ABSTRACT
For those of us who grew up in the UK in the 1960s, a not uncommon sight in large towns and cities was the person, usually a member of some religious group or another, carrying a placard proclaiming, ‘The end of the world is nigh’. There is a risk in any discussion of the current global political situation of sounding like that person. As will become clear, that is not the spirit or intention of this chapter. Nevertheless, to borrow Gramsci’s aphorism, ‘optimism of the will’ has to be tempered by ‘pessimism of the intellect’ (Gramsci, 1971). The threats and realities we currently face both as citizens of this planet and as members of the social work profession could scarcely be more serious. Here, I will mention just three.
