[Acrylic-bob]

Part two.

In the era before the advent of the Welfare State took personal responsibility out of the hands of the people, the average man or woman had to provide for his or herself and family. The young and the elderly were compelled to remain close to the family unit for essential support in the event of need or misfortune. This combination of generations, often under one roof, enabled the dissemination, promotion and encouragement of acceptable standards of behaviour. We are happy now to hand over the responsibility for the care of our elderly to the state and so deprive our young of the lesson and example of lives filled with incident and experience. In asking “What went wrong?”, I think that it is here that we need to look first if we are to find answers.

Before the advent of the Welfare State, the poor and working class made much use of the Mutual Society, our present day Building Societies and Credit Unions are the only survivors of this once mass movement. Mutual Societies were, in essence, working class clubs, formed by the workers themselves, to provide an astonishing range of social services. It is from this movement that the Co-operative Societies developed, eventually becoming one of the largest wholesale and retail food distributors in the country. In the early part of the last century the London department store Harrod’s boasted the telegraphic address “Everything, London.” which was largely untrue. In the seventies however, the Co-Op could boast in advertising “It’s all at the Co-op” which was very nearly the case. About the only thing you could not get from the Co-op, in one way or another, were armaments.

Now, there is little need to worry about providing for tomorrow because the state will step in and do whatever needs to be done. We do not even have to manage our income to budget for contributions to this marvellous system since the contributions are deducted at source.

I am reminded of what happens to wild animals when they are captured and confined in Zoo’s for our amusement. The need to hunt to provide food, which once consumed a large part of their waking time, is now taken away and little or nothing is put in its place. Boredom claims them and many develop severe neuroses and anti-social and aggressive behaviour patterns. Now where have we seen that before? Indeed, many even indulge in recreational sex as a means of alleviating their condition, a thing almost unheard of in the wild.
For all our apparent sophistication, we are not so far removed from our origins that we are not still governed by animal instincts.