Good old Tom

17 July 2020 (PA Images)
He was – of course he was – good old Tom, “an inspiration to us all”, in the Prime Minister’s words. As the Daily Telegraph put it, in a phrase of an elegance seldom found in news stories, “the embodiment of the country pulling together, each of us doing our bit to defeat the unseen enemy, however challenging the circumstances”.
That image, so redolent of the War — and, like Her Majesty the Queen and Major Sir Tom Moore (as he was correctly described by the time he died this week) I am old enough to call it the War and not World War Two — was enhanced by the picture of him being knighted last July in the grounds of Windsor Castle. At 94, the Queen is standing ramrod straight in sensible shoes, a pale green coat and one of those slightly bizarre hats which even I, a card-carrying Republican, have come to expect and enjoy. She is gamely wielding the longest sword I have ever seen, a socially distancing special, at the moment of knighting Sir Tom. There is a smile of pleasure, and recognition perhaps, on her face. Tom, already 99, is standing ramrod straight too, though his head is appropriately bowed. This was, in its way, a Vera Lynn moment. We’ll meet again. Or as Tom used to put it with his trademark smile, “Remember, tomorrow is a good day.” Meanwhile: duty cheerfully undertaken.
As I child in the 1940s, I remember seeing in the papers pictures of the young Princess Elizabeth in military overalls, fiddling with the innards of an army lorry, doing her duty, just as so many other young women were doing. Meanwhile Tom, like so many other young men, was being conscripted, in his case into the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment. And there they both were, more than 75 years later, still serving, “above and beyond the call of duty”.
The nation needed reminding that we, the three million plus old, are much more than a mere burden which a younger generations carry, sometimes reluctantly but, if we are very lucky, without too much complaint. That picture from Windsor’s Covid Summer does a necessary job. For it has become fashionable, in otherwise politically correct circles, to disparage the old. Nobody uses the appalling Nazi phrase “useless eaters”, which was employed to justify their killing of old people. But the language used recently is almost as contemptuous .
“Dissing” the elderly became the fashion in the bitter aftermath of the Brexit referendum. Politicians, newspaper commentators and self appointed celebs explained away the Leave votes as being cast by the old, ignorant, ill-educated, prejudiced, and often senile. They contributed nothing to society. They didn’t deserve the vote. Not to worry. They would soon be dead. It was the bright young things, who had voted Remain, and who would inherit a future ruined by the selfish irresponsibility of their elders. And please note, I am not exaggerating. All these offensive words and phrases were freely thrown around by people who should have known better.
Things got worse with Covid. Last spring there was disgraceful talk of how convenient it was that the virus disproportionately targeted the old, and hit them more seriously. After all, people of my age (I’m 82) “have had a good innings”. Time to pop our clogs. In extremis, some hospitals were said to be deciding, even without consultation, not to resuscitate over 80s, to ensure that ventilators were available for those who might reasonably hope for decades more life. It was a funny way to prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable, but there you go. The Government finally stamped on that sort of malpractice, though by bitter irony Government policy had by default had the same effect in care homes. In spite of the heroic efforts of carers, many such homes became, for a while, little more than death traps for the aged and infirm.
So what has gone wrong? Part of the the truth stems paradoxically from the welcome fact that more old people are living longer and more productively than a generation ago. Sir Tom, Her Majesty and thousands of other oldies demonstrate that every day. Yet society has not caught up with the welcome advance, brought about by better housing, better diet and above all amazing medical advances delivered – in this country — free at the point of need. I have heart failure and a pacemaker. I had sepsis a few years ago. Until I had couple of operations last year, my sight was fast failing. But I am one of the lucky ones. My mind is as good as it ever was. I’m writing my memoirs and pieces like this one for TheArticle. I walk, for an hour each day, for pleasure. I live alone and truck along happily enough. But I would like to contribute more to society.
My point is not that I am unique, but that I am typical. There are I guess many thousands not unlike me among our three million octogenarians. Yet without the medical and other advances I have listed, many of us would have long since gone to the great care home in the sky. It is not that we are useless eaters. More, that we are under-used assets.
Of course, not all of us oldies are as lucky as Her Majesty, Major Sir Tom…or me. Slow physical or mental deterioration is the heart-wrenching fate of many. But they, too, demand respect. As Milton said of his blindness, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” They will have loved and protected their vulnerable children. The time comes when the moral imperative is that such love and protection should – and usually is – returned by their offspring. We are all only human. Increasingly society has come to accept our fallibility, which is why we no longer hang even the most depraved. Why increasingly we offer love and support, not an assisted death, to children born with grave handicaps. Even the never-ending controversy about abortion is framed as much in terms of the point at which a foetus becomes human, as it is about a woman’s right to choose.
But things are not as simple as the paragraph above may suggest. The sort of medical advances which have kept me alive and kicking, also keep some people — mainly, but not exclusively, the elderly — in intensive care, technically alive but in an irreversible vegetative state. How to balance the injunction “Thou needst not strive officiously to keep alive” with the sanctity of human life is beyond me and certainly beyond the scope of this article. Let us, for now, salute good old Tom: a man who, by simply doing his duty, cheered up the whole nation.
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