Masks in This

As it is the summer I thought that I'd do this a little differently. The government announced that from the 24th July face masks would be compulsory to be wear in shops. People had been wearing them on public transport and some had put masks on as soon as the pandemic closed in on us. But now we would all be required to wear them. This caused much discussion on social media and in bubbles across the land. Some had been arguing for the mask for some time, others pointed out that they would make little difference, something that WHO originally indicated. The president of the United States was against it at first but he has since relented and has been seen in public wearing one. Immediately before the announcement that we should wear a mask even our government seemed conflicted with Michael Gove saying that he didn't think legislation was needed to make it mandatory to wear a mask. Yet it is mandatory - we can be fined if we do not wear a mask in shops and enclosed populous spaces. There is a debate as to who is to enforce this - the shop worker, shop security or the police?

I decided to find out people's views on this piece of material that we now need to fix upon our faces. A small thing to ask but one which I found is an emotional instruction. Our identity is often channelled through our faces. One time government minister Jack Straw was once pilored for asking a Muslim woman to remove her veil during a constituency surgery as he couldn't quite hear what she was saying. Indeed there is a debate on the wearing of a veil within feminism - some believe that covering the face empowers the woman. Mead's semiotics suggests that we need to see facial expressions to fully interact. The mask will surely stop that.

Mead is often lumped in with social action theorists who use qualitative methods to investigate certain phenomenon. I thought that I'd use social media and unstructured interviews - with the later I took the idea of a 'guided conversation' to the extreme by mostly having a conversation. Using facebook, messenger and instagram I asked for people's views. And I was delighted with the responses. It seemed a topic that people felt strongly about and it also gave a valid view of the act of wearing a mask from a few perspectives.  In some cases I ask ed further questions but mostly just recorded the posts that people made.

Those that were against wearing the mask ranged from a loss of liberty to worries about it being the thin end of a wedge. One person believed that mask wearing would lead to further control from the government which would lead to things such as digital control. This is a point of view shared by left and right libertarians, those on the left worry about the loss of identity and extreme social control, the right agree but worry about liberty as well. One respondent was visceral about those who were arguing against this, believing that they were sleep walking into digital chips and more aggressive government monitoring. Some respondents attended a Keep Britain Free demo in London. The belief here is that the government has totally mishandled the virus for its own ends and mask wearing will continue this. Some people said that they would not wear a mask, they feared that people may be aggressive toward them but felt that it was their right. Some people who are anti mask are also anti vaccine. Another respondent said that they would wear a mask as they are required to but felt that it was for their own safety rather than for others. This person isn't English and believed the England was a country "increasingly being led by fear". They went on that "I worry that over time Brits will become a nervous bunch like the Americans."  Elaborating on how the mask would make them feel safe this respondent said that they didn't want people "being nasty to me in shops". This echoed the more explicitly anti mask respondents who feared 'bullying'.

This is an interesting point, my own observations since the lock down began was that at first mask wearers seemed to be more nervous, understandably as they wore masks before being required to. But also some wearers were more aggressive, I heard stories of people being shouted at and knocked out of the way by mask wearers. This can be attributed to the hiding of identity. Psychologists and sociologists have often researched into how hoods, scarves and masks can make people behave differently as it hides their identity. I decided to wear a mask a week before it was necessary to do so, on a trip to a supermarket both my partner and myself were taken aback by stares and fairly awkward body language directed towards us. One respondent said that she had noticed that at the start of lock down she'd seen people wearing them who she thought did so so that they didn't have to observe social distance and that they were an excuse to be anti social.

Some people worried about the comfort element. One respondent has been wearing full PPE at work (he is an optician)  and found it a pain, "it makes my ears sore and people can't hear me properly. But if it saves one life and keeps people safe then I'll choose a minor inconvenience every time."

I had a much needed haircut and the woman who did a particularly good job at it was wearing a visor. I didn't feel intimidated at all and was amazed at how 'normal' it felt.

Some respondents hated the idea of the mask but were resigned to it, one said that she had "been enjoying getting out and about again recently...I'll be scaling that back". This respondent echoed the 'bullying' theme by being concerned by people who see it as their place to confront those who aren't wearing masks and even going so far as to video them. "I despair of the nation of curtain twitchers that we have become".  Another respondent was resigned to wearing a mask but felt "claustrophobic and panicky" when doing so. Another said that the mask makes her feel "anxious" and was very worried that they would be here to stay.

The mask did have supporters, some enthusiastic. One respondent had been wearing one on the bus and at work and said that "I really enjoy the mask aesthetic to be honest, it makes me feel mysterious. That and strangers keeping out of my way. I could happily keep it up forever."  This echoes the empowerment argument in a positive way.  Others felt that the mask was needed if we are to get moving again as a country, especially as one respondent noted that the social distancing was becoming less of a thing as restrictions are eased.  A few respondents asked me what the harm was in wearing a mask, one said "what's wrong with erring on the side of caution?" This is perhaps the extreme of the anti mask respondents who see a lot of harm. Another said that it may make us "moderate our behaviour". Some worried about how they'd work in pubs and gyms. People were beginning to see them as the only way to get back to normality.

Others have ordered masks which reflect their identity. I have a Membranes mask, one respondent has ordered a Billy Casper mask. A record shop proprietor told me he has one with "It sounds better on vinyl" on it.  I was asked which "one I had got". I sat in a park with people comparing theirs. I ordered a nabd mask because I though it looked less scary, it was psychological, if it was part of my identity then it would become more normal.

As noted, several respondents have worried about what our country is going to become. So what of those living abroad?  One respondent who lives in China said that the mask was still necessary to wear on a bus or in the shops, he said that he never had a problem with wearing a mask but that it was becoming "bloody uncomfortable" now that it is a "constant 35 degrees". He also stated that he found it funny when he sees people wearing masks in cars when they are the only person in the vehicle. In Austria masks were required immediately. An American respondent said that in the states "people have lost their minds about it. And since there is no leadership or clear communication it's another dumpster fire consuming our civic life. The failure of common sense and the politicalisation of a step that is being recommended to help the collective is wild to witness and painful to be living through."

So, the mask has its supporters and its enemies, some see no problem with it - indeed some comments on my Facebook feed merely said "Just wear one"- others see it as physically scary or politically dangerous. None of my respondents are virus deniers - in fact the most anti mask respondent had symptoms of it. What all the answers hint at or boldly state is that identity both personal and cultural is being changed either slightly or extremely. The mask is another emblem of this virus which is seeing change enforced on us.

As I walk around town or on my country early morning walks I see masks on the roads and pavements lying there, dropped or discarded.  Debris of the new normal.

National Identity in This

Writing in the New Statesman this week the writer Fintan O'Toole lays blame at the British government's perceived mishandling of the current crisis as lying at the door of a boorish nationalism. The Prime Minister is caught in a colonial past when Britain ruled a large slab of the world. The Prime Minister's language is nationalistic, he uses terms from the war and the empire. Britain is a 'world beater'. Many Prime Ministers enjoy invoking the greatness of Britain (remember "British jobs for British people"). The blitz spirit comes out regularly as well. O'Toole connects this language with the 2016 referendum and the spirit of Britain alone evoked by that campaign. there is little surprise here as Dominic Cummings is the architect of both responses.  But the pandemic has raised questions of national identity, it has arrived at a time when British identity is at a premium as far as the politics of our land are concerned. Since the 2016 referendum we have had three Prime Ministers and two general elections. The last Prime Minister promised a "red, white and blue" Brexit. The current one sees himself as a Churchill figure evoking times past.

In sociology national identity has been a concern for years. Much research has focused on the white working class and our BAME communities. Terms such as 'little Englander' and 'Brasian' have been coined to try and identify identities in our cities and large towns. Brexit played on these identities, the Leave campaign focused on how identity was being taken away. The real argument was trade and political decisions but it was played as 'us and them'. mainly focused on the working class and the lower middle classes. Dominic Cummings saw these people as well as the older generations living in provincial towns as the target to winning the referendum. I knocked on doors for the Remain campaign in a lower middle class / working class area and a lot of the people I spoke to talked about identity and culture. They felt that their identity was being taken away by the EU certainly (although few could say how) but also because they perceived that the government did nothing for them. It was surrendering to other countries and to immigrants from various parts of the world. In short their identity was uncertain. this was also to do with how the UK had broken up since 1997, the union seemed fragile. Curtice and Heath found that since the late 1990s most English people identified themselves as English rather than British, they summised that this was because Wales and Scotland had their own governments with legislation powers. plus Scotland had had a referendum about leaving the UK and even though they narrowly voted to stay this gave out a message that they weren't 100% committed to the union.  the sociologist Waters saw this new Celtic identity as a threat to British national identity but in his research he also identified globalisation as an issue and the increasing multi culturalism in the UK that globalisation brings with it.

ITV4 has recently been rerunning Big Match football programmes from 1977. The Britain you see on the grubby rain soaked pitches is recognisable but different. The crowds are all standing, overwhelmingly white and male. The players are all white as well with names from Scotland, England, wales and Northern Ireland. When players smile they have gaps in their teeth. The adverts around the grounds are all local or national products and companies. Compared to our globalised multicultural game of today it looks very colloquial. Quaint perhaps. However two years later the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher came to power and revolution followed. a monetarist revolution which became what some call neo liberalism. The UK economy became determined by the rest of the globe, instead of making stuff we became a service economy, reliant on financial services. Writers such as Wilkinson have spoken about this as deindustrialisation. From a traditional gender perspective this meant that women were suddenly important to the economy (middle class women as working class women often had to work). But it also meant that Mrs Thatcher was initially pro EU. Free movement meant that our workforce could be supplimented at cheaper rates. The traditional working class such as the miner or the docker would become unemployed, some went into deskilled work, if they wouldn't or couldn't they were replaced by immigrant workers. Our banks, football clubs and high streets all became part of the global market. The country prospered, or some of it did.

With all of this came a libertarian mindset initiated by New Right thinkers such as Murray and Saunders. People should look out for themselves, take advantage of what is offered and prosper. There is a true meritocracy in the UK, if you fail it is your fault. Our services all became dependent on competition. ITV companies had to compete to keep their franchise, schools had to compete for formula funding. They were inspected and regulated directly by Whitehall and told what to teach through the national curriculum. Our utilities had to compete too. Companies such as British Telecommunications became a private company as did our buses and train networks. Eventually even our banks and building societies became internationally owned. Our football became truly international, foreign investors and businesses buying up clubs with dour industrial British names.

Mrs Thatcher was able to do this on the back of a conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a short bloody war which cost numerous lives but was sold to us as a British national victory akin to our campaigns in the Second World War. It was a heroic event and united most of the country behind it. But it also showed that national identity was going hand in hand with uber globalisation and free movement. In short a new type of Britishness was evolving despite the nationalism being presented by the government.

New Labour continued this nationalism, in their 1997 election broadcasts they even used a bulldog with a union flag draped around it. But they also embraced openly free movement incorporating it with a new British identity. Guibernau and Goldblatt believed that a new form of British identity was forming which was multicultural and all encompassing. The foreign secretary in the early New Labour government, Robyn Cook delighted in proclaiming that a survey had found that the national British dish was Chicken Tikka Masala. This multi cultural British identity was celebrated in the arts and saw itself wrote large in the 2012 Olympics included British athletes from all ethnicities winning and the opening ceremony incorporated British history and all its cultures.

However once the economy stagnated and the global banks went into recession people did what they do best, retreated back to their own tribes. This had been happening since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq and the attacks in London and other parts of the UK. Poverty combined with fear of terrorism, unemployment and general distrust of our political and legal system led to riots and the rise of nationalism. This was seen in the rise of UKIP and the Conservative party's fortunes. All of it then produced the referendum of 2016. National identity could now be restated.

Then came the pandemic. The Prime Minister initially seemed to favour a herd immunity. Something once favoured by his chief adviser but changed mlater. He told Phil and Holly on This Morning that we should 'take it on the chin'. Later when he called a lockdown he talked of the great British public with their common sense and their desire for the great British pint. 

The sociologist and cultural commentator Stuart Hall once wrote about how the British still talked like a colonial power. I used to dismiss this as a student in the 1990s but the current Prime Minister seems to have a hang up about the Empire. He quoted Kipling when foreign secretary and seemingly, as Fintan  O'Toole states in his article, thinks that what other countries have gone through does not apply to us. This nationalism echoes the President of the USA who has even gone as far as asking for testing to be slowed down as it "makes us look bad". Both men won elections on the back of nationalism.

back in March the Prime Minister said “We’re taking away the ancient, inalienable right of free-born people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub. And I can understand how people feel about that… I know how difficult this is, how it seems to go against the freedom-loving instincts of the British people.” These British people he talks about are the people Curtice and Heath identified, not so much British as English according to them. This quote does not speak for the whole of Britain. During lockdown we witnessed the toppling of statues, demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and people sympathetic to it and people opposed to it. Violence revisited our streets. Large numbers of working class Black and white people are dying. Mostly people who identify as BAME. 

A pandemic need a global response, we shouldn't compare ourselves with other countries. Perhaps we should unite with them and help the whole of our multi - cultured land and its diverse people.

https://www.newstatesman.com/2020/07/fatal-delusions-boris-johnson