Each week, I would stand on the doorstep of my house, clap, bang pans and make noise as I joined in with the growing chorus that echoed across the town. Even though we couldn't see each other in lockdown, we could certainly hear.

Yet, this new found feeling of unity was very short lived. Society was starting to divide between those who obeyed the lockdown and those who didn't.

Looking out of my front window, I was soon seeing cars from out of town parking up in Whitby and the occupants going for a stroll. The holiday homes on my street were visited by their owners even more often than before lockdown.

'As Covid first hit the country there was a growing sense of unity'. PIC: PA

On social media, the tensions began to rise. Anger and discord soon surfaced. It felt as if, even though we were locked in our homes, the nation was slowly starting to fall apart. A new tribalism was starting to grow where people clung to their like-minded echo chambers. The community was dividing into smaller and smaller groups as national unity diminished.

The wounds of Brexit were still very much open and soon began to fester. Politically, socially and economically, Britain began to become a place of growing division.

Everything was suddenly blamed on Covid and Brexit. Crisis after crisis seemed to follow. Petrol stations shut through panic buying. Toilet rolls were stripped from shelves due to transport problems and we were told food supplies were in danger.

In reality, all of these issues were fuelled by the mainstream media jumping on stories that weren't really there. The petrol shortage was caused by a single leaked comment from a government meeting.

Intent on discord, political agitators used lockdown to spread dissent. Black Lives Matter, an organisation hell bent on defunding the police and breaking up the traditional family brought even further division. Colonialism became the new buzz word as statues of long dead and forgotten people were pulled down. This quickly led to panic sweeping through our national institutions as they all tried to rewrite the past.

Since lockdown, becoming woke has become a thing to be. People fear that if they say anything against it, they will be branded, racist, a transphobe, homophobe or any other phobe that could be slung at them for arguing against this new ideology. Post Covid woke, has split us into imaginary tribes of for and against. It is as if you aren't actively anti-racist then you are racist.

Lockdown has certainly left this country in a worse place than before the pandemic started. It has divided us into partisan tribes of special interests. There is a new gulf between rich and poor, north and south, gay and straight, vaxxed and non vaxxed. Outrageously, lesbians were banned from a Pride march, such is the division amongst some in the LGBTQ community.

Minority groups that should have minimal influence, now punch at heavy-weight, as people are too scared to stand up to them.

The climate change tribe attempt to bring our nation to a standstill as trade unions try to procure a general strike. Mark my words, on the week of the Labour Party conference, you will hear a rallying call from fat-cat union bosses to bring down the PM with a national strike. Division is the new trend. Divide and conquer to build back better, but don't you dare have a different opinion.

We are all living in a broken Britain of antagonised groups intent on bitterness and dispute. Nothing is as it once was.

Our police force, that is supposed to protect and serve without fear or favour, doesn't bother to turn up to burglaries as most of them are too busy dancing the Macarena or being lapped danced at the Notting Hill carnival. All they have achieved is losing respect and being laughed at on social media.

It would seem there is growing post lockdown anger still waiting to come out. We only have to turn on the news to hear about more murders, stabbings and violence on our streets. Lawlessness appears to be on the rise as the police are seen as being impotent in dealing with disorder. The crime tribe believe that they are above and beyond the reach of the law.

For many of us, this causes even more isolation as the pillars of society can no longer be trusted. It is as if the country is in the grip of mass post pandemic, traumatic shock. Various studies state that people have heightened levels of anxiety and anger due to lockdown.

Our nation is dividing into smaller and smaller single issue groups as our culture and Englishness is hung out to dry. How sad that all that is good and wonderful in this land is being thrown on to the altar of division and tribalism. It's every man and woman for themselves, our Dunkirk spirit has been drowned in the waves of discontent.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Yorkshire.

How our society is more divided now than it has ever been before - GP Taylor