Here’s a story that will melt even the iciest of hearts, one so heartwarming it could have been created by Frank Capra with James Stewart in the role of shop manager. More than 100 customers, staff and children spent the night in a John Lewis department store after they were stranded by snow. The 54 staff, about 30 adult customers and 20 children were provided with food and a bed in the bed department of John Lewis in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, after heavy snow gridlocked local roads on Monday.
The snow brings out two reactions in British people. On the one hand, frustration with the authorities and their inability to keep the country moving. And, on the other, a willingness to take control and deal with the problem ourselves, giving us a brief moment of freedom from state socialism.
It is no coincidence that it was John Lewis, a worker co-operative retailer, that looked after the families last night in Wycombe, rather than the state. Council gritters have done better this time around than in February, but by their very nature extreme weather conditions require ordinary citizens to do most of the work.
Last night there were touching scenes of co-operation in my part of London, a valley with no Underground nearby and a main road that goes up and down a steep hill. By half past four the buses had stopped; by a quarter to five the road was completely blocked, with cars unable to move in the ice, hazard lights flashing. Some of the drivers were clearly scared.
But, as far as I could see, no one was left stranded. Dozens of passers-by were pushing cars into safe spots to park, with men of all ages and nationalities helping strangers. Some of the local teenagers, who usually loiter around by shops looking both menacing and pathetic, were pushing cars into a side road. Briefly they actually had some role in society, some way of behaving that both displayed their masculine virtues and helped other people; they could take back part of the role that the welfare state had snatched from them.
Of course the state needs to do the heavy gritting, but it cannot do everything, and one of the better suggestions I’ve read is that council gritters dump sandbags at the end of every road to let people do it themselves.
Because harsh weather conditions isolate people from the authorities and so briefly remove the conditions of state socialism, people become more altruistic. We don’t walk on by, we don’t let our fellow citizens freeze, we don’t sit around moaning that the council hasn’t sorted it out. Women stranded in cars are saved by young men able, for once, to be heroes rather than hoodies, and communities destroyed by the state are briefly brought to life.
From
The Telegraph![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
