A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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A Duty of Care : Britain Before and After Covid - Google Books

The financial crisis put an end to New Labour despite Brown’s successful attempts to alleviate it. The “austerity” policies of the Conservative-led coalition, continued by Conservative governments that followed, completed Thatcher’s destruction of the post-1945 reforms, including through the introduction of Universal Credit, the “bedroom tax” and severe reductions to legal aid, all summarized adequately by Hennessy. In consequence, as he points out, in 2020 the “5 Giants” were very much alive, as indicated above, though he provides little detail of pre-Covid poverty. He rightly describes the attempts of the Scottish and Welsh governments, following devolution in 1999, to retain a more caring system so far as their limited powers allowed, raising the possibility of the break-up of the UK, soon reinforced by divisions over Brexit. Arifa Akbar’s Consumed: A Sister’s Story is about the death of her sibling from tuberculosis. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The GuardianThe 'duty of care' which the state owes to its citizens is a phrase much used, but what has it actually meant in Britain historically? And what should it mean in the future, once the immediate Covid crisis has passed? Peter Hennessy is Attlee professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary University of London. He is a fellow of the British Academy and was made a crossbench life peer in 2010. The author of a widely admired “postwar trilogy” of history books, his latest work is A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid. It combines deep knowledge of the UK’s political landscape over the past 80 years with a “new Beveridge” manifesto to create a fresh vision of the welfare state. But let’s move on from these (strange) times, to other times (and places). I could not be more excited about Fall by John Preston (Viking, February), an account of the life and death of the tycoon Robert Maxwell by the author of A Very English Scandal (though I still think it should be called Splash!). In biography, I wonder whether Burning Man: The Ascent of DH Lawrence by Frances Wilson (Bloomsbury, May) will make me feel any differently about my least favourite writer (if anyone can do this, it’s Wilson); The Mirror and the Palette: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits (Weidenfeld, March) by Jennifer Higgie, the former editor of Frieze, is set to be sumptuous as well as fascinating; and My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland (Virago, February) sounds weird and un-categorisable (in a good way). Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth: The Biography (Cape, April) is bound to be rich, complicated – and very long. (Bailey, the biographer of John Cheever and Richard Yates, was appointed by Roth, and had full access to his archives.) deeply thoughtful ... the book is testament to Hennessy's own deep humanity as well as his expertise in the history of Britain since 1945, the era of the post-war consensus, about which he writes with such conviction. It is a valuable and exceptionally well-reasoned guide to how we might turn round a country battered not by war, as in 1945, but by a wave of disease unknown in living memory. Simon Heffer, Sunday Telegraph

A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy | Waterstones A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy | Waterstones

He was born in Edmonton, the youngest child of William G. Hennessy by his marriage to Edith (Wood-Johnson) Hennessy 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. How relevant to present problems is the comparison of the war and the pandemic? World War 2 lasted for more than 5years, longer (so far) than the pandemic and was far more disruptive, nationally and internationally. Another difference is that, although it was preceded by 20 years of high unemployment and poverty, war needs brought about unprecedented full employment, rising living standards for many on low incomes and shrinking inequalities, raising expectations for the future and leading to many proposals for post-war improvement in social and economic conditions.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. Hennessy’s great skill is flattery. He flatters those that he writes about but he also flatters those who read him. He writes about Britain in the first-person plural and is much concerned to emphasise the virtues that ‘we’ display. He states banal opinions with a confidence that will give anyone who holds such opinions the impression that they must be very clever. Everyone gets to bathe in the warm glow of their own virtue. At times, this book reminded me of those television programmes from the 1970s in which some established star – say Val Doonican – would present a line-up of his friends. There would be an exchange of mutual admiration and the performers would sing a well-known song together. John Preston’s Fall is an account of the life and death of Robert Maxwell, pictured in 1964. Photograph: Hulton Getty If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Peter Hennessy's A Duty of Care is a call from the deep for civility, compromise and cooperation. Coming from one of our most distinguished political historians, it can hardly be ignored. But A Duty of Care is much more than just an appeal for a politics of sanity and mutual respect. It is also, no less importantly, and more interestingly, a Confucian appeal for a politics of benevolence. Oliver Letwin, The Tablet