It is highly encouraging that someone as authoritative as Rabbi Baroness Neuberger has written such a militant book on age discrimination. It is more than 40 years since the word "ageism" was coined and a good deal of progress has been made since then, but nowhere near enough. I have been involved in several ways over the years, but campaigns must still be waged, and here is Neuberger, a much younger person (born 1950), who is well equipped to give a lead.
Her background includes chairing a community health services NHS trust and running the King's Fund health think tank, and she is very knowledgeable about health matters. In Not Dead Yet she extends her range to cover policies and practices in many other aspects of public life. Her previous books were all informed by humane concern, but now she means to raise the political temperature - hence the manifesto format. She has the front-bench health brief for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords, but her manifesto's approach is not party political; it is more in the manner of an angry rabbi.
Largely inspired by memories of her parents as they grew old, she provides important information and ideas about age discrimination, written in a clear, simple style and with masses of down-to-earth detail. She opens and closes the book and ends each of the ten chapters with ten-point manifestos to counter age discrimination. These deal with work, pensions, public safety and facilities, learning opportunities, housing, care assistants, community beds and hospitals, the right to die well and much else, and then, summing it all up, "grey rage".
"Don't Make Me Brain-Dead, Let Me Grow" is a particularly telling chapter. Government policies in recent years have led to a huge decline in the number of adult education courses that do not relate directly to the economy (summed up by one secretary of state as a preference for plumbing, not Pilates). Using statistics regularly checked by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, Neuberger is dismayed: "The numbers of over-50s attending evening classes has dropped by a third over the past two years, mainly because of the increase in fees." In my view, the over-50s are missing out, not only on Pilates, but on pottery, poetry, philosophy and politics as well. It is reassuring that she writes so enthusiastically about other developments - the University of the Third Age, the revival of dance among older people and the potential of public libraries.
Two profoundly contrasting examples, from the arts and from care of the frail elderly, symbolise the ageism in our society and offer a glimpse of a more positive future. The learning chapter opens with a tribute to the Zimmers; the section on care has a horror story about "bucket chairs". The Zimmers, 40 people with a combined age of more than 3,000 and no previous experience, became a rock group and recorded a hit single in the Abbey Studios and performed it on television. I share her delight in them. Not everyone could have such an opportunity, but many more could have a chance to discover hidden talents if adult education were itself in better health.
There are, of course, some good care homes, but far too many are seriously inadequate. It is well known that drugs are often used to sedate residents because there aren't enough staff to look after them properly, but bucket chairs are something else. Neuberger describes a care home in King's Heath, Birmingham, run by two GPs who made the residents sit in deep, reclining bucket chairs. Once in them, they were unable to get out. The inspectors feared such immobility speeded up "the onset of pneumonia, as well as worsening pressure sores, which are seriously painful". Residents were also given the wrong drugs in the wrong doses at the wrong times, causing a huge increase in the numbers dying. The GPs were struck off.
There are one or two oddities. For example, the book mentions the pilot stage of Better Government for Older People, a partnership between older people, central and local government, but that was nearly ten years ago. It has developed a good deal since and would be worth assessing. Neuberger does not mention the older people's forums all over the country, keeping an eye on local authorities and the NHS. And agencies such as Help the Aged, about which she writes almost disparagingly, are the sources nevertheless for much of the evidence she uses.
There are many positive proposals in her last chapter that we should act on. Here are two, one highly specific and the other on an ambitious scale: 1) She advocates "elected standing committees of over-70s to hold every local authority to account"; 2) She believes the time has come to "launch a Grey Panthers movement, get angry, force change to happen". We now need a series of meetings and conferences (and demos?) to discuss how best to take the agenda forward for a society free of ageism.
Brian Groombridge is professor emeritus of adult education, University of London, and an active senior citizen
