As events have unfolded in the USA, Afghanistan and the Middle East, I have been thinking about social work and terrorism. Social workers will always be counted among the stretcher-bearers of society and we know already of their considerable contribution to the counselling of the bereaved and traumatised in the USA and elsewhere. It is from the strength of experience like this that our credibility grows and enables us to help to bring about better policies and practice in the future.
However, social workers also find themselves working among people - be they asylum seekers, ethnic minorities, disabled or disadvantaged in some way - whose experiences and belief patterns take them outside those of the majority. Sometimes this is wrapped up in the jargon of social disadvantage, but it is part of the skill of social work to be the mover in this situation.
Indeed, I would suggest that inside almost every social worker at some point there is a burning sense of injustice brought about by how their client is being treated or about how whole groups of people who form their clients get a raw deal. This has to be part of the motivation of social work. It also affects how social workers look at the world and at injustices in other countries.
Some may bring with them religious values that are at odds with worldliness. They may feel some sympathy for radical religious ethics that proclaim the downfall of the rich and the salvation of the poor. Others may come to this point of view by way of socialist thinking that dominated so much of the past 150 years and may not be so dead as supporters of consumerism may think.
Certainly it is within the collective memory of social workers to recall the protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Remember "Hey Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?" Who will own up to having posters of Che Guevara on the back wall of the office? Who watched If or Apocalypse Now?
In his early books Sartre describes how the mentality of resistance grew in occupied France, and there is a famous passage in which the hero finds meaning in life as he stands on the top of a church tower and turns his gun on an advancing troop of soldiers, a moment of intense liberation. We may pause to think how we would react if some part of the British Isles were occupied or invaded by an outside power.
So social workers are no strangers to wanting to right the wrongs of the world, but theirs is not a heroic occupation in the usual sense of the word. For them, empowerment does not come, as Mao said, out of the barrel of a gun, but through patiently helping clients to achieve their potential and obtain their civil rights. Caring also teaches about consequences. There are alternative ways to violence. Do we want the memorial to all those who died in New York to be more brutal killing elsewhere?
John Metcalfe is parliamentary officer of the British Association of Social Workers.
