Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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BRITAIN has veered between general lockdowns and periods when we let Covid-19 generally run free.
Boris Johnson saw the choice as being between “lockdown” and his occasional preference for allowing infection to spread, “letting the bodies pile high in their thousands,” because his government ruled out a more traditional way of virus control — quarantining infected people.
The free marketeers thought a traditional quarantine would have been too great an interference in society. They thought proper public health measures would interfere with “the economy” and, as a result, messed up both health and the economy.
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