Barry Turner

By Barry Turner Columnist

The government has once again encouraged the people of Britain to bring in the harvest and has even ‘recruited’ Prince Charles to stand in his kitchen garden and chivvy us all to “work harder”. A moving sentiment if ever there was one.

The plan is to encourage students and furloughed hairdressers and clothes shop assistants to pick up the tools of the stout yeoman farmer and sally forth into the fields to recreate the Land Army of World War Two. A world war analogy is never far away in any crisis in the UK. Whatever the problem, be it Brexit or the outbreak of a world-wide pandemic, all that is needed is a bit of plucky blitz spirit, a tin hat and the problem is solved.

“Not quite,” mutter a few defeatist naysayers. Is there anything like the possibility that plans based on folk myths might fail? It’s beginning to look like it. The UK needs somewhere in the region of 90,000 seasonal migrant workers to successfully recover the harvest this year and Concordia, an ethical work placement charity has reported that 50,000 originally showed an interest. Out of those, 6,000 came forward for the online interview and 1,000 outright rejected the terms and conditions offered; some suggest because working for the minimum wage and being asked to pay for accommodation is not in the spirit of the blitz.

The government has in recent days unveiled its immigration policy for post Brexit Britain the long awaited points based system will be implemented as soon as we end the transition period at the end of this year and from that point on we will only be allowing the ‘brightest and the best’ to come to the UK and work. A points-based system focused on skills we are told will facilitate that.  The UK farming and food processing industry along with several other sectors reliant on ‘unskilled’ workers has long been voicing alarm at this.

The concept of skilled and unskilled seems to be very simplistic in its definition and will presumably be, based on the current model, simplistic in its implementation. The ‘brightest and the best’  all being medics, scientists and engineers, or those with enough money to buy their way in. Agricultural shed workers and fruit pickers do not by definition fit the bill and astonishingly neither do care workers, also a role filled by foreign staff. It is facile in the extreme.

The National Farmers Union and the large food processing industries value Eastern European workers and sometimes controversially prefer them over the indigenous population. For thirty years and more Eastern Europeans have been the backbone of the UK’s agricultural sector and it might be argued that far from being unskilled, they are very skilled in terms of maximising productivity or, in other words when it comes to points, the ‘best’ at the job.

Will our Pick for Britain Land Army match their productivity and tenacity in working long hard shifts? Will our students and furloughed retail staff and waiters come up to the task of bringing in vast amounts of food that needs rapid collection processing and distribution. Our Eastern European workers have decades of experience and skill; will our Land Army’s enthusiasm and pluck spirt be a successful substitute for that we should wonder?

Can we be confident that a word of encouragement from government ministers and ageing royalty guarantee that we do not face food shortages and high prices?

Well if it all goes wrong there is unusually a plan B to save us from another great wartime tradition, rationing. Shortly after World War Two, which for the press and media in Britain seems to be the source of all inspiration, there was a miraculous phenomenon. Our former wartime ally and now deadly opponent the Soviet Union with its Eastern European allies closed off the land border to Berlin with the intention of starving it into submission.  The Western allies organised an air bridge to Berlin saving its population from subjection to Soviet rule.

So, here is our World War Two inspiration for the Pick for Britain campaign. If the Land Army does not make the grade let’s have an airlift in reverse. This has already happened on a small scale. We can fly in the Eastern Europeans to harvest our food, as they have been skilfully doing for thirty years. We can appreciate them for what they have done for our economy with all their hard work and without in any way compromising our right to control our borders take a pragmatic and economically sensible way of bringing in the harvest.

Barry Turner is a Senior Lecturer in War Reporting and Human Rights and a member of the Royal United Services Institute.

By Barry Turner Columnist

Celebrity particle physicist Professor Brian Cox has made some well-deserved criticism of politicians using the “we are following the science” mantra. His point is well made that this could damage the public perception of science in general, especially where the science we are ‘following’ is incomplete at best.

Professor Cox remarks that the often-conflicting messages broadcast by ministers and government officials are being used as a shield where they have no easy answers. It is far easier and of course far more honest to simply say we do not know than send out a message, based on little data that then turns out to be inaccurate or simply wrong. We are following ‘the scientists’ makes it look like the scientists are wrong and they only have to be wrong a couple of times for public trust to be undermined.

What Prof Cox perhaps could have added is that the press and media are in large part responsible for this mythologising of ‘the scientists’ as the oracle with all the answers. It is clear from interview after interview that it is often the journalists who pre-empt this somewhat blasé assurance with a question along the lines of “are you listening to the scientists?”

There has long been an uncomfortable interface between the press and science, in large part due to their very different philosophies and ethos. Science is a search for the truth, not the possession of it, and those of us who work in a scientific environment know that that search is often long and sometimes disappointing. Scientists do not have all the answers, the science is never, as the press and politicians like to suggest to us, ‘settled’.

Having read very many scientific papers over many years, this writer can testify to the frequent use of the expression “we are at present unclear about the mechanism” often repeated in them. This means in ordinary speak “we do not fully understand what is happening here.” It is that of course that is the driving force behind all scientific endeavour. The press of course wants answers now, the scientists may still be looking for them.

We have an excellent body of distinguished scientists across all relevant disciplines advising the government and the media. From virologists to epidemiologists, from pharmacologists to medical physicists, we have many distinguished experts and of course we should listen to experts, whatever Michael Gove once may have told us, but we need to understand the dynamic here. Experts know much more than us ordinary folk, but they do not know everything.

If we are to follow the science, then we should be honest about that very science. The reality is in this case that there is a lot of science yet to be discovered for all we may now know. The pandemic is far from over, even if we are now talking about easing the lockdown — it will not be over until there is a vaccine and an effective treatment and that they are deployed for use in the community. We do not know when that will be, following the science on that point is not likely to get us very far.

We still do not understand the mechanism of this disease. We know the infectious agent is a coronavirus but there is far more that is unknown about how or why it has such a massive variation of effects from fatality at its worse, though mild respiratory symptoms, to possibly no symptoms at all. There is little to follow there yet.

We do not know for sure if this disease will be effectively a one off as many of the pandemics of the recent past have been, or whether it will be from now on a seasonal blight with inevitably tragic consequences. Scientists have openly disagreed on its origins, and even if we ignore some of the more fanciful notions about it being planted or broadcast by phone masts, there is no real consensus on point of origin, aetiology and prognosis or effective pharmaceutical intervention or treatment. Once again not a direction that we can as yet confidently follow.

Science will of course find the answers, it’s only a matter of time and effort, and then we will be able to be confidently reassured when our politicians tell us they are ‘following it’. Until then it might not be quite as bad as the blind following the blind, but it is certainly the uninformed following the partially sighted with only half of the road map.

So, the path we must follow is a steep learning curve and one with many obstacles yet to be encountered. Of course, our politicians must show effective leadership and of course they must listen to their advisors. They should also, hope springs eternal, be honest with us. Saying we are “following the science” is far from honest and as Brian Cox warns us, can do damage to the very thing and the very people we are now so reliant upon.

Barry Turner is a Senior Lecturer in War Reporting and Human Rights and a member of the Royal United Services Institute.