{The Personal Touch}[25th June 1970]

[Redbook1:164-166][19700625:2210]{The Personal Touch}[25th June 1970]

Thursday 25th June 1970.

10.10. p.m.

            I suppose what is wanted is the personal touch in local government -- in housing and welfare, to avoid if possible these terrible evictions of people who don't want to leave by people who don't want to do it -- on orders from above.  Perhaps it is the system -- but that is of man's making.  Lack of communication is the age-old problem, growing as civilisation grows.

            It* showed you what depths the human being can sink to and not despair, how resilient they are in their misery; how cheerful children can seem in adversity they know, but how a sudden change, an enforced move, can shatter the fragile glass shell of their own world and leave them helpless, naked and in despair: that unending hopelessness, the fear of an infinite world, childhood.

            Having said that, what shall we do?  What can we do?  We are all so busy keeping one jump ahead of ourselves that there is no time for more than a passing tear: and next, the adverts, and then the News (which everyone knows isn’t true, just like the wrestling), and the Cinema program ....  We shall forget, all of us, until the next time.

            The impersonality of it cannot be dealt with by an impersonal system.  The neighbours came round and helped -- but why then, why not before?  Why did they ever let it get to this stage?  They were too busy to look until the danger was actually upon them.

            Who’d be a policeman.

*[A TV programme? <880805>]

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