An Imagined Offence

At the end of last week, the British press in varying degrees of moral indignation reported on the story of Sergeant Mark Prendeville of the Royal Air Force.  During a training exercise at RAF Manston, Kent when he got chemicals in his eyes.  He was taken to be treated at the Accident and Emergency Unit at the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate.  Whilst in the hospital A&E awaiting treatment, he was twice asked to move by hospital staff to make himself less conspicuous, as he had attended the hospital in his uniform.  Firstly he was placed around a corner and then offered a place away from the public areas.

The entire story was reported on the basis of an interview which Sergeant Prendeville’s father gave, stating:

“The way they treat our servicemen – they’re willing to put their lives on the line and they’re treated like lepers when they go to A&E.”

The hospital issued an apology stating that the hospital worker had acted in good faith, as there had been instances in the past involving altercations between members of the forces in uniform and other waiting patients.  Whether the hospital worker was acting to defend Sergeant Prendeville from the other patients, or vice versa is not clear.  The hospital has issued an instruction to its staff that members of the armed forces should not be treated any differently to any other member of the public.

Not surprisingly there has been public outrage over the story, with the to be expected claims about migrants coming to this Country but not adopting British values and standards; not respecting the armed forces; that the migrants are treated better by the State than their own armed forces; that it is political madness gone mad and so on.

There are two paradoxes with this reaction though.  Firstly, the outrage is aimed at migrants who found Sergeant Prendeville’s uniform offensive.  But in the report there is no indication that anyone was offended by the uniform.  The report states that the hospital worker asked Sergeant Prendeville to move because he thought that the uniform might offend some of the other patients and that he (assuming it was a he) was seeking to mitigate the risk.  There is nothing in the report to suggest that anyone actually was offended.

The story is simply one of a hospital worker who would appear to have been unduly sensitive to the views of others and as a consequence perceived a risk that may never have existed.  The decision to ask him to move elsewhere was a mistake and as a consequence of this mistake the hospital have apologised.  Which all makes the mock outrage seem excessive.

But secondly, those same people who malign the patriotism to Britain of the migrants are generally the same ones calling for a ban on the wearing of the burka and naqib in public.  Aside from the obvious hypocrisy of criticising people who are offended by a military uniform (when in fact they weren’t offended) while at the same time seeking to ban a religious form of dress, there is a deeper paradox that they ignorantly miss.

One of the British values, in fact one of the main, if not the main British value, is our freedom to do pretty much as we please and the acceptance that everyone else has the same right.  So people in Britain have the right to dress pretty much as we please too.  So if you want to wander around in a toga, a zebra onesie or in a tweed jacket with plus fours, then nobody is going to prevent you (except of course your relatives for fear of being associated with you).  So in criticising migrants for not observing British values by wearing the niqab or burka, they are failing to observe British values themselves.

Maybe the story about Sergeant Prendeville should have read something like this: today a British soldier went to hospital in his uniform and nobody was offended.  Of course if those pesky migrants won’t get offended by British soldiers in uniform, then we’ll just have to get mad at them by imagining that they were offended.