Don't Be Too Tough On Nanny. Sometimes the State Needs to Intervene

Summary

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"Some may call it the nanny state but I call it a force for good." Margaret Hodge Nanny knows best. The nanny state has become a war cry of the political right, rarely articulated without a sneer. It conjures up stern Edwardian matrons with ramrod backs who force- fed castor oil to their charges and checked they had washed behind their ears. The term is first recorded in a Spectator article of 1965 by the Conservative Ian Macleod and has since become a pejorative byword for any proposal or legislation that is deemed "good for us".

It has been much bandied about recently. In Scotland, the executive's legislation on breastfeeding in public and proposed smoking ban in enclosed public places had the anti-nannying brigade bristling with indignation, just before a similar chorus was taken up south of the border in response to the government's white paper on health. Liberty is the most important political value, but even the most laissez-faire right-winger has to admit that the state needs to intervene when liberties collide. As children's minister Margaret Hodge pointed out in her speech in defence of the nanny state yesterday, the state has historically always taken an interest in the family, on subjects ranging from compulsory education for children to drink-driving laws. Not quite always.

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Don't Be Too Tough On Nanny. Sometimes the State Needs to Intervene

In Victorian times, when infectious diseases accounted for the largest burden of ill health, reactionaries opposed the building of sewers, clean water systems and decent housing on the basis that it was none of the st...

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