The PR Blog

When the bonds that hold us together are tested, the cost is often borne in the very divisions we seek to overcome.

I recently watched a film called United, based on the true and tragic story of the Manchester United team lost in the Munich air disaster of 1958. It is a story many people think they know - young men, enormous promise, sudden catastrophe -  but what struck me was not the crash itself. It was what followed.

In the aftermath of tragedy, Manchester United rebuilt not through optimism, but through unity of purpose. Today, in a world where everything has become political and division is quietly encouraged, that lesson feels more confronting than ever. This New Year, the question is not whether we agree -  but whether we are still willing to stand together.

Those who survived did not rebuild because they were cheerful, or optimistic, or untouched by grief. They rebuilt because they understood something that seems almost foreign to us now: that when loss comes -  and it always does - the only way forward is together.

That is what makes the film so confronting today.

Because we are not united.

Division is nothing new. What is new is how we are being actively pushed into it…  into whispered outrage, torn loyalties, careful silences, and the quiet fear of saying the wrong thing in the wrong place. We are encouraged to see neighbours not as people, but as categories. To sort, label, and dismiss rather than listen.

And this is happening at a time when everything in our lives has become political.

Some years ago, I wrote that I would try to keep Christmas free of politics. I genuinely believed it was possible. I believed politics was something that happened out there -  in parliaments, on talk shows, in election campaigns  -  while life happened at home, around the table, in church, at work, and among family.

I was wrong.

Politics no longer sits alongside life. It has moved inside it. It LIVES in our everyday lives. 

Life is political.
Death is political.
Health is political.
Education is political.
Faith is political.
Christmas itself has become political.

The air we breathe, the land we farm, the seas that feed us -  all subject to regulation, permission, and ideology. Every dollar earned and spent, every movement tracked, every record stored and shared. From birth to death, intervention is no longer the exception; it is the default.

The men who played for Manchester United gave themselves freely - for love of the game. Johnny Cash’s Sixteen Tons reminds us that most of us do the same every day, working, speaking, and striving not out of hatred for our country, but out of love - and rising anger when treated as if it belongs to someone else.

What troubles me most is not that politics exists - it always has -  but that politics now claims moral authority over the most intimate human moments. Decisions once governed by conscience, family, faith, and community are increasingly dictated by law, slogan, or system.

We are told “my body, my choice,” until it isn’t.
We are told freedom matters, until compliance is required.
We are told diversity is sacred, until disagreement appears.

And all the while, we are urged to stay quiet -  for the sake of harmony.

But silence does not create harmony. It creates submission.

This is where United returns with uncomfortable force.

After Munich, Manchester United could easily have collapsed. Grief alone would have justified it. Anger, blame, retreat -  all understandable. Instead, something else happened. People chose not to weaponise tragedy against one another. They chose continuity over chaos. Meaning over bitterness. Unity over fracture.

And here is the crucial lesson: unity did not require sameness. It required shared purpose. It required the refusal to abandon one another when it would have been easier to walk away.

Contrast that with our present moment.

Today, crisis does not produce solidarity -  it produces suspicion. Every emergency becomes an opportunity to divide, to rank obedience, to reward compliance and punish dissent. Unity is no longer encouraged; it is treated as dangerous unless it aligns with approved narratives.

That tells us something important.

If unity were harmless, it would not be discouraged.

What we are living through is not accidental. A disunited population is easier to manage than a united one. A fearful population is easier to steer than a confident one. A silent population is easier to rule than a speaking one.

Which brings us to the New Year -  that strange, reflective pause where we are encouraged to look back and look ahead.

I do not believe we are past the point of no return. But I do believe we are past the point of neutrality.

We cannot opt out of politics anymore -  not because we crave conflict, but because politics has opted into us. The question is not whether we engage, but how.

Becoming political does not mean becoming cruel.
It does not mean shouting, sneering, or despising.
It does not mean surrendering humanity for ideology.

It means reclaiming moral agency.

The anger we see today is not the absence of love for country, but the protest of people who have given their best - and are tired of being treated as though it belongs to someone else.

Becoming political? Why? 

It means refusing to outsource conscience to systems.
It means speaking plainly without hatred.
It means standing beside people even when we disagree.
It means choosing courage over comfort.

We have seen families torn apart over politics, vaccinations, and lifestyle choices. Once-united households fractured by arguments that feel impossible to resolve. The choice between “keeping the peace” and standing by one’s principles has become unbearable for many -  because bowing down for the sake of superficial harmony often feels like the destruction of the self.

This is not unity. It is quiet surrender.

Unity today will not look like marching in lockstep. It will look quieter - and braver. It will look like people refusing to dehumanise one another. Like neighbours choosing conversation over categories. Like families protecting the human scale of life against bureaucratic abstraction.

The men remembered in United did not live to see what their legacy would become. They simply lived -  and died - as young men committed to something larger than themselves. The rebuilding that followed honoured them not by erasing loss, but by carrying it forward with dignity.

That is the choice before us now.

We can accept disunity as inevitable, whisper our frustrations, and retreat into private resentment.

Or we can decide -  stubbornly, imperfectly -  to rise from the ashes anyway.

This New Year, I am not asking for agreement. I am asking for unity of spirit. For the refusal to be broken into obedient fragments. For the courage to speak truth without malice. For the determination to remember that systems exist to serve people -  not the other way around.

Because “together” is not a sentimental word. It is a demanding one.

A team cannot function if only some players believe in the game. Unity does not happen if the players, the coaches, the managers, and the financiers are working against one another -  or worse, pretending they are on the same side when they are not.

And perhaps that is why unity is discouraged now. Because real unity requires honesty. It requires shared sacrifice. It requires leaders who see people not as assets to be managed, but as human beings to be respected.

Our lives are not entries in a ledger.
Our years are not theirs to spend.

And our future -  like that rebuilt team all those years ago - will only exist if we choose to build it.

Together. This year, the choice is ours: to let systems define our bonds, or to define them ourselves - one act of courage, one conversation, one refusal at a time.