The ‘Tyranny’ Of Social Obligation

By Les May

‘There is no such thing as society must be one of the best known comments by Margaret Thatcher . For her critics it became shorthand for a crassly individualistic world view that prized selfishness and the trashing of social obligations. For her acolytes this crude shorthand became an excuse for the policies which have come to be known, and despised by people like me, as ‘Thatcherism’. Now it appears that this crude version is alive and prospering in the minds of those protesting against the ‘tyranny’ of being told they should wear a mask in public places and practice physical distancing.

In fact Thatcher was saying something a little more nuanced than is immediately apparent in the well known version of the quote. Her point was that the state cannot solve all our problems, we have to accept some level of personal responsibility. As a democratic socialist I believe that only the state can ensure that we all have access to decent housing, lifelong healthcare and education irrespective of our income, because the so called ‘free market’amplifies and exploits inequality.

Even people who do not share my political stance readily slip into the belief that when they are ill it is the job of the NHS to restore them to health and I doubt that the protesters are any exception. If they shake off the tyranny of having to physically distance themselves and by chance meet someone who, like them, refuses to wear a mask in public and so become infected with Covid19, which of course some of their compatriots think does not exist anyhow, and go on to require hospitalisation, it is NHS staff who will risk their lives nursing them.

Wearing a mask in public places and maintaining physical distance isn’t about what the law requires it is about each of us accepting that we have a responsibility to avoid infecting others. Perhaps these demonstrators who prize selfishness above all else and reject the notion of social obligations have never known anyone who has been infected with the virus. I know three, two of them in my family and one a nearby neighbour. None of them reported it as ‘a little flu’.