A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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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. 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. 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.’ Beveridge was deeply disappointed by Labour’s response to his proposals and because the government did not consult him as he hoped, as Jose Harris points out in her excellent biography of Beveridge which, strangely, Hennessy does not reference. 1 Following this missed opportunity, British state pensions have never provided enough to live on without a means-tested supplement (now Pension Credit) and are currently among the lowest in the high-income world. Beveridge’s report did influence real improvements, but full implementation would have achieved still more.

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

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. As a constitutional expert, do you think “partygate” is a storm in a teacup or a fundamental breach of the contract between government and citizens?

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However I found this to be a very scrappy and jumbled piece. It covers a very summary account of British health and social policy - taking the Beveridge Report as its starting and reference points - and concludes with a cri de coeur about developing a new Beveridge framework following the Covid 19 pandemic. 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 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: Britain Before and After COVID (Audio

Jay Elwes Has the past decade blunted our sense of the duty of care? With Britain still beached on the problem of Brexit, will we ever recover from the cost of Covid to provide adequate welfare again, wonders Peter Hennessy 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 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. 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 Covid has highlighted the fact that the most severe inequalities are those found on a global rather than a national level. This raises questions about the implicit nationalism of the British welfare state. In 1944, Friedrich Hayek wrote that socialists ‘proclaim as a duty towards the fellow members of the existing states, [what] they are not prepared to grant to the foreigner’. In any case, are the architects of the postwar settlement people we would want to imitate now? What would Keynes have said about contemporary Britain? A eugenicist, he might have made some sinister remarks about the effect of Covid on the ‘unfit’. Had he witnessed British politics over the last few years, his scepticism about democracy would hardly have been attenuated. He might well have pointed out how different things would be now had graduates possessed two votes in 2016, as they did in 1945.