14th January 2012
Count Your Blessings, and Protect Them
Mark Hanson
"Count Your Blessings." It is an age-old cry of fathers, mothers and grandparents to the disaffected and complaining child. Yet, in modern Britain, can we still manage to count our blessings? Disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; riots last summer; respect for authority now seen as a weakness rather than a strength; and the authorities themselves moving from one knee-jerk reaction to another: these seem to be spiralling the country into a dark abyss of societal breakdown. Economically the prospects look awful, and the cornerstones of the British system of governance, based on civil freedoms and civil participation, are under threat from all sides.
There are, however, many reasons to be joyful, many blessings to count. Extreme poverty, which in the 17th Century and earlier included severe outbreaks of disease and famine, is now a thing of the past in the UK. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, used as an indication of the economic wealth of a nation, has grown enormously and even in these days of recession and austerity the GDP of the UK was at $2.25 trillion in 2010 compared to $72 billion in 1960. There are many other blessings should we care to look for them.
Despite these amazing accomplishments of economic wealth, eradication of famine (the last peacetime famine in England was in 1623-24) and the control of diseases which once decimated the British population, the fact remains that all these have not lowered the general anxiety and fear with which many view the future and even the present.
Part of this fear and anxiety is caused by the natural human tendency to worry, and especially worry about the unknown. It is only through a trust in God that we can move beyond the worry, and Jesus Himself said that we should "not worry about tomorrow". The basic principles of the UK are rooted in Christianity, as David Cameron rightly recently acknowledged, and a re-connection with this God-centred approach will enable us to truly "count our blessings" rather than having a constant fear of the unknown future.
Although the blessings are many there are still some immense challenges. The degree of relative poverty is increasing even though extreme poverty has gone. The greater part of the UK’s wealth is not available to a massive section of the British public and the omens for this seem to be that it will get worse, not better. Relative poverty can be crippling: it is no good having £100 a week to buy food when the price of food means only those with £200 a week can afford it. People are still missing meals in the UK and action needs to be taken.
The disparity between the wealthy and the poor is also bringing with it dangerous asides. The riches that many of us are blessed with and should truly count as blessings are also, due to the worshipful attitude of consumerism, deceiving so many in the UK that we are doing well, whilst on our doorsteps there is a gross and hideous societal disintegration.
Since the 1980’s there has been a growth of an underclass that has all but been forgotten by mainstream society. Sections of society such as travellers, the homeless and the jobless have been sidelined to such a degree that many do not see any hope for the future. They are generally derided as having brought on their problems themselves: "get a house" (similar in vein for some travellers as saying to a Jew that they should get a swastika), "get a bedsit" (when simply finding a squat is hard enough), "get a job" (with no qualifications, out of work since Thatcher, no openings locally anyway).
The situation where many have been disenfranchised from the political process and even the wider society has burgeoned the numbers of the disaffected and, as a Guardian-LSE study showed, an increasingly anti-authority, especially anti-police, sub-section that sees direct action as the only means left to them to make their voices heard. The authorities have furthered this immensely by showing in many instances that they are not organisations or people that deserve any trust.
Even so, there is much to count as blessing and perhaps the unique form of British policing could be a start. The British model of policing initiated by Robert Peel in 1829, based on policing by consent, minimal force and local accountability, has increasingly been forgotten and the police are now forgetting a primary responsibility of theirs, which is to be the public, not to be authorities over the public.
The recent news that the police are considering water cannon and baton rounds, which are powers granted by the former Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw in 1981 only after he had been assured by chief constables that they would not be used, brings into question an increasingly combative approach where the shock and awe principles of US military action are being rolled out into policing practices.
New powers should not, at present, be considered until there have been sufficient reforms to British policing that will enable a return to accountability on the part of the police and a return to the model of British policing.
Here there is real hope: the Coalition are pursuing a new policy which they say will enable the Peelian principles to be restored, and senior police officers in the country have made clear that the British model is vital and deserves protection.
Both Sir Hugh Orde, in an article for the Guardian at the time of the August 2011 riots, and Dennis O’Conner, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary who wrote the 2009 HMIC report into policing, were convinced that the British model of policing must be restored and would increase in effectiveness and the level of esteem it is held in if there were a return to the basic principles of Peel’s vision. The press release by HMIC in 2009 reported that: "It is time to reassert the principles of the traditional British model of approachable, impartial and accountable policing based on minimum force for major public order events."
Sir Hugh Orde stated in August 2011, at the time of the UK riots, that:
“Although I understand the enthusiasm of politicians and communities for robust measures, excessive force will destroy our model of policing in the long term. What we must hang on to in all of this is the British model of policing, premised on human rights and the minimum use of force. We police with consent and must be professional, proportionate, fair and justifiable to the public at all times.”
Human rights and the legal limits on government and on the police are, at present, increasing rather than declining. The Coalition Government came in heralding a return to basic liberties, and although in too many areas they have failed thus far, there have been some very positive moves.
The Protection of Freedoms Bill, which will remove certain powers, water-down certain others, and will regulate still others, is enabling a real debate on which freedoms we cherish most. The moves in the last few decades to codify the powers of the police has restricted the abuses that used to occur regularly, although some of the powers they have now been legally granted are of dubious necessity and only further the tensions between police and public.
The Human Rights Act enshrines in law the fundamental rights of UK citizens, which before were protected by tradition rather than by a set law. The proposals by the government to repeal this should only be allowed if a Bill of Rights with superior authority in the law courts is enacted simultaneously.
There is much to count as blessing. There are many areas of concern. Laurels tend to wither if rested upon and we must not let despair or discouragement prevent us from both cherishing our blessings and resisting any moves that would render those blessings to be historical rather than current and future. The future depends to a large extent on the values we hold and choices we make today.
