‘Inessential’ workers have helped keep the country afloat

A common sight across Britain these past ten months has been those rainbow flags fluttering in urban and village streets: ‘Thank you NHS.’ Many add an afterthought: ‘And other key workers.’ And who would dispute either sentiment?

To these expressions of gratitude are added ministers’ and their medical advisers’ thanks to everyone who just ‘stays home’. We are saving granny. We are, if only by inaction, doing our bit in a great national effort, pulling together with the team. We join the ranks of the public-spirited, the selfless, the just. And again, who would cavil? Prudence, caution, carefulness… in a pandemic these are needed qualities.

But there’s a group of our fellow citizens whose efforts during these pandemic times have gone somewhat unremarked. Many, many of these people have been doing this by choice; others out of necessity; all of them accepting an enhanced risk by leaving home.

I am not talking here about the ‘key workers’: NHS staff, police, council employees and other (often) public-sector workers whose contribution has been so important. They’ve been everywhere noticed and — sometimes to their embarrassment — praised.

No, I’m talking about the millions, mostly in the private sector, who have kept the economy ticking over by deciding to carry on with business as usual: either because they freely chose to, or because household economics pressed. They are the men and women, the bosses and the workers, the managers and the managed, who could have shut up shop, could have asked to be furloughed, but didn’t; who ploughed on, going in to work when they would have been comfortably compensated for staying at home. We owe these voluntary leave-homes more than we recognise.