HOPE AFTER THE VIRUS

In the early days of the Second World War, Britain was in the fight for its life. All of Britain's European allies had been knocked out of the war by Hitler's Germany. In the Pacific, Britain's possessions and dominions were under threat from the advancing Japanese empire. Britain's own empire was sending help in the form of troops, ships and supplies, but they were not enough. The Soviets were engaged in a life-or-death struggle of their own with the Nazis, and the United States did not enter the war officially until late 1941, but did not ramp up enough men and materiel until late 1942. Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, held Britain's war effort together almost literally with his own two hands, and the survival of that island nation was nothing short of a miracle of luck, tenacity and courage.

A second miracle, interestingly, was also happening behind the scenes. While Britain was preoccupied with the war effort, a commission was enacted that would dramatically shape the post-war world and, in no small way, alter the way Britain and many other countries defined their societies and how people would interact with each other. And, most importantly, this commission re-invented the role of government in a way that would be profound and long-lasting.

According to Churchill's biographer, William Manchester, the Prime Minister knew that Britain would have to change after the war. The suffering, the privations experienced by most of the population, the entire way of doing things needed to be put right. Amazing to think of such foresight from a man who was one of the most privileged in Britain, a true blue-blood aristocrat. But he had lived through the turbulent times of the rise of Britain as a world power in the late 19th century, only to see it shattered in the bloodbath of the First World War and the terrible economic uncertainty and upheaval of the 20's and 30's. He knew that the nation would not stand for a return to the status quo after the Second World War. He knew that the whole social structure of class and privilege must come to some type of re-ordering … to ignore that would lead to a possible revolution resembling the Bolshevik experience in Soviet Russia.

Sir William Beveridge

Or so Manchester would have us believe. In reality, this great change came about at the behest of Churchill's health minister, a man named Ernest Brown, who realized that the system of insurance, particularly health insurance was in need of an overhaul. It was a rather clumsy, outdated and inefficient system. Churchill, immersed in the war effort, agreed with Brown that such an overhaul was needed. Brown gave the assignment to an accomplished but little-known man outside of politics called Sir William Beveridge. Beveridge took on the assignment with relish and, while bombs rained on London and the population was transfixed on surviving the existential threat of Nazism, Beveridge and his team created one of the seminal works of social planning, the so-called Beveridge Report.

A summary of the Beveridge Report here would take up much space. The reader can look it up for him/herself. But the nub of the matter is this: not only was Britain's insurance sector reformed, the entire health and welfare system was as well. Churchill, when he saw the Report's final copy was dumfounded by the breadth of the reforms, but Manchester insisted that Churchill would've enacted most of it. Alas, Churchill and his Conservatives were turfed out of office in the post war election of 1945: the British people needed his bulldog spirit during the fighting, but wanted nothing to do with him in peacetime. The new Prime Minister was Labour's Clement Atlee. Atlee endorsed the Beveridge Report whole-heartedly and saw, correctly, Churchill's defeat as a signal that the British people wanted fundamental change. Atlee and his colleagues set about creating, for better or worse, the modern post-war welfare state, with all its social safety nets and programmes.

While Britain languished economically in the 20 years after the war, it can be argued that the working classes in that nation were healthier, better cared for, and paid more fairly for their work. I remember having a conversation with my old Grandad, a Cambois coal miner, about Britain from the end of the war until the late 60's. I never knew if he was a Labour supporter, but he told me, in no uncertain terms, that conditions for working people in Britain improved greatly.

We are now living through a period of great turbulence in the world. The current Covid 19 pandemic is perhaps the tip of the iceberg: we have been enduring a 40 year period ( since the days of Thatcher and Reagan ) where the social safety net has been whittled away, and rampant capitalism has been allowed to flourish. Working people have seen the purchasing power of their wages deteriorate. Power and wealth is more securely concentrated in the hands of a few. Democracy is under attack from human and cyber sources that distort the truth and bend things in the favour of the wealthy. And now this severe pandemic has hit us and made us think of our society and how things are being done, and how they ought to be done.

An enlightened government should, in this time of crisis, endeavor to create another Beveridge Report. While we are all preoccupied with surviving this terrible virus, and while we watch thousands of our fellow citizens fall ill and even die, someone should be working on "The Plan" for the world post-pandemic. There are so many things that need to be re-thought, re-purposed, and re-prioritized. This is the perfect opportunity.

I'd like to believe such a government exists. And I'd like to hope that someone, somewhere, is willing to take on Sir William Beveridge's challenge. Who will plan the brave new world that will be born, kicking and screaming, out of this pandemic? Who has the vision and the guts ?

We need that person NOW !