Wes Streeting, detail from his official portrait, photo Chris McAndrew

There Are Not Enough Safeguards!

by Phil Hall

Any legislation of this kind must robustly safeguard against abuse, and guarantee that those who are seriously ill would not feel coerced or pressured to prematurely end their life. I am not satisfied that this legislation provides these safeguards – and that is why I cannot support it.

Jeremy Corbyn MP

As sure as night follows day, death will be pushed as an affordable alternative to costly state healthcare. Let’s face it. death is inevitable, and we all have an equal stake in this matter and a right to take a stance. My mother, Eve Hall, died because of the higher and higher doses of morphine that she was prescribed to help her avoid pain. The doctors that were helping her weren’t trying to kill her. They were trying to make her life bearable—but the morphine killed her. According to Margaret Yip, whose former husband was very ill: ‘They do it anyway, they say there is no death plan in hospital – but there certainly is. They tell you the patient is too weak to have an operation they have an infection and medication is not working, then the patient is put on nil by mouth.’

MPs in their pomp and relative youth may not have been the right people to take this decision. The answer to the question of euthanasia should have stayed where it belonged—within the remit of the existing legislation of the courts, and the medical profession and not strayed into the ballcourt of Parliament. GPs (who would be expected to implement it), palliative care doctors and psychiatrists are just some members of the medical profession who are coming out against the Assisted Dying Bill the MPs just voted through parliament.

Of course, there are cases where decisions need to be made by the lawcourts and senior medical professionals and oversight committees—but these don’t warrant introducing new assisted death legislation into law. The Parliament that brought you Iraq and now Gaza now brings you assisted dying. This should help alleviate the housing crisis!

There is an old Mexican proverb: Piensas mal y atinaras! (Think badly of someone and you’ll be right). I think badly of the MPs who voted for this Assisted Dying Bill and I suspect I am probably right.

There will be sweeteners. If you euthanise, we will lower the death tax. Admiring articles will be written about old people who didn’t want to be a burden, and hateful articles about those who selfishly prolonged their lives at great expense to the taxpayer.

The new ‘spongers’—according to the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, the Times, and the Sun—will be the old people who insist on living on without ‘paying their way.’ There will be a cut-off point at 90 to 95. Even if people are healthy at 90, they will be looked down upon for not ending their lives. Of course, billionaire gerontocrats will never be criticised because they are ‘benefactors’ of society.

Euthanasia will be promoted ‘sensitively’ in every clinic and old-age home. The process farmed off to a private-public partnership, to a subsidiary of some US corporation. 

‘Is it all getting a bit much? We understand. Call 44444 for the death squad. No questions asked. Take a week to get your affairs in order. Bask in the respect of the community and family and friends before you go. A free ‘Good Life’ party in every package. £1,000 and urn included.

Can’t take it anymore? Smash this glass for a pink coping pill and call us. Don’t throw yourself on the railway line, we have a better solution.

Maybe the US corporation’s euthanasia department—‘We Celebrate Life’—could set up a branch in war zones. ‘Getting a bit much for you and your family, Gazan? Why not end it all here? Free of charge (sponsored by the AIPAC Gaza Redevelopment Group).’

We don’t live in a socialist, humane society. We live in a rapacious capitalist society being slowly taken over by US health corporations. What the hell do we think will be the upshot of voting for Euthanasia in a society like ours? How many of us voted for Starmer or the LibDems and against Humane Socialism and Jeremy Corbyn and his team? Wes Streeting overseeing assisted dying! 

If you are flush with cash and your kids are doing well—with houses, and you donate a little to charity, and have a live-in nurse, and access to the best food and healthcare, and holidays abroad—you might not want to off yourself as much as a homeless man on the street being kicked awake by drunken thugs, despised by passers-by, possessing one set of clothes. Or you are stuck in a house you can’t clean without being able to go up the stairs, or you are being roughhoused in one of our more dysfunctional old people’s homes when you refuse to go to bed, or sing at inappropriate moments or get angry when you should be quiet, or behave in a way that isn’t exactly like the way the inmate of a jail is asked to behave.

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People are horrified by what might happen to them in future, and so they make living wills condemning themselves to death because they can’t stand the thought of suffering. But imagine you have Alzheimer’s and can still enjoy the odd food and the sunlight and a hug—and suddenly, because you’ve made a living will, along comes Dr. Jack Kevorkian with his needle to put you to sleep. 

My son and my daughter-in-law are doctors, not executioners. Officially state-endorsed (and soon to be promoted) self-execution in a country with no formal constitution, where law is a matter of precedent, is a revolting desacralisation of human life—turning human life into a utilitarian cost-benefit calculation.

I am sure that Wes Streeting and all the other MPs voting to support Israel, supported by the right-wing press and who are courted by US healthcare lobbyists, using all the logic of Raskolnikov, are strongly in favour of the utilitarian calculus of death. But Jeremy Corbyn says there are not enough safeguards, and Diane Abbott says they are not enough safeguards, and all humane socialists say they are not enough safeguards, and the Catholic Church and other religious organisations say there are not enough safeguards, and many disabled people are terrified by the idea that euthanasia should be promoted and supported—directly or indirectly—and sanctioned by government and what it means to them and their right to life.

Remember, euthanasia was a key part of eugenics programmes that were meant to get rid of the infirm and disabled and the the aged and ‘unfit’. Has enough time passed so that we no longer remember that? So let’s say it loud and clear: There are not enough safeguards.

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Do not go gentle into that good night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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*Headline from e.e. cummings poem: [Buffalo Bill ‘s]

Phil Hall was born into an ANC family in South Africa. The family was forced into exile in 1963 after his mother was imprisoned and his father banned. They relocated to East Africa, where his parents continued their activism and journalism. In 1975, after a period living in India, they journeyed overland back to the UK, eventually settling in Brighton.

Phil pursued a broad education, studying Russian, Spanish, politics, economics, literature, linguistics, and English grammar and phonology. His path led him to live and study in the USSR, in Ukraine, and later in Mexico, where he married and started a family. Over the next decade, Phil and his partner balanced activism with work before relocating to the UK—a move initially intended to be permanent.

However, professional opportunities took him to Saudi Arabia and then the UAE, where he spent ten years before returning to the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in Britain, he founded Ars Notoria Magazine and, alongside fellow humane socialist Paul Halas, launched AN Editions, a small venture dedicated to publishing thoughtful, progressive and exciting new books.