The timely death of Thomas Moore
The fawning response to the late captain distracted us from lethal government cockups
There is an age you reach where, as the comedian Chris Rock once said, any death is of natural causes. “Even if you get hit by a truck, it’s natural causes,” he said. “Cause if you was younger, you’d have got out the way!”
Put another way, those of a certain vintage cannot claim to have been swindled when their ticket is torn for the great gig in the sky. Among such lucky people is Captain Sir Thomas Moore, who became an ex-parrot earlier this month at the age of 100.
Like a geriatric Joe Wicks, Moore found fame in his last year zimmering around his garden to raise money for NHS charities. News organisations around the world were captivated by the story, presumably bemused at why the world’s sixth largest economy was funding its health service in this unusual manner.
The captain got his centennial telegram last April, at the height of his fame. Such innings, as they say, are good. Or, to put it less commonly, his death was a timely one.
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One good thing about the dead is that they cannot sue you for libel. The downside is that social convention generally discourages criticism of the departed, even if they were a massive shit while alive. When you’re a war hero and widely-regarded good egg who raised millions for the health service and may soon be immortalised in Trafalgar Square, disparagement can be career-ending.
It is therefore hard to express even remote scepticism about Moore or his campaign. Even noting the obvious absurdity of Britain relying on an old man walking round his garden to fund a buckling health services during a global pandemic feels a tad risky.
Two relevant news stories have emerged in the past week. The first concerns an unnamed 35-year-old man in Lanarkshire charged over an offensive tweet regarding Moore. Contempt of court restrictions mean that I cannot comment further about this.
What can be discussed is the uproar around Jarel Robinson-Brown, a trainee priest. Responding to plans for a national clap for Moore, he tweeted, “The cult of Captain Tom is a cult of white British nationalism. I will offer prayers for the repose of his kind and generous soul, but I will not be joining the ‘national clap’.”
In the normal way of such tales, Robinson-Brown later deleted the tweet, apologised, and left Twitter temporarily, having been subject to what the Church of England’s anti-racism taskforce called a “staggering” amount of abuse, much of it targeting his ethnicity and sexuality.
This being politics, criticism of the trainee priest even came from people who could normally be relied on to support those who opine controversially. Guido Fawkes reporter Tom Harwood asked, “Does the @churchofengland really think this man is the best person to become the new curate of the oldest church in the City of London?”
Last November Harwood questioned why institutions give “so much time to a tiny band of shrill and unrepresentative culture crusaders” in cases like this. I think he may have a point.
One can go on too long about this kind of thing, but there is something in the fawning reception of Moore worth noting. For all journalism’s reputation for unbridled cynicism, morning television and local papers often treat such ‘human interest’ stories totally uncritically, with questions to match.
Most of the time such dross is harmless. But as others have pointed out, the fervour that embraced the captain proved useful for a government guilty of considerable mismanagement during the Covid-19 pandemic. Consider Moore’s remarks to the BBC last year:
“I think you’ve all got to remember that we will get through it in the end, it will all be right. It might take time, but at the end of the day we shall all be okay again. All you people who are finding it difficult at the moment, the sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away.”
Vera Lynn, the forces’ sweetheart during the Second World War, once made similar promises to soldiers that they would see their loved ones “some sunny day”. For hundreds of thousands of British military personnel this proved untrue. So too the 100,000 pandemic victims whose corpses we’ve already counted.
Undermined authority. Most of you have probably seen the shenanigans at Handforth Parish Council, which became internet famous for its dysfunctional meeting from December. We discuss what the point of such parish councils are in the latest episode of the Right Dishonourable, as well as GameStop stocks and the EU vaccine debacle.
Big in Japan. In the wake of Brexit, our government is hoping to open up markets beyond Europe, bolstering our trade and salvaging our diplomatic reputation. Our application to join a Pacific trading bloc is among the earliest examples of this ‘Global Britain’ agenda, as I discuss in TheArticle.
Forgot to curtsy. Working as a copy editor has unfortunately burdened me with strong opinion on things like courtesy titles, which the Times has lately decided to drop. Those of you hoping for a mention in some future honours list will have to make do with your drab surnames on second mention – a truly British tragedy.
The snow has made a rare appearance in South London in the past few days, suggesting even species-threatening climate change has its upsides. If you’re enjoying this newsletter lob it at whoever you pass in the street, like an unwanted snowball.
Jimmy