Dame Julia's manifesto for older age

By Tony Watts - Editor - 17/06/2008

“What we need in this country is a grey power movement,” says Julia Neuberger. “Something to make the politicians in this country take notice of older people. At the moment, they only bother when we’re close to an election. It’s not that they’re bad people, but they just don’t see it.”

“It” is the plight of millions of older people in the country, who – as she describes in her new book “Not Dead Yet” – are being put upon as never before. Julia is an outspoken peer, rabbi and social reformer who has huge experience in the public and voluntary sector and her book should be compulsory reading for every politician – local as well as national - as well as everyone who has professional dealings with the older generations … from benefits officers and doctors to care home managers and employers.

She sets out just some of the indignities and injustices to which many older people are routinely subject – but then goes on to set out a positive course of action to sort of the problem, root and branch. A lot of her attention is focussed on care homes, a subject with which she is very well acquainted, having headed up the Kings Fund for a number of years. She describes the ludicrousness of local authorities cutting back on care in the community budgets at a time when care homes are shutting down in record numbers, and the all-too-frequent poor quality of care on offer from homes relying on cheap, untrained labour.

She highlights the lunacy of older people being forced out of employment when they could offer so much to the workplace, the stupidity of the lack of learning and reskilling opportunities, the shortsightedness of cutting back public transport systems in rural areas and marooning older people there, the humiliation of means testing, the inhumanity of healthcare rationing and the lack of foresight in removing public toilets from our towns and cities – effectively trapping people in their own homes.

She also argues for a more humane way to approach certain conditions as we reach the end of our life – which leads to a quality of existence that is hardly, if at all, worth having. It’s a powerful book and, more to the point, actually offers sensible, joined-up solutions. All that has to happen now is for the people who make the decisions to sit up and take notice. “It’s not just the politicians at fault,” she says, “it’s now part of our culture. It’s a social failure which is peculiarly English.

“I’m not saying that other countries have got it all right. They haven’t. But even Scotland and Ireland look after their older people better than the English, and so do the Welsh.”

As someone who sits in the Lords – as a Lib Dem peer – she despairs of any of the political parties really taking all of the issues on board without a lot of steering. And for her the solution is a coherent campaign from older people to force issues like pensions, healthcare and fuel poverty further up the political agenda. “What we need now is ‘Grey Rage’.”

As she writes in one of the book’s most telling passages: “There is some evidence, though not much, that older people are beginning to fight back and to realise the political power they potentially possess. But what we need now is to focus that anger, not just by expecting politicians and professionals to change – through they surely must – but by setting up the businesses, services, mutual networks and new designs for living that older people will need.

“Nobody is going to do this for them. What they have to realise is that they have the power, energy and time to make it happen for themselves.”

Powerful stuff – and in tune with everything that Mature Times has campaigned for over the years. But is there no single body representing them in this fight? “At present, no. In the last year Help the Aged has been doing much more campaigning – which has been fantastic to see. There has been a lot of talk about them merging with Age Concern; and if that happened, perhaps that might provide a new focus.”

But realistically what Dame Julia is calling for is a “Grey Panther” movement mirroring the hugely influential movement in the States where goods and services dedicated to older people are more readily available – from travel insurance through to health care.

So are things getting better – or worse? “In some respects better – the recent Government housing strategy is very promising. But issues like care are getting far worse. We need to look at the best practices of other countries and use those as a benchmark.

“I would like to see someone take up the mantle of leader of a new movement for older people. He or she would have to cut across the political divides and probably be in their 60s or 70s. But the movement could get behind that person.”

“Not Dead Yet” by Julia Neuberger is published by HarperCollins, price £18.99.