City Matters 119

CITYMATTERS.LONDON 18 - 31 March 2020 | Page 21
RESIDENT OPINION
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I’VE noticed that people have
recently started drawing historical
parallels between coronavirus and
the many previous times when
London has been struck by outbreaks
of contagious disease, writes Ian
McPherson.
Specifically, memes relating to the bubonic
plague seem to proliferate on social media any
time people are discussing coronavirus and
COVID-19.
As a City Guide with a particular interest in
the 17th century, I consider myself to know a
thing or two about the history of plague, and
I don’t think drawing such parallels is very
helpful.
Whilst we are undeniably facing the biggest
global health crisis in a generation, coronavirus
most certainly isn’t the plague.
The outlook is nowhere near as bleak or
frightening as it was back in 1665, when the
Great Plague of London killed seven out of
every 10 people it infected.
A bit of perspective is perhaps in order,
folks.
However, there are certainly some
unpleasant historical similarities, chiefly
around the suspicion of ‘otherness’ and the
rise of xenophobia when frightened people are
faced with contagious disease.
I witnessed my first coronavirus hate crime
the other day on the concourse of Liverpool
Street station.
Somebody loudly passed a derogatory
comment about a man of East Asian
appearance who was wearing a facemask.
The slighted man responded assertively,
shouting at the perpetrator that he was a racist
and for a minute it looked like the situation
would escalate until a security guard from
one of the concourse shops noticed what was
happening and ran over to intervene.
As paranoia about the coronavirus
HISTORY
REPEATING
increases, the media have reported that people
of East Asian heritage, both here in Britain and
overseas, have been subjected to an increasing
amount of xenophobic and racist abuse. This
is a case of history repeating itself. During the
Black Death of the 1340s, Europe’s Jews, who
were no strangers to prejudicial treatment,
experienced a marked spike in anti-Semitic
attacks.
They were frequently accused of causing
plague by poisoning wells and there are
numerous reports of Jews being dragged from
their homes by mobs and murdered.
The City’s small Jewish community, based
around their Aldgate synagogue in Creechurch
Lane, was not subjected to anything like this
level of sectarian persecution during the Great
Plague of 1665.
Nevertheless, they remained under
suspicion. Many with fundamentalist
Christian views argued that the Great Plague
was a divine punishment for London’s newly
found tolerance of the Jews.
Others at the time similarly blamed the
pestilence on non-conformists, Sabbathbreakers,
prostitutes, Roman Catholics, and
the poor.
The Dutch, whom England was at war with
at the time, also fell under suspicion. People
became openly hostile to anyone different to
themselves.
So, depressingly, it appears that there
are indeed parallels in the human response
to epidemics of disease; suspicion, paranoia
and the need to identify and blame an
‘other’.
Arguably, rather than circulating plague
memes on Twitter it would be much more
helpful for people to try to connect the present
to the past as a way to further understand the
ways in which racism plays out.
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