The lockdown should be lifted for the sake of working women

ASK the audience whether it wants the lockdown to continue, and the answer comes down to class and cash. Also down to Aristotle and Plato. Regular readers will remember I believe we are born followers of one or the other, as follows:

Platonists believe in a perfectible society.

From which it follows that everybody can and must be saved from Covid-19, no matter what the cost.

Aristotelians believe both man and society are flawed. Accordingly, no society can guarantee against death.

Novelists tend to be Aristotelians. Many years ago, Don DeLillo, watching the frantic joggers in Central Park, asked: Do they think they can live forever?

The Government was acting as Aristotelians when it locked us down for safety’s sake in March. But it moved into Platonic mode by prolonging the lockdown.

Deferring to one group of experts (experts disagree about Covid-19) played to the Platonist gallery who made silly statements like “no one is safe until all of us are safe”. Note the ‘until’.

The Government is now a victim of its policy of

‘be afraid, be very afraid’. With no good reason. Two weeks ago, we got some hard figures, based on 1,429 deaths. Only six people under the age of 44 died, which is 0.4pc.

In short, the working population, especially those under 45, are not really at risk. They know that now, which is why they are going to the beaches. Time they went to work, too.

That senseless panic raises the question: are we in the Republic mollycoddling ourselves?

The reason I ask is that my email friends in NI are much more stoic about risk.

Rev Chris Hudson, of All Souls Unitarian Church, Belfast, who commuted between Belfast and Dublin last week, was struck by the difference. We seemed more fearful.

A Claire Byrne Live poll of 1,000 people last week confirmed this misplaced sense of fear — or possibly satisfaction with the stay-at-home subsidy.

An astonishing majority of 71pc felt the lockdown restrictions were being lifted at the right speed.

That’s an extraordinary reaction from a country facing a €30bn deficit, with half its workforce (1.27 million) depending on State income supports and with thousands of small business hanging by threads — which are fraying further with every week that passes.

Clearly the following questions need to be asked and are not being asked.

Why did we not concentrate on the most vulnerable and let the rest get on with life?

Why are children not at school as they are in Sweden and Denmark?

Why are we not urging people back to work before the economy bleeds to death and leaves us jobless?

Above all, why are politicians and journalists so loath to challenge the current consensus?

The answer is that the country is now increasingly divided between two groups: Continue Cocooners and Lockdown Victims.

Continue Cocooners are mostly middle class, in public sector jobs, like the articulate academics who attack lockdown critics.

Lockdown Victims are mostly in the private sector, many of them working class, many of them women who are not properly represented by the ideologues who dominate working-class parties.

What is worse, both politicians and journalists are afraid to call out the Continue Cocooners.

No wonder. Last week, an academic feminist tweeted I wanted to punish those “who due to health concerns can’t or won’t return to work”.

She added, gratuitously, that “she always knew I hated feminists”.

Admittedly there are many brands of feminism, but I certainly dislike the academic brand that focuses on abstract feminist issues while ignoring the practical problems of real women.

Because looking at the road map for lifting restrictions, it’s pretty clear that women are getting a raw deal compared to men.

On Monday, hardware and gardening stores reopened but homeware stores did not.

Yes, I know women do

DIY and gardening, but, by and large, they’re still mostly male pursuits. Hairdressers, despite an energetic campaign, driven by demand, won’t be open until July 20. Yet they are open in Italy, a country hit far harder than us by Covid.

Meanwhile, small local businesses, independent shops and clothing boutiques can’t open their doors until June 29.

That is why I have such admiration for the stylish courage of small fashion shops like Khan and Fran & Jane in Blackrock village.

While the big multiple stores sold women’s clothes, they had to stay shut. But bravely, every single week of the lockdown, they continued to change the window displays they could not sell.

Academic feminists should leave their cushy cocoons and take up the cause of working women.

Because last week, a CSO report on the social impact of Covid-19 on men and women found that women got the worst deal.

Women are less happy, more nervous about the future, and are drinking, smoking and eating more junk food than their male counterparts.

The burden of work, children and worrying about vulnerable family members is also crushing women and it’s not surprising that they are finding working from home more difficult than their husbands.

Almost half of women would like to return to their place of work after Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted, compared to less than a third of men.

But that means delivering on the core problem faced by women — childcare.

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Platonists who believe in a perfect society are also plaguing the Green Party where a rump is reluctant to go into government.

Let me pause for a reminder based on personal experience and the precedents of Irish political history. Every party from Fianna Fail to Sinn Fein has flourished far more after a split in which it dumped its Platonic rump, Trots as I call them.

Catherine Martin has a crucial role to play in convincing the Green Trots that going into opposition will anger those who loaned them votes on the basis of going into government.

Martin is well placed to explain this because she is sitting in one of the most urban constituencies in Ireland, Dublin Rathdown.

She did well from FG voters. Thanks to Dr Theresa Reidy’s UCC/TCD researchers, we know this reflected national coalition preferences.

Catherine Martin should explain that Reidy also found a majority of Green voters preferred a FG-FF-Green deal.

These voters would not be impressed by a leadership challenge to Eamon Ryan at this sensitive time.

Ryan and Martin’s problem is that some of the new Green Party TDs sound like ultra-leftists, closer to Brid Smith than Eamon Ryan.

Martin, who is from Monaghan, and by all accounts a straight-talker, is well placed to explain two facts of life to the Green ultras.

First, if the Greens go into opposition they will lose any credit for climate change.

Second, their left antics will look like pop-guns compared to the heavy artillery of Sinn Fein.

Middle Ireland voted for the traditional Green Party. If it wanted Trots it would have voted for People Before Profit.

‘Green voters would not be impressed by a leadership challenge to Ryan at this sensitive time’