Threats to doctors and nurses and lifeboat crews – and why laws and law enforcement are not enough

25th July 2021

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‘…we are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell. Making an enemy of our own future.’

– Marwood, Withnail and I

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Every so often it seems that the culture wars are coming to an end, and then you get extraordinary things like this:

A speaker tells a crowd in Trafalgar Square that doctors and nurses should be ‘hung’.

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People are abusing lifeboat crews.

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Doctors and nurses and lifeboat crews are perhaps the last individuals that would be insulted and threatened in a decent modern society.

Without any of the mirth of the Withnail and I film, we can echo the sentiment that our country is drifting (ever further) into area of the unwell.

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Those who defend such abuse may seek to say that it is only ‘freedom of speech’.

But no society has absolute free speech.

An immediate verbal threat of harm is not a protected speech act – just as forging a cheque or planning a robbery are not protected speech acts.

And dealing with threats to inflict hurt on other humans is what the law has, in part, always been about.

But to say a thing is against the law is not the same as saying the law would be effective in prohibiting such abuse.

Indeed, the laws as they stand would cover such utterances – and the law has not deterred the threats from being made.

And even if individuals were arrested and convicted, there is no reason to believe the nastiness of the culture wars would abate.

The ultimate issue here is not a public order problem with a neat legal solution.

The issue is cultural and political and social – and so only looking to the law would be an error.

There is a need for cultural and political and social leadership: for arguments to be won, and for behaviours to be discredited.

Laws and law enforcement will be part of that, of course, but they are not a complete answer, or close to it.

Once we are deep inside the arena of the unwell, there is no set of law suits or prosecutions with which we can bound free.

Those who threaten doctors and nurses and lifeboat crews should be prosecuted fully and fearlessly.

But such prosecutions would not make the problem go away.

Something deeper and more disturbing is afoot.

Brace, brace.

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15 thoughts on “Threats to doctors and nurses and lifeboat crews – and why laws and law enforcement are not enough”

  1. A somewhat common-place observation: Perhaps some of this is legitimated by success. People feel free to be abusive when they are unable to perceive the fragility of the social structure they attack. A shorter way to put this would be that humans don’t seem to be able to remember the past beyond two generations.

  2. Agree with your argument completely, David. However, I would take grammatical issue with the ignorant commenter. The correct term is ‘hanged’ , not ‘hung’. Could this tell us ‘something’ about the person who made the comment?

    There seems to be an education problem in this country before university. This is also true in the US where pre-university education is generally dire. This doesn’t help.

    1. I quite like the fact that capital punishment is not so (yet) dominant in political discourse that the speaker thought the correct word was ‘hung’ not ‘hanged’.

    2. It’s not an education problem alone, but a deliberate de-civilisation process that’s apparent in all areas of non-elite life. Too many are being expected to endure relentless privations and the skilfully mendacious are all too good at misdirecting the resulting frustration and anger.

  3. Sure Putin finds it all very amusing. I ponder if we would’ve been less of a sitting duck for contemporary fascism if we’d experienced occupation in WWII. We must appear to be an island of village idiots.

    1. That you appear as an island of village idiots, I couldn’t agree with you more. Brexit and the N.I.Protocol speak loudly.
      But as an Italian, who was 5 in September 1943 when Italy signed the armistice with the Allied (followed by the terrifying nazi occupation) and had four family members shot or hanged by the fascists and nazis for being in the Resistance, I regrettably note that we in Italy – as well as in France, Germany, etc. – are “enjoying” the active presence of fascist parties and culture rapidly rising together with the abominable culture of hate associated with fascism of any shape or form.
      The cause of this is manyfold, as sociologists explain, but the base reasons I believe are ignorance and the tendence to forget. That’s why my nickname in my email address is ‘mnemonikos’, ancient Greek for ‘he who conserves memory’.

  4. The reason we are now witnessing the rapid descent into the abyss of unwell is it’s deliberate encouragement & facilitation by those in positions of power & influence. By setting the tone and providing the arena for what is acceptable, and whipping up division via political and media rhetoric, the touch paper is effectively lit by those who stand back to admire and benefit from the outcome of their efforts. The resultant abhorrent activist displays, such as those noted above, are a direct and deliberately calculated result of the tone used by our political (and other) leaders and their media supporters to suit their (and their backers) own ends. Brace, brace, brace indeed.

  5. I wonder if any of these people could explain why 23 doctors were prosecuted at the Nuremburg tribunals, 16 convicted, and 7 executed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_trial
    And indeed why there were a number of other trials involving Nazi doctors and nurses, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_trials and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamburg_Ravensbr%C3%BCck_trials

    Anyone who thinks anything happening in the NHS today bears any relation to any of that is simply delusional.

  6. I have often wondered what was in the mind of the yob who obscenely abused me in a threatening manner in the street as I was doing my visits as a Community Midwife. I had delivered his partner’s infant and I had seen him weeping at the birth. I won’t repeat what he said but it was distressing.
    The conclusion I came to was his shame in his tears had turned to anger and he was using anger to prevent his weakness returning. He was a hard case. The type you see in these marches. Thuggish faces shouting their invectives. I think in these instances the weaker a person feels the angrier they become.

  7. Thank you for your thoughts and for those who have commented. My tuppence:

    Politicians have misappropriated language. “Ordinary” people feel they have the same freedom to say whatever they feel.

    Small groups of individuals (QAnon?) can run convincing campaigns. Reports suggest 80% of anti-vaxx information on Facebook was produced by just 12 accounts.

    Government ministers have dismissed experts. We are all experts now, but without the need for peer-review.

    Politicians have lost contact with their communities. In the 80s and 90s, campaigners would frequently door knock: now rarely.

    There “is nothing to believe in” so we each choose our own ideas. This leads to new groupings with no real understanding of what these new ideas mean. Conversely if the State forces a set of values on us, then that would be wrong.

    Our institutions are under attack from all sides, and government is standing aside to see where the pieces fall.

  8. Very anger-making. After contemplating all manner of medieval punishments I took a lie down in a darkened room.

    Our approach to punishment seems crude and ineffective but not too open to abuse. Best left alone, too much of a can of worms. Although I did feel immurement worthy of consideration by the MoJ. That or oubliettes.

    We are left with ridicule and the emergency services are left to pick up the pieces when some nutter does what the cynical/misguided gabble about. Seems inadequate really.

  9. As a country which tolerates a compulsive liar as Prime Minister, I’m sure we can take freedom of speech to a new level.

  10. Behaviour is learned and copied from the top and when we have a so called Prime Minister who lies, shuns agreements and international laws and thinks rules and regulations are to be broken – what do you expect.
    As you say ‘brace brace, brace” we ain’t seen nothing yet.

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