek out ‘lessons from history’, Hennessy’s main conclusion is ‘I was right all along.’ The greater part of the book is a survey of postwar history that repeats much of what Hennessy has said before: he quotes generously from his own series of radio interviews with politicians. He describes a postwar period in which Keynesian economics dominated, the welfare state flourished and a Bevin-esque variety of patriotic Atlanticism prevailed. It turns out that what we need is the same again and that the right response to the effects of the pandemic is a ‘new consensus’ and a ‘new Beveridge’. These conclusions will not come as a surprise to anyone who has read Hennessy’s previous work or, for that matter, to anyone who has read virtually any journalistic commentary on Britain in the last few years.

A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy — building a better post

Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ Modern British history can be divided into two parts: before Covid and after. That is the central pillar of this at times arid but ultimately compelling account of British social policy since 1945. We recovered in the aftermath of the second world war. Can we do it again, post-pandemic? Hennessy is moderately optimistic that the nation’s shared Covid experience could be what R.H. Tawney termed “a source of social energy”, increasing awareness of the need for the state to care for its people, breathing life into reform debates that have existed for some time. Prominent among these is introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), as trialled in Finland and elsewhere. Or of Universal Basic Services (UBS), including housing, transport, childcare, social care, healthcare education, legal services, access to digital information and communications and a basic income. Both are designed to bring about social equality, social justice and, as Hennessy puts it, “serenity”. The problem remains of finding a government willing and able to introduce such costly measures, though we might reasonably ask why a government that can afford very expensive failed private services could not afford public services that bring real public benefits. Similarly superficial surveys of the Major and New Labour governments follow. Blair and Brown receive due credit for improving health and education funding, for Sure Start, introducing the minimum wage, reducing unemployment and increasing economic growth, until overtaken by the international financial crisis in 2008. Hennessy rightly points out their reluctance to tax the rich: low incomes rose but the inequality gap remained substantial. Also, their preference for maintaining and extending mean-tested benefits over restoring universalism. But they were more successful in reducing child poverty than he suggests: according to the IFS by one-third rather than one quarter between 1999 and 2010. You also quote RH Tawney, who said that the mark of civilisation was to aim to eliminate inequalities. Can we move towards a more egalitarian future with a monarchy?The detailed prescriptions for a better future advanced in this book deserve to be read by anyone actively engaged in politics today. Nobody knows more about the world of high politics in the United Kingdom than Peter Hennessy. Richard Evans, Times Literary Supplement For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Almost as soon as the pandemic began, it became a cliché to compare the UK’s response to Covid to its experience of the Second World War, but if anyone has earned the right to do so, it is Peter Hennessy. The historian, broadcaster and cross-bench peer is renowned for his books on postwar Britain, so familiar with his subject matter that he treats his “characters” – Churchill, Bevin, Wilson – as though he is writing about old friends. But just because Hennessy is able to draw such parallels does not mean he should. And at times his new book A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid, in which he attempts to chart the impact of the Beveridge reforms over eight decades and transpose their lessons on to the post-pandemic era, falters under the weight of its ambition.