Plenty of people criticise #ClapForCarers on the basis that we should be funding them properly, not giving them communal platitudes. Yes to that.
But the clapping was always more than a gesture to the NHS. It’s a gesture to each other. Something communal amid enforced isolation.
But the clapping was always more than a gesture to the NHS. It’s a gesture to each other. Something communal amid enforced isolation.
In that sense, #ClapForCarers is similar to Remembrance Day and poppies; or World Cup/Euros display of the national flags. A rare moment where we acknowledge we’re all one country, by focussing on designated ‘heroes’ (soldiers, footballers, NHS staff).
The discord, and maybe the hypocrisy, comes because the moment of national unity is centred around idealised heroes rather than the reality. Thus it transpires that we underfund hospitals, and allow former soldiers to slip into drugs, prison, and suicide.
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