Esther Rantzen, deep into treatment for lung cancer that cannot be cured, has made an intervention in the assisted dying debate that is unignorable: she has already joined Dignitas, she says, and “might buzz off to Zurich”. Yet she worries that her friends and family would want to be with her, but that could open them up to prosecution. She wants to see a free vote in parliament on assisted dying.
I can’t help placing this in the constellation of Rantzen’s life’s work, a huge number of campaigns spanning decades, always focused on the pragmatic, the uncontroversial: consumer rights; the rights of children not to be abused or neglected; loneliness and elder abuse. She has been an object lesson in not needing to be radical or original in order to make change. Indeed, sometimes just making the commonsense case for justice is enough, so long as you’re loud and trenchant.
