If we want to be free then it’s our responsibility to behave differently
My late father would have hated lockdown. His generation deserve the right to choose liberty
Like many families in the current lockdown, my three sisters and I catch up each weekend on Zoom and share our news. A little over a year ago, we lost our father, Nigel, at the age of 90, and we often contemplate what he would have made of this situation.
Our Dad was incorrigibly active and sociable into his late old age, walking many miles each day and raising large sums for charity through skydiving and mountain climbing in his eighties. He went to local pubs every night without fail, a tradition he maintained to within a few days of his death. Each day he enjoyed meeting new people. He was not a man you could confine, or ever lecture on how to live, and he would recall that he had been to the funerals of most people who had told him what was good for him.
Like most of us in Britain, he would have found lockdown frustrating but necessary. However, what he could never have accepted is the idea that after a certain time, most of the country would be released from restrictions while those above a certain age would have to remain isolated for their own safety. At that point he would almost certainly have said he would be the judge of that himself and resumed his enjoyment of fresh air and some community life. He would have pointed out that he was fitter and more active than some people half his age. Any official telling him he was vulnerable would have received a memorable lesson in how someone who had lived through the war, served in the Army and survived for nearly a century could decide when to do things at their own risk.
As ministers ponder how to relax the lockdown in the coming weeks, they would do well to avoid telling the over-70s to stay in their homes for the rest of the year, or they will find there are more Nigel Hagues out there than they might have bargained for. Furthermore, people like him will have a serious point – not only are exercise and sociability major parts of the quality of their lives, but also important factors in their longevity. They will additionally have an important moral argument on their side: as long as we are engaged in a collective and common action to combat the virus we are all obliged to act together, but once it is a matter of individual preservation then at least part of the judgment involved should rest with each person.
I do not envy my former colleagues as they try to pick their way through these and other dilemmas, but I would urge them to shy away from solutions based on blanket, one-size-fits-all policies dictating the hourly habits of millions of people. Far better to stress that our rights as citizens, as they are slowly re-established, are firmly attached to vital responsibilities, for young and old, rich and poor.
Of course, we are now used to the idea that our right to go to the supermarket is coupled with a responsibility to stand apart from others. But the right to return to more of normal life must involve a vast extension of such responsibilities. The long-awaited app, which tells us when we have been near someone who develops Covid-19, is being prepared, ready to install on our phones. Once it is ready, the freedom to resume moving around must go along with the responsibility to download it and use it. We will have to accept very different responsibilities determining how we greet, work and move around other people. A young person who disregards that should not be in their workplace, pub or gym, while an older one who is very conscious of this ought to be there if they wish.
The notion that rights and responsibilities are intimately attached to each other has become weakened in modern society. Good schools do teach the connection, and millions of people instinctively live up to their responsibilities to others – witness the vast numbers who have volunteered to help in this crisis. Yet in many ways our concepts of rights have become absolute and inalienable regardless of our behaviour.
We are rightly proud of our freedom of speech in democracies, but in the digital age many people abuse that freedom with bullying and intemperate behaviour online. We believe in freedom of religion, but that too is abused by those who brainwash vulnerable individuals into a twisted and hateful brand of their own beliefs. Our right to eat what we like is not associated, for many people, with a responsibility to bear in mind how it is produced. And our right to burn fossil fuels is certainly not combined with a responsibility to preserve life for future generations.
Does everyone associate their much-valued right to vote with the responsibility to keep well informed about events? Or the right to healthcare with the responsibility to moderate our indulgence and lead an active life so that such care is focused on those who need it most? There was never a golden age when such thoughts were universally combined, but much political ideology in recent decades has lost sight of the connection between freedom and obligation. Businesses that fail to invest in their employees, or those people who amass wealth without trying to use it for wider benefit have taken advantage of an ultralibertarianism that relies solely on markets. Just as bad, socialists respond by trying to sweep away both rights and responsibilities and rely excessively on state direction.
Governments should be aiming for a future in which we exercise great freedom, but with the corresponding duties understood. The coming weeks and months will be a period in history in which the connection between the two is exceptionally clear. The fragility of freedom has now been brutally revealed. The need to live responsibly is suddenly ripe for emphasis. In this country, people of all ages will be ready for that.
Asking them to respond in the right way will require openness and transparency from ministers about the options and their plans. The public are entirely capable of understanding that they must maintain the current effort while a vigorous discussion over what happens next takes place. They will react most positively, not to any one group being told they are losing their liberty indefinitely, but to all of us being told that liberty and responsibility go together – irrespective of how young or old we happen to be.