" The Allies were gifted with time. Naval ships, vehicles, passenger ferries, fishing boats, yachts and boats owned simply for pleasure were assembled.
A handful of civilians even joined the mission, sailing out into the Channel voluntarily. Over the course of nine days this fleet, supported by British planes overhead, was able to rescue most of the troops."
BBC News on 'What actually happened at Dunkirk?'
Mid-May, Transformation published a stunning essay by Hanna Meretoja, warning against deploying the war analogy to describe the fightback against coronavirus. There have been some awful examples. Ministers keen to absent themselves from European cooperation had to hope that Matt Hancock’s invocation of the ‘Blitz’ on March 14 would persuade “some of the biggest names in British manufacturing” to supply a new British ventilator from scratch, quickly. But by mid-April, the FT was reporting that a potentially lethal procurement programme had sent manufacturers down entirely the wrong path for treating COVID-19 patients. Little competes with the Daily Mail headline for May 15 for sheer callousness, however, taking aim at the teaching unions and ‘imploring’, “Let our teachers be heroes. Magnificent staff across the nation are desperate to help millions of children get back to the classroom…”.
Another thought-provoking article left me wondering nevertheless what had happened to ‘Dunkirk spirit’ – that energetic revenant visiting UK bookshelves and screens from June 1940 to today. (As I wrote, the Express front page was busy pouring the latest libation: “Dunkirk spirit is with us... and will see us through coronavirus –.” ) This was an investigative piece by Peter Geoghegan and Tansy Hoskins, looking into the hiring of Deloitte by the UK government, one of the ‘Big Four’ accountancy firms, to manage PPE procurement. They had interviewed several manufacturers who responded to the urgent call, only to be frustrated by a delayed response and red tape. 8,000 emails in less than a month received an automated reply. But there was a failure to deliver, and questions were now being asked about Deloitte’s lack of knowledge of the “British textile industry, which has seen a flourishing of small businesses making high-volume fast-fashion items for a domestic market.” Those who had “avoided Deloitte’s centralised system” were reporting greater success.
