Hidden agenda from right-wing wolves

COMMENT

“’I am homeless, the government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing!” In a 1987 interview with Woman’s Own in Number 10, Downing Street, these words were uttered by Margaret Thatcher. She was bemoaning the fact that those who had fallen on hard times were seeking to be helped by the state to get them through their time of need. The idea of the state helping in such a fashion was obscene to her and her ideals from the time live on today in those who speak of all people on benefits as “scroungers”.
The Iron Lady made no bones about clarifying this fact to the readers of the magazine, adding, “I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand, ‘I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!’” This kind of statement is anathema to her latest successor, David Cameron. Having learned the lessons of ‘New Labour Spin’, this individual has seized the keys of Number 10 and begun to shape the nation to his will.
This has been accomplished with the almost Green-like acquiescence of the Liberal Democrats, whose collaboration has allowed the new Tory king to announce details of his ‘Big Society’ this week. From She Who Went Before, he has divorced himself only in his bluntness of language. His announcement is an expertly crafted piece of spin. In the Cameron tradition however, it is an affront to all those who are possessed with the capacity for thought. 
The Guardian described the announcement as follows, “David Cameron today pledged to deliver a dramatic redistribution of power ‘from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street’ as he set out his plans to create what the Tories are calling the ‘Big Society’.” Despite being several hours old, the story was not reported on the websites of either the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph at the time of writing. The BBC announced, “Cameron launches ‘Big Society’”.
I have long advocated the devolution of power to local councils and democratically elected local representatives. The Guardian article continues with dampers to over enthusiasm, unfortunately. “In his most important speech since the general election on the devolution of power, the prime minister said he wanted to create communities with ‘oomph’ and end the days in which capable people become ‘passive recipients’ of state help.”
Whoops! Isn’t that just what Thatcher said?
Certainly, the newly crowned Tory leader plays a different whistle, trouble is, the man is incapable of coming up with a different tune. This individual is actually expecting the people who elected him to believe that he is somehow different from everyone in his party who has gone before him. I have little by way of positives to say about Tony Blair or Gordon Brown but at least they, despite all the spin, did present a new form of Labour government in adopting some of Thatcher’s economic policies and openly declaring they had done just that, when they came to power in 1997. Cameron, on the other hand, is trying to pretend he is doing the country a service when in fact he is aiming to destroy those parts of the public sector his Tory predecessors did not manage to choke while in power.
The new leader of Britain is essentially, under the guise of public spirit, asking volunteers to do the job of the public sector. He wants to have volunteers run museums and parents run their own schools. Boiled down, the argument is a very basic one. What the Tories want in Britain in terms of services exists already in Ireland. There are a group of people in Ireland known as ‘carers’. The work they do ranges from basic provision to 24-hour care. They receive the kind of monetary acknowledgement from the Government that would be an insult to a hobo if you dropped it in his hat. These are people who love those they care for. They do not seek reward for what they do, they simply seek to have a life of their own. They do what they do out of love in its purest form and they should not suffer economic hardship as a result.
But, for many carers, that is what life amounts to, an economic punishment for the love, obligation and compassion that they express.
A glance at the website of The Carers Association reveals a host of damning press releases. The second most recent, at the time of writing, has a headline stating, ‘Family carers left isolated, exhausted and acknowledged’. Austerity or not, is this the kind of society that we want to build? Surely there is something absolutely wrong about a statistic from the same website which tells us that 73% of young carers surveyed began caring from the age of nine”.
What has come to pass in Ireland is what David Cameron wants to bring to fruition in Britain and it is nothing more than a society of greed, built on a foundation of ordinary people’s human decency and compassion. There are no statistics which tell us the number of carers who have died premature deaths because of the extraordinary effort they have made and the peace and comfort they have brought to those who are suffering or are incapacitated.
The Carers Association press release on young carers quoted above describes the appearance of Conor Hughes, a young carer, at a conference. It describes a paper presented, which urges Ireland to examine the practices of Britain and Scotland in terms of service provision. It outlines a number of very serious concerns for those young carers which include, “developmental implications” as a result of having been “forced into premature adult roles”.
Those in the Irish Government had better look across the Irish Sea very quickly because very soon those practices may go the way of other public services in Britain and fall under the knife of a wolfish right-wing ideology dressed in the sheep’s clothing of empathy.