ABSTRACT

At the last Labour Party Conference of the twentieth century, Prime Minister Tony Blair looked forward to a new Britain for the next millennium. He invoked a new moral purpose manifest in the creation of a model nation, based not on privilege, class or background but on the equal worth of all. He illustrated his notion of social injustice by a maternity ward with two babies side by side, delivered by the same doctors and midwives, yet with two quite different lives ahead:

One returns with his mother to a bed and breakfast that is cold, damp, cramped. A mother who has no job, no family to support her. Sadder still, she has no-one to share the joy and triumph of the new baby, a father nowhere to be seen. That mother loves her child like any other mother. But her life and her baby’s life is a long, hard struggle. For this child, individual potential hangs on a thread.

The second child returns to a prosperous home, grandparents desperate to share the caring and a father with a decent income and even larger sense of pride. They’re already thinking about schools, friends she can make, new toys they can buy. Expectations are high, opportunities truly limitless. (Tony Blair, 28 September 1999, as reported in The Mirror)

Tony Blair recognised that he had been lucky, and wished that all could share this experience.