A Duty of Care: Britain Before and After Covid

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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 John Preston’s Fall is an account of the life and death of Robert Maxwell, pictured in 1964. Photograph: Hulton Getty

A Duty of Care by Peter Hennessy — building a better post

In A Duty of Care, the historian asks whether politics after Covid can match the reforming ambition of the 1940s. The '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?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.

Details for: Duty of care : Britain before and after Covid

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.I have always enjoyed listening to Peter Hennessey, but admit to finding this book hard going at times, despite its brevity. However, he does very well to produce a very focused analysis of post war Britain when measured against the 5 wants. 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 Peter Hennessy is a historian and a dreamer. To grasp his direction of travel in this narrative of the British social experience since 1945, we must fast-forward to the end. He quotes Michael Sandel, the Harvard political philosopher, with approval: “It is often assumed that the only alternative to equality of opportunity is a sterile, oppressive equality of results. But there is another alternative: a broad equality of condition that enables those who do not achieve great wealth or prestigious positions to live lives of decency and dignity.” 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. It needs both. In our long history, the NHS is the closest we’ve come to institutionalising altruism. That’s why it has a special place in people’s hearts. I admire Nigel and regard him as a friend, but I must say if you’re going to turn anything into a secular religion, it might as well be the NHS… there are certainly a lot worse candidates. The potential fragility of the intensive care systems in this wretched pandemic was what was surprising. The people who staff it did surpassing wonders, but they are still worn out by it. So it survived the test but it needs long and sustained investment, plus an overhaul.

A Duty of Care - Penguin Books UK A Duty of Care - Penguin Books UK

Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ 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. Biographies of Philip Roth and DH Lawrence, the curious death of Robert Maxwell, and dispatches from the Covid frontline From 1992 to 2000, Hennessey was professor of contemporary history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. From 1994 to 1997, he gave public lectures as Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, London. From 2001, he has been Attlee professor of contemporary British history at Queen Mary. Funder reveals how O’Shaughnessy Blair self-effacingly supported Orwell intellectually, emotionally, medically and financially ... why didn’t Orwell do the same for his wife in her equally serious time of need?’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 Modern British history can be divided into two parts: before Covid and after. That is the central pillar of this at times arid but ultimately compelling account of British social policy since 1945. We recovered in the aftermath of the second world war. Can we do it again, post-pandemic? 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. 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. 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.

duty of care Has the past decade blunted our sense of the duty of care

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. BIBTEX Dublin Core MARCXML MARC (non-Unicode/MARC-8) MARC (Unicode/UTF-8) MARC (Unicode/UTF-8, Standard) MODS (XML) RISPeter Hennessy is an English historian and academic specialising in the history of government. Since 1992, he has been Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary University of London. Arifa Akbar’s Consumed: A Sister’s Story is about the death of her sibling from tuberculosis. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian New Yorkers: A City and Its People in Our Time, Craig Taylor’s follow-up to his wondrous oral contemporary history, Londoners, is long awaited (John Murray, March), and it will be interesting to see how this book reads at a point when our urban centres feel so hollowed out. At the other extreme, The Foghorn’s Lament by Jennifer Lucy Allan (White Rabbit, May) is about – yes – foghorns, and promises to sit on the wobbly line (and, in this case, noisy, mournful line) between nature writing and music writing.