Post #77
April 3, 2024
Claire Bodanis
The Easter Sunday message prompts Claire to reflect on how we don’t need to be in positions of power to act powerfully: any of us can stand up for the truth by challenging false information.
As regular readers will know, I often write my blog on a Sunday afternoon, and from time to time, inspiration strikes during my morning snooze in the choirstalls. But this morning, I was listening to the sermon with rather more rapt attention. I like to think that’s because it’s Easter Sunday, one of the most important days in the Church calendar. But I can’t deny that the preacher at my parents’ local church – a distinguished doctor as well as a priest, dubbed ‘the Dishy Vicar’, or DV, by my nieces one Christmas – might have had something to do with it.
It was his concluding words that sparked today’s train of thought. ‘Have faith,’ he said, ‘and God will do the rest.’ This prompted an expression familiar to many who’ve been on zoom calls with me, when I’ve failed to control my features quickly enough on hearing something I find astonishing (and not in a good way).
To be fair to the DV, his words were meant not in the general sense of everyday life, but in the particular context of the Easter message and God loving us sinners however miserable we are. Nonetheless it reminded me of the utterly dampening feeling I get when I hear these words used by certain types of believers, who seem to be either not interested in solving, or have given up trying to solve, many of the problems facing the world today. I can see the appeal, given the enormity of those problems. Climate change, war, political extremism – it can all seem just far too big for any one of us to tackle.
For those types of believers, then, I imagine it’s rather comforting to think that when things get really bad, God will intervene and sort it all out. And that’s not necessarily a purely Christian view, by the way; there are sub-groups within most religions who have an interventionist view of God. But for the rest of us – religious or not – this kind of laissez-faire attitude to the ills of the world is, I would suggest, neither a very sensible nor indeed a very fulfilling way of going about our business.
But what can we do instead? I confess to feeling pretty powerless most of the time, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. What made me feel even more powerless this week was the latest political news coming out of the US. The Washington Post amongst others reported that, under the auspices of the new Trump-endorsed Chair, all staffers of the Republican National Committee had been fired and are being required to reapply for their jobs. During interview, they’re being asked whether they believe the 2020 election was ‘stolen’, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out what answer is required if they are to keep their jobs.
It’s not unimaginable that it might become a requirement for all sorts of people to sign a statement of this nature, particularly if Trump wins the election in November. After all, the US has form on the signing of politically-engineered oaths; the 1950s McCarthy era declarations against communism spring to mind. But let’s not imagine we’re immune from such things here in the UK either.
As many of you know, my late father was a vet. This weekend, I was both shocked and proud to hear from a younger colleague of his that Dad’s outspoken campaign back in 2001, against the then UK Government’s handling of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, was principally inspired by the requirement for vets to sign a false document.
A bit of background. Foot and mouth is a highly contagious disease affecting cloven-hoofed animals such as cows, sheep and pigs. The UK suffered an outbreak in the 1960s, and all the vets, like Dad, who’d been involved, agreed that it was very well handled by the Government. The procedure back then, Dad’s colleague told me, laid down by statute, was that if one animal contracted the disease, all animals on that farm had to be slaughtered. To carry this out, the duty vet had to sign what’s called a ‘Form A’, which stated that he or she had evidence to believe that the disease was present. So far, so uncontentious.
In response to the 2001 outbreak, however, the policy was extended far beyond this. It required not only that animals on that farm be slaughtered, but those on neighbouring farms within a particular radius as well. This unnecessary slaughter of healthy animals was enough to get Dad going. But what he found even more egregious was that, to enact the policy, vets had to sign a Form A for the neighbouring farms, effectively requiring them to lie on an official document. Now, unlike what’s happening in the US today, I’m not suggesting that the Government of the time was driven by anything other than sheer expediency. According to Dad’s colleague, creating a new means of enacting this policy, a Form B perhaps, would have taken a change in the law and thus an Act of Parliament.
I’d love to be able to say that Dad’s intervention saved the day. Unfortunately, despite making a nuisance of himself on the mainstream news (after his arguments fell on deaf ears within the Ministry of Agriculture), this needless culling of disease-free animals continued unabated. Without wider support, vets felt compelled to sign. And the slaughter played out to its sorry conclusion, resulting in millions of dead animals, many farmers committing suicide, and many more livelihoods destroyed. And Dad resigned from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for its failure to stand up for the profession; a rather sad coda to a very distinguished career.*
But what inspired me in this story, aside from Dad standing up for the truth, was that, according to his colleague, his actions did not go unheeded by many within the profession and the farming community.
Just imagine, I thought to myself, if all those vets had refused to sign?
By drawing this parallel with the US, I’m not suggesting that the signing or not of Form A is as influential and thus as dangerous as persuading people that the 2020 US election was ‘stolen’. And there doubtless have been other instances of this kind of thing happening in the UK far more recently than 2001. But the reason that Trump can go this far now is because in the early days, on the smaller things, when the stakes were lower, people didn’t stand up for the truth. Now that the stakes are so high, it’s much harder to do so; and we’re seeing the US in real danger of becoming an autocracy if not an outright dictatorship. This brings to mind one of my favourite quotations, from the English philosopher John Stuart Mill, who said (I paraphrase for the 21st century): evil triumphs when good people stand by and do nothing.
That might sound a bit depressing for a favourite saying, but if you read it the other way round, then it’s actually very inspiring. If good people step in and do what’s right, then evil cannot triumph. And that needn’t be about grand gestures from people in power, nice though these would be. So many of the problems facing the world today are built on the suppression of truth, on the falsification of fact, on people believing lies. And the one thing we can all do to make a difference, whatever our role, whatever our status, whatever our political persuasion, is to stand up for the truth.
And when the truth prevails in this world, perhaps then I’ll feel ready to take the advice of the DV, and leave the rest to God.
* I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that Dad didn’t waste his retirement, however, and went on to do many other useful things, as described in my tribute to him in December 2022!