Politics

What happens when war on coronavirus is won as UK stands at crossroads


At 9.42am on this day in 1940 the Nazi sub U-37 torpedoed steamer Stancliffe off the Shetland Islands.

Skipper Henry Herbert and 21 crew perished.

It was the only British loss of life at sea that day, one tragedy amid many over the next five years of war. And at the end of it the British were a changed people.

Today we are in another war and, like the Stancliffe, against an unseen enemy. The casualty figures of around 800 every 24 hours coming back from the coronavirus frontline are three times higher than the daily average 80 years ago.

Some other concerns back then are eerily familiar. The Economist magazine of 12th April 1940 worried about how business would recover.

We were within a month of being led by a PM prone to colourful speech and flamboyant gestures initially thought by many Conservatives not up to the job. They called Boris Johnson ’s hero Winston Churchill “the rogue elephant”.

Winston Churchill was voted out after he failed to see change

When Britain emerged from the struggle against the Nazis she was broke. Today our economy is being crippled.

The end of World War II saw the birth rate jump 33 per cent. Lockdown could spawn another baby boom. Food rationing and queues outside shops – lengthened by social distancing – are reminiscent of wartime.

The UK which emerged from the ashes of Europe with 450,000 deaths, 67,000 of them civilians, did so with different values, fresh purpose, and a willingness to pull herself up by the bootstraps to embrace the most comprehensive social change in history.

The greatest reform was the creation of the NHS. Without it we would not have the weapons to fight today’s war.

It was not ingratitude for his wartime leadership which led to Churchill being swept from power in the 1945 Labour landslide. It was because he was a Tory.

And Tory meant no change from the bleak 1930s. A different world required a different world order. When this crisis is over, no change will be no option either.

Modern history professor Rohan McWilliam of Anglia Ruskin university says: “Some part of Johnson feels that this is his Churchill in 1940 moment.

When Britain emerged from the struggle against the Nazis she was broke

“But he’s been appeasing the virus by being too slow to lock down. He’s not even followed his own health advice.

“It’s difficult to present an image of indomitable strength from an intensive care unit. And for the first time shelf stackers and delivery drivers are seen as heroes as they keep vital supply chains going. Our views of what and who is important have been transformed.”

The worth of investment bankers and hedge fund managers who never had it so good becomes valueless when measured against so many who have never had it so bad.

It is the shop assistants, the posties, the truckers, refuse collectors and utility workers who lead the charge in today’s war effort.

Buried in the polling figures of 61 per cent approval for the way the Government is handling this crisis are the 57 per cent who say ministers did not move fast enough to contain the pandemic.

Pollster Adam Drummond of Opinium says: “The crucial difference between Churchill in 1945 and Johnson is that Churchill had to face an election almost immediately and the Conservatives were punished for their failures in the 1930s.

Churchill had to face an election after his failings in the 1930s

“While the fallout from coronavirus could be huge, the Conservatives will have several years to recover as long as they aren’t seen to have handled it worse than other countries.”

In 1935 the Tories had 585 MPs. Ten years later they were down to 213, and Clem Attlee’s new Labour government enjoyed a 146 majority.

The new PM was determined to put it to good use. It was the poor and downtrodden who had lost most and they demanded it be put right.

Social psychologist Mick Finlay says: “Coronavirus affects the poorest sections of society most. Mass dangers always do.

“During the Blitz working class housing was more likely to collapse because of poorer building standards.

“And middle class households were more likely to have their own bomb shelters in their gardens.”

The basement of a warehouse in Tilbury, Essex sheltered 14,000 people from Hitler’s Luftwaffe with only a few buckets for toilets. Infections spread like wildfire.

Nye Bevan visits first patient Sylvia in 1948

With 700,000 homes destroyed by German bombing Attlee embarked on a massive housebuilding programme. By 1948 Labour reached 750,000 new builds, and doubled that before leaving office.

Innovations included 156,000 weatherproof, warm and well-lit prefabs built in factories to be unloaded ready-painted where they were to stand.

They weighed two tons compared to the average 125 tons for a brick house and only needed screwing together, often by German or Italian PoWs.

Since 1942 the toff William Beveridge, a former social worker who rose each morning at six for a cold bath, had been beavering away at a report so far-reaching a copy of it was even found in Hitler’s Berlin bunker.

Allied bombers had been dropping it over Germany to show what a post-war democracy could achieve. It was the blueprint for Labour’s “cradle to grave” welfare state.

And the jewel in the crown was the NHS.

While the Tories got their knickers in a twist over nationalising the Bank of England and a coal industry which supplied 90 per cent of our energy needs, they could hardly object to the NHS in principle.

So they left it to the British Medical Association to do so in practice.

Doctors feared they would be nationalised, too, and paid flat rate salaries.

But Health minister Nye Bevan shrewdly allowed them to keep their private practices and set GP pay by patient numbers.

That brought them onside, and they have been onside ever since the NHS opened its doors to all on 5th July 1948. First patient was Sylvia Diggory, 13, and the NHS cured her potentially fatal liver disease.

Now the NHS treats a million patients every 36 hours. No wonder it ramped up £13billion of debt which the Government has just written off.

The lesson from this crisis must be to give a health service proving its value beyond price the funding it needs never to get into debt again.

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Coronavirus outbreak

Churchill was ousted because he failed to understand that Britons were a changed people in a different Britain.

Boris Johnson could yet go the same way, even though an election is four years off.

Mark Harrison, emeritus professor of economics at Warwick University, says: “World War II fuelled a desire for change. In a time of national crisis it’s natural that people rally round the national leader. That may not last.

“Lots of things we took for granted have suddenly been taken away. We will have greater expectations of government than before.

“Whether Boris keeps his halo depends on him being able to go with the swing of the popular mood.”

But for now all we have to look forward to is our own VE Day. Our liberation.

Virus End Day.





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