Forgetting & Remembering in recent history. From the Pandemic to Liz Truss
The historical record doesn’t start until 20-30 years nowadays but before then a sort of selection process gets underway to determine what might be remembered and what not.
Liz Truss’s Sunday Telegraph article (5th February) is one case in point. Aside from a hard right group of MPs and, one presumes, most of the 80,000 Tory members who voted for her, most Tory MPs would prefer to forget her 49 day Premiership where she attempted to wreck the economy and left many mortgage payers significantly worse off.
Indeed a male Tory MP is quoted in the Times as saying she should ‘shut up’ although he may apply the sentiment generally to women one suspects.
Truss however as done the historical record a favour. Her Premiership will be remembered and rightly so.
By contrast the COVID pandemic is dipping from memory. There is a useful Guardian piece on this
Of course it is not dipping from the memory of those who lost friends and relatives, those with long COVID and the many who remain vulnerable to the disease. But media coverage and discussion has mostly moved on. A comparison is made with the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-20 which likewise is not much discussed historically although it probably saw most deaths than both twentieth century World Wars.
In the case of COVID official investigations as to its initial handling, the lockdown parties of Tory Ministers, and various scandals about Government contracts do still feature. But the central feature, the impact on people’s lives and society is not a major discussion. Will the historical record capture it. To some extent its up to us
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