After the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was introduced in 1939, imposing a series of stringent and intrusive restrictions on individual freedoms, the wartime government anxiously kept a close eye on compliance. How would people respond? The answer, a Ministry of Information report concluded in 1942, was that: “People are willing to bear any sacrifice if a 100% effort can be reached and the burden fairly shared by all.”
During the critical days to come, in the very different Britain of 2020, the present government must trust in exactly the same kind of popular resilience. The public desperately needs clear, bold leadership, as the trajectory of the coronavirus epidemic in this country continues to track that of stricken Italy. On Saturday 793 people there died from the disease in one day – a global record. This is the right time for Boris Johnson to abandon the register of exhortation and rely on clear instructions that are understood to carry legal force, instituting a lockdown. A laissez-faire approach to fighting a pandemic has not worked.
Most people, in uniquely testing circumstances, have done their best to follow the government’s guidance. A majority have broadly followed physical distancing advice, stayed at home for the most part and worked from there if possible. But the exact parameters of the permissible have remained unclear. The throngs who gathered in sunny public parks on Mother’s Day weekend were in part a testament to confused messaging about going outdoors. Sadly, there was also evidence of a willingness to disregard warnings that came with no sanction attached. Soon it will seem inconceivable that, as Belfast doctors and nurses put together a video pleading with people to stay at home, over 6,000 people gathered to run the Bath half-marathon.
This halfway house of self-regulation must be vacated for good. An analysis by scientists from University College London and the University of Cambridge found that sticking to a voluntary regime could lead to between 35,000 and 70,000 excess deaths over the next year. That is clearly an unacceptably high price to pay for allowing people to choose whether or not to do the right thing.
Yet again, as in previous phases of this crisis, institutions in civil society have in any case begun to perform the necessary gear change without waiting for belated orders. The National Trust has shut parks and gardens across the country. Councils such as Lambeth have closed children’s play areas. There appears to be a grim acceptance that the previously unthinkable – the shutting down of sport, pubs and restaurants and the abandonment of the workplace – was only the beginning of what had to be thought.
Any form of lockdown will constitute a level of constraint that none of us have ever experienced. Plans must be put in place to help families with limited domestic resources to draw upon. It will be necessary to tend to people’s mental health as well as their physical wellbeing. This is a journey without maps. But the evidence from Italy suggests that citizens are willing to cede their liberties and swap freedom for greater security once the state takes responsibility.
The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, locked his citizens down two weeks ago. There, as in Britain, the spread of Covid-19 was initially greeted with misplaced stoicism and declarations that life must go on. The leader of the governing Democratic party, Nicola Zingaretti, was photographed sharing an aperitif with students in Milan. That kind of breezy defiance was swiftly replaced by fear, as images of overwhelmed hospitals came to dominate the evening news. Enforced by fines for those who left their homes without good reason, lockdown brought clarity and, overwhelmingly, compliance. On Sunday, Italian health officials cautiously welcomed the news that, after the horrific high of the day before, the daily toll had finally fallen back and rates of infection had slowed. On Monday both rates fell again. These are the first positive signs after a fortnight of national sacrifice.
As things stand, Britain is believed to be two weeks behind Italy in this nightmarish experience. Yet the government has waited to impose a similar level of self-restraint. It is right to take action now.
