The poverty-stricken alcoholics of the 18th century lived their miserable lives in appalling slums, but by the mid 20th century such slums had all but disappeared. Now they are back. Overcrowded, filthy, insanitary houses with dirty, broken-down sheds in what were once their back gardens have brought the Third World into England. Once we took our standards into the Third World; now the flow has been reversed.
Very often when I raise my head and mutter, or even shout, that things were arranged better in my young days, I am told that “You can’t turn the clock back.” It is a way of closing down the discussion. There is then no need to consider whether or not things were better. You just can’t put the clock back, so that is that. Francis Maude was at it yesterday, seeking to prevent any discussion of whether or not Conservatives should be in favour of changing the definition of marriage, which has served us across so many cultures and religions so well for so long.
Even before that, I think it was the recent trial of the couple who murderd a little boy because they believed he was a witch that started me thinking about that dishonest way of thinking. Lots of people here in England used to believe in witchcraft, and witches were tortured and burned to death. Such barbarous atrocities were stopped long years ago, but oddly enough it is again the modernisers who have themselves turned the clock back to those days when people believed in witchcraft.
Nor is that all. Once not so very long ago tuberculosis was a widespread fatal disease here. Good public health policies began to overcome TB during the early 20th century; by the 1950s it was almost eliminated, and by the late 1970s just about extinct. Over the last 15 years the clock has been turned back, and TB is now back in our great cities.
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