Blackwell’s reopened yesterday in line with government
guidelines, which permit non-essential retail stores to begin trading again.
New safety measures to reduce the risk of transmission of Covid-19 are being used in the store to protect shoppers and booksellers. This includes physical distancing in the shop, one-way systems, and having a maximum capacity.
Books that have been touched while browsing are being
quarantined and sanitized, and Perspex screens have been set up at the tills
and enquiry points. Blackwell’s have also changed the layout of the shop to
allow for browsing at a safe distance and hand sanitizer is available to all
customers.
The Oxford bookshop, which celebrates its 141st
year in 2020, has been closed since the lockdown began at the end of March.
Assistant manager Charlie Bush said: “While our shops have
been closed, our excellent online bookshop has been sending thousands of books
out to customers – regular and new – to keep them reading even thought they
can’t visit us in person.
“That service with
free postage goes on but we are delighted that lots of booklovers have been in
to browse and buy books today, our first day open again in bricks and mortar.
“We look forward to
welcoming many more for a safe shopping experience at Blackwell’s.”
Opening
times for the Broad Street branch are Monday to Saturday from 10am until 6pm,
and Sunday 11am until 5pm. The Westgate branch is still closed.
Students that are shielding or not currently in Oxford can order books online at www.blackwells.co.uk
“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric”
Whilst Plato’s invocation of the Muses as literal goddesses allowing access to arts and creativity is outdated, the cult of the Muse has long endured. Recently the term has been invoked in cases of film directors who are obsessed with or inspired by actors whom they repeatedly return to work with.
Recently, the creative partnership between Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan has generated Lady Bird and Little Women, both critically and commercially successful films championing female narratives and creative control. From countless interviews, it is clear that their relationship extends beyond that of director and actor; they are friends who told the Hollywood Reporter that their continued partnership allows them to grow together creatively and “step into yourself a little bit more”.
Similarly, when asked about his creative partnership with Colin Farrell, who stars in The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos told The Atlantic that, “It’s also great to create these kinds of relationships and then try to evolve with the other people and try to do different things. Next time, things are easier and you can go further”. With respect to Lanthimos’ dark, surreal film worlds, wherein boundaries of morality and reality are regularly tested with acutely uncomfortable moments, finding an actor who just “gets the material” is a gift. Whilst working with friends is undeniably fun, the benefits of long-term artistic partnerships have deeper implications for both actors and directors, affecting their styles and the artistic DNA of projects.
Surrealist auteur David Lynch is known for his frequent partnership with Laura Dern. The pair first collaborated on Blue Velvet (1986) when Dern was just 19 years old. As a pastel-cardiganed high schooler, Dern enters a fevered world of severed ears and sadomasochism– a far cry from the John Hughes’ films she auditioned for at the time. It is a world she has yet to leave: Dern also starred in Wild at Heart, Inland Empire and played the mysterious Dianne in Twin Peaks: The Return. Lynch himself, naturally, remains a close personal friend. Dern told Vulture that their collaboration ““just gets better and better”.
From the beginning of her career Lynch has given Dern messy, complicated and transgressive characters. She revels in Lynch’s woozy mix of horror, mystery, dark humour and absurdity. For Dern, in taking on a role from Lynch she finds herself “falling in love with these outrageously complicated characters” and for Lynch, Dern’s versatility and emotional commitment to the roles ground his demanding films with a humanity that we may otherwise struggle to see in his imaginative worlds. Dern’s presence on the screen feels as integral to a Lynch film as an Angelo Badalamenti soundtrack.
Although Lynch also has many repeat collaborators, Wes Anderson takes things a step further, populating his ensemble casts with multiple actors from his large roster of muses. Anderson’s unique aesthetic of pastels, preppy costumes, retro soundtracks and ‘Hipster chic’ is bleakly beautiful with a melancholic air of charm. However, this whimsical aesthetic might easily be dismissed as superficial without exceptional performances from his pool of recurring first-rate actors, including Anjelica Huston, Tilda Swinton, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman. Of course, a Wes Anderson film without Bill Murray is almost unimaginable, whether the role takes the form of a minor cameo as in The Darjeeling Limited (sibling rivalry taken to the next level on a trip to India) or of the eponymous star of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a shark hunt that turns into a Moby Dick-esque odyssey). Murray seems as obsessed with Anderson as Anderson does with him; he always gives Wes an “automatic yes” when the director calls with a new part. Equally, Wes always “write(s) with Bill in mind”. Like other muse-using directors, Anderson gives diverse roles to his actors, ranging from human character to stop motion animal, which prevents typecasting, even within his own filmi-verse.
As with any enduring trend in Hollywood, the cult of the director’s muse has been criticised. Some argue that the artist/muse model for casting is outdated and that these cosy creative companionships prevent new talent from having their own ‘big break’. Whilst this is true to an extent it is important to note that Lynch cast Dern when she was finding it hard to break into Hollywood through the mainstream ‘brat pack’ competition, despite her famous parents. Similarly, Farrell was reintroduced as a leading man by Lanthimos after a few years of smaller parts in critically and commercially unsuccessful films. Finally, Anderson’s roles for Murray afforded him the opportunity to break free from his rigid typecast as a comic actor, giving him more melancholic and emotionally probing roles.
Besides, big star presence allows indie directors to find a larger audience for their work. The Muse model may not be perfect, open as it is to allegations of nepotism, but in the works of Gerwig, Lanthimos, Lynch, and Anderson, the results speak for themselves.
The talk of the football world recently has been the return of the Premier League on the 17th June. However, for lower league football fans the drama begins on the 18th with the first leg of the League Two play-off semi-finals. The return of League One will follow two weeks later, meaning that both leagues will be wrapped up by the middle of July. Clubs will have only had around 3 weeks of training before playing, which should make for interesting viewing.
In League One, Coventry and Rotherham will be promoted to the Championship, and Portsmouth will play Oxford United while Fleetwood will play Wycombe Wanderers in the play-offs. In League Two, Swindon have been crowned champions and Crewe Alexandra and Plymouth Argyle will also be promoted automatically, leaving Exeter to play Colchester and Northampton to play Cheltenham in the play-offs.
The decision to end the League One season was far from easy. There is a huge difference in club budgets in the league, meaning that some were eager to continue the season, but not others. Clubs like Portsmouth have a large following and budget, and with a shot at automatic promotion, wanted to continue playing, while this was not feasible for smaller clubs. Therefore, the decision came long after League Two clubs had informally agreed to end the season.
It was still all to play for in League One when the season ended as, like usual, the league was tight. The decision to use points per game to calculate final standings was a controversial one due to the dramatic change in league positions that it caused. In League Two, the only change at the top of table was Cheltenham overtaking Exeter to finish 4th, while in League One, Wycombe Wanderers leapt from 8th to 3rd, causing Peterborough to drop out of the play-off places.
League Two clubs agreed to ending the season fairly quickly. Only Stevenage and Forest Green Rovers wanted to continue playing, with the former wanting to because of its position in the relegation zone, although relegation to the National League is yet to be confirmed. The primary reason for ending the season was for financial reasons and many of the clubs will be facing severe problems in the upcoming months. Therefore, it seemed unfair that four clubs were suddenly asked to fork out money to play the extra play-off games. In order to raise the money, fundraising initiatives have been launched. Cheltenham and Northampton have opted for cardboard cutouts of fans in the stadium that will be sent back to fans once crowds can return to matches, something that will also hopefully provide a lift for the players.
However, finances are not the only source of controversy. In the first round of testing in League Two, 7 out of 135 players and staff tested positive for coronavirus, a number that many fans deemed too high to allow the play-offs to go ahead. It was an especially worrying statistic given the number of players who had already expressed their concerns about playing. There were calls for the fourth team in the league to be promoted automatically to avoid health risks to the players and their families, but the pleas were in vain. Luckily, the rounds of testing since have produced zero positive tests.
It will be interesting to see what effect playing in the play-offs will have on next season. For the vast majority of clubs in both leagues planning for next season can begin. However, for the play-off teams it is difficult to sort players’ contracts if they do not know what league they will be playing in next season. Furthermore, three teams in each league will have forked out large sums of money only not to be promoted. But hopefully, the financial impact will not be too extreme.
Nevertheless, despite the controversies surrounding the play-offs, lower league football fans have something to look forward to over the next few weeks, especially as the three months without competitive matches means that the result is completely unpredictable. Watching the play-off finals take place at an empty Wembley will undoubtedly be eerie but the excitement of promotion should lift the mood. It is certainly a chance that all eight teams should grab with both hands and I am sure that all the players will be ready to go.
I was against the play-offs happening at first due to being from a family of Cheltenham fans. Cheltenham lie 4th in League Two on points per game and many fans, myself included, had believed that automatic promotion was on the cards before the season came to an abrupt end. If the play-offs had not gone ahead and four teams had still been promoted, the champagne would have been opened by now. But, now that they are going ahead, I’m looking forward to sitting down with my family and cheering Cheltenham on from the comfort of our sofa.
The candidates for the Second Election are as follows:
Amy Gregg, DPhil student, Exeter College
Jeremy Bararia, Economics and Management undergraduate, Lady Margaret Hall
Joseph Mochhoury, Law undergraduate, St Hughs
James Price, graduated student
One candidate is not currently an Oxford student. Ex-students are usually excluded from running due to residency requirements, but this requirement was lifted due to the coronavirus pandemic. Manifestos have not yet been released, but will be sent out no later than 9pm on this Thursday.
Nominations for the Second Election closed this evening at 10:45pm, 72 hours after the announcement of the first election’s results. Only current or former members of Standing Committee were eligible to nominate.
Members who registered to vote in the first round of elections do not need to register again. Members who did not can register to vote in this second Poll until noon on Wednesday.
Hustings for the Second Election will take place on Thursday evening at 6pm, which members can attend if they email the Returning Officer ahead of time.
The Poll will take place on Friday online from 9:30 – 20:30. RON will not be an option, and the candidate who wins the most votes will be President of the Union in Hilary 2021.
Allegations concerning the Second Election can be made until 24 hours after the Poll for the Second Election ends.
Oxford Union Election rules changed mid-May to allow elections to take place online.
Image credit to U.S. Department of State/ Wikimedia Commons.
Intervals. I know you have been dying to read an article about them for as long as you can remember, so I’ll put you out of your misery. Intervals are a seemingly counterproductive phenomenon- why on earth would you want to tear down the until-now suspended disbelief just so a few people can go for a piss? Well, other than the fact that actually, this is a perfectly valid reason, there are a number of purposes and benefits of having an interval.
The most obvious being, of course, to allow the audience a break; some time to, as aforementioned, wee or otherwise (no judgement- you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do). Broadway bladder is (apparently) an actual thing, with audiences on average needing to urinate every 75 minutes. An interval lets the audience breath, stretch their legs, take in the mind- bending narrative of the first half they’ve just watched, and grab some food (because apparently these days no one can last three hours without a weirdly small tub of ice cream- myself included). It seems in the modern day, however, intervals are not a luxury but a basic ‘right’ for theatre goers, after all, god forbid we don’t get to check our phones for two hours…
On top of the audience needing a break, intervals allow the cast and crew to rest themselves, change, move the set around, refresh if they’ve had a particularly taxing scene or if the play is a bit heavy- If you think sitting still in a seat longer than an hour is tough, imagine having to act for that long! Think of the accents, costumes, movement and general high energy they have to bring to set day after day.
What do theatre toilets and theatre café/bars have in common? QUEUES. Oh, the queues. I could honestly leave my seat before the lights have even come up on stage, sprint down and there would still be a bar queue of pensioners eighty-strong waiting for me. And don’t even get me started about women’s toilet queues (for those theatres that have not yet evolved to gender neutral)- I see the smug faces of men waltzing past the mile of women desperately clinging onto their crotches and crossing their legs, hoping not to wet themselves (I won’t lie and say I’ve never been to the men’s toilet out of sheer desperation. Confidence is key when pulling a stunt like that).
Now you’ve relieved yourself, naturally you might take a mooch around the heavily overpriced gift shop. If you’re pretentious you might seriously consider, or at least look like you’re considering, buying one of the paintings made by local up-and-coming artists that a five- year -old definitely wouldn’t be able to make. If someone’s birthday is coming up, you could buy them one of the normally quite artistic and abstractly designed cards, but of course that would be their only present, since it’s £17.
Gift shop well-and-truly mooched, you look at your watch, or phone screen if you’re under the age of eighty. Still time. But what to do? Your next move could be one you regret, so choose carefully. If you go to the bar, you will no doubt be asked to pay around half your accommodation fees on a small lukewarm beverage, before being practically interrogated by resident socialite boho- chic vegans on your opinion of the opening sequence. You shortly realised these were the people you heard laughing at things that weren’t even funny, just to assert that they understood the nuanced and tasteful script.
But wait; they don’t care if you enjoyed the opening sequence. They were just unsubtly setting up the opportunity to tell you about the time they met the lead actor through ‘some old drama school friends’ and got themselves invited to the Q&A panel afterwards. Oh, sorry did you also know they went to drama school? Well, they did. They’re not bitter. I promise, they’re not.
Sarah Kane’s first play, Blasted, begins with the ageing Ian grooming his young girlfriend Cate in an expensive hotel room. It escalates into bombings, rapes, the gouging out of eyes, and it ends with a baby being eaten. Since the effect of the short performance is pretty much as abrupt as its synopsis, the critical uproar it provoked upon premiering in 1995 seemed predictable; theatre sections were smeared with fairly unanimous distress and bewilderment over just what this 24-year-old’s ‘monstrous’ writing was doing to the theatre world. The Daily Mail famously branded the show a “disgusting feast of filth”.
Reading these reviews now, they smack of sensationalism and self-defence. Ian’s character is far from a stock villain, instead becoming Kane’s route to laying bare the nuanced toxicity of certain types of Western masculinity. The defensive reactions of the sea of old, white, male critics was evidence of how close it cut to the bone. As it is for many who find themselves suddenly under interrogation, critics seemingly preferred to decontextualize the play’s violent exploration of sexual politics, and so to write it off as perverted and unneeded, than to confront it.
But Blasted’s violence wasn’t only informed by gender relations on British shores – it drew upon the atrocities of the Bosnian Civil War too. In ridiculing the violence which occurs on the domestic stage, the reviewers by association deemphasised the very real international political events which were taking place, and which their peers were reporting on. I read Blasted for the first time very recently, and found that the violence was difficult, but needed. I winced, cried, couldn’t make it through in one sitting – but don’t I see and hear worse every day? Cate’s abuse, Ian’s ruthlessly sordid powerplays, the Soldier’s almost pathetic conceit; these are broadcast to us all, though veiled in politics and not in their pared-back theatrical incarnations, through our phone notifications.
Kane’s critics chose to remove the discussion from its international context and figure Blasted’s brutality as sensationalist, accusing Kane herself for portraying such violence. She answered, “my imagination isn’t that fucking sick…I just read the newspapers”. Now, an entire world of people increasingly wired in and switched on to international news read the same events, see these same images – and worse, off-stage –constantly. In the current climate of the systemic racism in US police forces and elsewhere, the ongoing Yemeni conflict, the climate crisis, and countless other events of atrocity which are shared instantly round the globe and in which we all, rightly, feel implicated, we can no longer take offence at fictionalised violence. This would be to deny what is taking place now.
Perhaps our increasing interconnection has bred the kind of awareness which Kane’s work needed; perhaps her violence seems congruous to our experience now, where before it seemed extraneous. But this isn’t simply a testament to the educational virtue of online news outlets – it is also a stark revelation of the extent to which our political climate has numbed us to the potency of violent acts. Could this be combatted by a revival of Kane’s brand of ‘in-yer-face’ drama, re-introducing shock and indignation at violence as it does so easily? If so – if Kane’s theatre will help today – viewers must change the direction of their anger. The woman who shows us metaphors for violence does not deserve it; the people who commit it do. With its prescient exploration of how a society functions, or doesn’t, when people twist their agency to the worst ends, Kane’s play has even more to teach us in 2020. When read in their most metaphorical senses, the trajectories of Ian and the Soldier, both predatory, cruel, and in denial, remind me of the kind of harmful and counterproductive self-interest which we’ve seen on shameless display by multiple governments during recent weeks. Ian and the Soldier both end up dead.
As playwright Edward Bond writes of Blasted – “images are omens and we must learn to read them”. Might the rest of this year bring an appreciation of human solidarity for us all, as Ian discovers in Cate’s selfless kindness at the play’s end? Or, as Kane suggests in Blasted’s futile tragedy and its deaths, will this compassion come too late? I sincerely hope that it will be the former; in Kane’s appeal to us to exercise empathy both in our worldview and our relationships with others, I find a message more suited to 2020 than any other. Blasted, far from sadistic, calls us to view violence both realistically and discerningly rather than to bury our heads in the sand.
With people forced to work from home, layoffs happening in every industry, and a power balance shifted by the increasing necessity of essential workers, the future of work promises not only to be uncertain, but possibly unrecognisable.
Tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter in the U.S. have announced permanent moves to more remote systems of work, a large shift from the previously campus-centric model that Silicon Valley companies swore by. For Facebook, this means having a workforce that is 50% remote in the next 5-10 years and building hubs in places such as Atlanta for remote workers to occasionally convene, away from the west-coast centre of tech innovation. For Twitter, the changes start much sooner; employees are now allowed to switch entirely to remote working if they prefer it to office life.
Shifts like these promise seismic changes in both how we work and who can work. People will be able to have greater flexibility in where they live, locating themselves based on the merits of an area rather than proximity to a job. This could help drive down rent in areas with high levels of housing inflation, such as London and San Francisco, making them more affordable. In addition, a greater number of remote working opportunities could make employment easier for people with children. Some research suggests that one of the main factors causing the gender pay gap is that women are more likely to take time away from careers to have children, but remote work could allow women to have more continuous and thus higher earning careers. A lower number of commuters could also help cut pollution from car emissions and congestion, meaning that there is an environmental incentive for remote working too.
Still, anyone that has tried to work or study from home during the pandemic can attest to the difficulties that it presents. Particularly in smaller spaces, maintaining any kind of work-life divide can be challenging, and it becomes a lot easier for time that would otherwise be more easily designated for rest to bleed into yet more work. Removal of the office social life could also lead to greater feelings of loneliness; without these communal spaces, people may begin to feel more isolated than ever. Remote working is only a reality for certain kinds of work, that which can be undertaken digitally, whereas people in jobs that require physical tasks, such as lab work, or people in minimum-wage jobs, would be exempt from reaping the benefits of these changes. Companies such as Facebook have already updated their policy to suggest that salary would become proportional to location, and so while rent prices may become more balanced, geographical wealth divides are likely to remain.
There is also the question of how work time should be arranged, now that guidance suggests limiting the number of people in office spaces. In New Zealand, Jacinda Arden has been one of the more recent proponents of the 4-day work week, a concept that has seen rising popularity. For her, it promises greater opportunities for domestic tourism, something that economies may sorely need given that international tourism won’t be an option any time soon. This switch has been tested by companies such as Microsoft Japan, who saw an increase of 40% in workspace productivity, while saving energy and money on the running costs of their offices. Moving to a 4-day work week certainly allows for more leisure time spent with family and friends, but it could also lead to more stress while we’re at work, as the same workloads become compressed into shorter periods of time. Parkinson’s law suggests that work expands to fill the time available for its completion, and so moving to a 4-day work week could lead to faster results and quicker innovations, but possibly at the cost at more stressful, intense working hours.
The changes that the pandemic promises may be beneficial to some, but they don’t promise to be helpful for all. People in minimum-wage and people-facing jobs are likely to be at greater risk as the outbreak continues, and so those that are able to take advantage of the innovations in remote-working will generally be safer, leading to divides in those impacted the most by the pandemic. On the bright side, however, the pandemic offers a future of increasing flexibility. While not everyone may want to move permanently to this way of working, one thing that has become clear is that doing so will become a feasible choice.
Most Oxford students’ lives right now are defined by uncertainty. Will we be faced with an online Michaelmas as well as Trinity? When will we be able to see our friends and family in person again? Will the world we live in ever return to something resembling normality?
Yet one certainty remains. Seeking respite from an essay crisis or trying to pass the time during lockdown, we open up Facebook to see a feed clogged with heated political debates between anonymous strangers desperate for validation. I am, of course, talking about Oxfess.
I’m sure at some point Oxfess was better. A confessions page should be a place to share embarrassing, hilarious stories free from judgment, to give others a quick laugh during a break from their busy schedules. I’m not saying that there aren’t still great Oxfesses- there are always gems to uncover, however many “Oxford colleges as ‘Simpsons’ characters” or “OUCA members as flavours of crisps” posts you need to sift through first. But the recent preponderance of political discourse between enraged keyboard warriors has turned Oxfess sour.
Don’t get me wrong- political debate has its place, and passionately supporting your views is an essential part of liberal democracy. But Oxfess shouldn’t be that place. Relentless arguments between increasingly angry students are at best boring and annoying to the majority, and at worst anxiety-inducing. At a time where many have lost loved ones or are trying their hardest to deal with working in difficult home environments, to be told there is yet another issue we absolutely MUST care about is a step too far. Even if these debates are engaged with, they achieve very little; seldom do people change their minds or reach common ground after a series of emotionally charged rants over Facebook.
True, there is a certain irony about writing an entire article about content you ostensibly claim to not engage with. But this trend on Oxfess seems to showcase part of what’s wrong with current political discourse. The Internet allows views to be expressed without the need for accountability; behind a veil of anonymity, people can say whatever they want, however outlandish, ignore or shut down criticism, and find like-minded groups where their subjective opinions are accepted as fact. Now that COVID-19 has forced people into physical as well as political bubbles, there is a risk that politics will become further distorted, with common ground harder to find. Real constructive debate, between passionate individuals willing to openly defend their beliefs, risks being replaced by anonymous ideologues screaming talking points at a computer screen, achieving nothing.
So as much as you might feel an undying urge to ‘confess’ your belief that taxation is theft, or that private schools are an abomination, or that the controversial SU motion of the hour is a much-needed recognition of existing systemic issues/ushers in an Orwellian police-state, please don’t. Or express your opinion in an appropriate space, like a niche ideological sub-reddit or the YouTube comments on a Jordan Peterson video.
Ever since Boris Johnson’s address to the nation outlining
the UK government’s plans to roll back lockdown restrictions, trade unions have
been in the headlines. Teaching unions, as well as the British Medical
Association, the UK’s largest doctor’s union, have opposed plans to re-open
primary schools from June 1st. This is due to concerns over the
potential spread of the virus without a testing structure in place.
Although the government has not backed down from the June 1st
goal, a great deal of uncertainty has been thrown on the re-opening process. As
a result of union discussions, documents from the government’s Scientific
Advisory Group for Emergencies have been released showing that the expert
recommendation was to wait until a testing system had been established before
re-opening schools. England is the only country within the UK sticking with the
goal, and even then, at least 14 English councils will be advising schools
against opening on June 1st.
Union activism has played a large role in keeping this issue
live, and rightly so. In a member poll conducted by NASUWT, a leading teaching
union, 95% expressed concern about the government’s plans. Yes, schools are
hugely important for children’s well-being, and for allowing parents and carers
to re-enter the economy. But teachers, like all workers, have a basic right to
safety in the workplace that must be protected.
As lockdown measures become less strict, this right will
come increasingly under threat. The unprecedented nature of the crisis means
nobody is truly sure when it will be safe for workplaces to re-open. And due to
the huge economic incentive to re-open businesses as quickly as possible,
industry leaders are far more likely to push for the earliest estimates that carry
the highest health risk for workers. In the last two years, union membership
has already seen an uptick; the pandemic could well lead to further unionisation
as established working relations destabilise in the scramble to recover from
the pandemic.
In the midst of a crisis, it is far too easy to paint unions
as an obstruction to the good of the nation. Teaching unions have been
portrayed as frustraters, ignoring the needs of students, despite the
legitimate concern of members and a constant offer to work alongside the
government towards a safer timeline for school openings.
This is because the policies that are safest for workers are
often the most inconvenient for those in charge; they require delays, or extra
expenditure and thus reduce profit. With union power far diminished since their
1970s heyday, and only around 23% of the workforce currently unionised, the most
obvious first solution to inconvenient union demands is to foster public
opposition towards them.
Unions are far from perfect. They are often
unrepresentative, likely to contain the most activist members of any profession
and skew heavily towards older workers; only 4.4% of union members are aged
between 16 and 24. The shift to the gig economy has also excluded unions from
many disputes. For example, Amazon has repeatedly refused to recognise unions,
and since the beginning of the pandemic, has fired several workers for speaking
out about safety concerns.
However, in the fight to have workers’ voices heard, the
union remains the best tool available – change is awkward, especially now, and it
can’t be achieved without an organised collective will. Unions will probably never
return to their pre-Thatcher standing, and under the Tories, they’ll almost
certainly encounter constant opposition to their proposals. But if there was
ever an opportunity for the union to reach a representative sample of workers
and achieve concrete change on their behalf, it’s now.
Unless you have been living under a rock, you
will be familiar with Captain Tom Moore, a 100-year-old who has raised over
£30m for NHS Charities Together by completing 200 laps of his back garden.
Almost more remarkable than the sum Captain Tom has managed to raise is the
warm sentiments that he has generated.
Among the many declarations of admiration for the
WWII veteran there have been enough birthday cards to fill a school hall, a
Spitfire flypast, and now a knighthood. With all that recognition, it is safe
to dub him a national treasure. You would be hard pressed to find anyone with a
negative thing to say about him, which is surprising in a nation that tends to
be divided on pretty much every issue. Captain Tom certainly is not the only
one to fundraise amidst the Covid-19 crisis, so how, and why, did he win over
the nation’s heart?
The image of the elderly Captain Tom using a
zimmer frame to complete his fundraising goal is an inspiring and endearing
one. It restores our faith in the good nature of humanity and invokes a sense
of resilience in the face of adversity. But Captain Tom does more than just
symbolise hope in a time of sorrow, and this is where the power of his
undisputed support lies. With his military background, and his fundraising specifically
for the NHS, he has become an emblem of so-called British greatness.
Tajfel’s (1979) social identity theory suggests
that our individual self esteem is affected by the status of our group
memberships, and for many, national identity forms a huge part of this. We take
pride in Captain Tom because at a time when Britain is undergoing huge societal
changes and is being scrutinised for its handling of the pandemic, his efforts
remind us what is supposedly great about Great Britain.
Captain Tom is more than a
national treasure: his veteran status makes him a hero, and people need a
hero to pin their hopes on now more than ever. Indeed, the discourse
surrounding coronavirus is rife with war rhetoric, drawing a
parallel between today’s NHS workers and the soldiers of WWII. But there
is a danger in drawing these comparisons and pinning our hopes on these
so-called heroes.
The NHS workers risking their lives just by doing
their jobs are not heroes, but victims. To treat them as heroes imbues them with
super-human status, ultimately dehumanising them and absolving us
of guilt over their suffering. After all, potential death isn’t part of your
typical NHS job description, but it is for a hero’s. This rhetoric creates a
scapegoat for the government, as when we look to individuals to
provide national security and health, we ignore the government-run institutions that
they embody and the issues within them that need addressing. It is no wonder
Downing Street has fed into the hero trope by commending Captain Tom, as this
makes his fundraising seem like a brave attempt at defeating the enemy and
distracts us from it really is: a damning testament to the disrepair of the
NHS.
Captain Tom has helped to boost morale across the
nation, and for that he should be commended. The public should be encouraged to
hold onto sources of optimism in times like these, but we shouldn’t let them distract
us from reality and blind us to our nation’s failings. ‘Heroes’ like Captain
Tom or NHS workers alone will not get us through this pandemic. We need a
collective effort to hold the government to account and to push for structural
changes that continue long after this crisis is over and the pot of money from
Captain Tom’s JustGiving page has run out.
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