They're comparing the virus pandemic to the last war – one ex-sufferer says the Spitfire pilots of today are the NHS heroes. Quite right too. Never was so much owed by so many to so few. And you can parse Winny's words any way you like – so few doctors, so few nurses, too few coronavirus tests. We weren't prepared for the pandemic nor in 1939 were we really prepared for war. But it's the 1945 comparison that will be crucial – when we British turned our backs on Winny and voted for a different Britain – for the welfare state, nationalisation of ramshackle railways and private coal, most tellingly for Nye Bevan's NHS. It was a master stroke for so many, like my Mum and Dad who relied on savings clubs pre-war, though the benefit for the many was resisted by Harley Street. Will something similar happen this time? There's no shortage of desirables – fewer polluting air miles, no diesels near schools, no cruise ship megaliths, no tax breaks, no fake news, no spin. Can 'community' be a priority for policy-makers again, can the values unearthed by the lockdown be perpetuated nationwide at least? Can we be prepared for the next crisis, for living on the edge rather than down the middle? All things are possible but – beware! – some remember not 1945, but the depressions of 1929, 2008 and the corresponding bounce-back.
David Perman
This poem is reprinted with permission from David Perman's Collected and New Poems, reviewed on page 26.