Empathy has no identity
Robert Darlaston, Goostrey, Cheshire
Your report and feature on the Bristol statue of Jen Reid created by Marc Quinn were marred by the comments of the sculptor Thomas J. Price in a different article. He claims that Quinn has “created the votive statue to appropriation” and it should have been “a black artist’s output, not that of a white cis man”. This is reactionary politics disguised in obscure, trendy jargon. The core values of all progressive movements are liberty, equality and solidarity. Millions of us didn’t need to be black South Africans to oppose apartheid. Similarly, we don’t need to be black Americans to oppose the endless police brutality meted out to them.
Our empathy lies with the exploited and oppressed. Price offers the worst kind of identity politics, where solidarity is impossible because only direct personal experience counts. That would be a disastrous dead end for Black Lives Matter and for all other social movements, while making broader alliances on social justice all but impossible. At a moment when the hardright is busy and active stirring up social divisions and cultural
It has never seemed right in polite circles to reveal any support for Andrew Lansley’s period as health secretary, but I would like to say a few qualified words in his favour. He had been the opposition spokesman for many years when appointed and had a good understanding of the NHS’s problems. In proposing decentralisation, Lansley was wounded by the Labour opposition for allegedly trying to escape ultimate accountability for the NHS. He was even undermined by his own PM, who rejected the plan. So the NHS remains centralised and over-bureaucratised, with failed integration with local government services, primary care and patients generally. It is clear that this is not serving us well, helping to create the mess made of dealing with Covid-19. What was really wrong with the 2012 act was the obligatory marketisation of healthcare provision, which Labour would have done much better to focus on. Lansley deserved to pay a price for this.
Deep in the heart of all this is the failure to recognise that there are things best done centrally in the NHS (such as setting standards of care, approving new drugs, planning medical training, securing adequate finance) and things best done locally, without interference (NHS England). Allowed to build its own patterns of care, cooperation and accountability to local citizens, a “local NHS” would surely by now have had the capacity to test and trace in the current crisis, and recruit and use volunteers for effective community action.
Lansley is right to weigh in against the rumours reported in this newspaper that those in No.10 want more control of events. Heaven help us if they succeed.
Peter Thistlethwaite, former editor of Journal of Integrated Care, Saltash, Cornwall