On the Danger of Feeling Quite Strongly

"Marmite: you either love it or hate it."  Oh dear!  You see, I don't mind Marmite - which is to say, I don't buy it and it would not be the first thing I would think of to put on a slice of toast, but I can eat it.  You could say that, re Marmite, I'm pretty neutral.  A silly example, not least because the now famous strapline is a mere (if very clever) marketing ploy; but one which neatly encapsulates the - I think, increasing - tendency to push us to one end or other of a spectrum of opinion.


In my own context, the vexed question of women's ordination (to the episcopate, currently) comes to mind.  I know a lot of people who are passionately in favour of it, and some who are firmly opposed.  But there must be people - potentially quite a lot of people - who don't feel strongly about it one way or the other.  Perhaps there are even some who (I know this is outrageous) really don't care.  People like this will be categorised by default as "pro" women bishops since, if you don't specifically object to them, you must be in favour of them.  But, in the eyes of their more committed brethren, their neutrality or indifference is reprehensible, and shows a want of proper awareness of the issues.  I have a lot of sympathy with them, however; and hitherto much inclined to defend the integrity of Not Feeling Strongly.


That was before the issue of same-sex marriage came to the fore, and I learned the danger of Feeling Quite Strongly.  This can manifest itself in various ways, but becoming a Twitter Bore is one of the most obvious.  I happen to feel quite strongly about the issue, for exactly the reason set out here by Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans:

"I was very struck by David Cameron's statement that he is in favour of same-sex marriage, not in spite of being a conservative but because of being a conservative.  I am not a political animal, but I want to say something very similar as a priest.  I am in favour of same-sex marriage not because I am a wild liberal but because I am instinctively a traditional Anglo-Catholic.  I believe in the sacrament of marriage; I believe we all need a disciplined framework for faith and love; and I believe we all need God's grace and blessing to live by it."

All those who are interested in knowing what I think about this now know.  I realise I have tweeted about it more than any other single issue since I started tweeting. This was brought to a head by the publication earlier this week of what the Church Times calls the Church of England's "tendentious and poorly argued" response to the Government's consultation on the issue.  I was surprisingly upset by both the tone and the content of the response, and expressed my dismay in a tweet which was - slightly alarmingly - retweeted more times than any other I have tweeted.  (This incidentally provoked some interesting replies - not all of them about the theological aspects, if you understand me.)


I've since pretty much stopped, mainly out of respect to those who are kind enough to follow and read me (and who may not agree with me), but also because I suspected I was heading towards Twitter Bore territory.  When the next stage in the saga breaks, I'm sure I will not be able to resist; but for the time being...


But it's been salutary.  It's taught me that I'm probably a poor candidate to stand for the Not Feeling Strongly party. And that, perhaps, on reflection, I do actually hate Marmite.


PS  Please note that I have not included at the head of this post a photographic cliche showing two clasped male hands bearing wedding rings.  You see how I think of you?

No bigots here, are there?

A revealing little anecdote on the gay marriage debate.

A couple of weeks ago, I was a guest at a wedding in London.  At the reception, I fell into conversation with another guest whom I had sat next to at the ceremony.  We chatted amiably about this and that, and enquired politely about one another in the way that you do.  I told her I was an Anglican priest; she said she was a Roman Catholic, active in her parish, and what did I think about gay marriage?  I said I was in favour of it.

She said (as I already knew) that Catholics have been asked by their Church hierarchy to lobby against the proposed change, in the context of the Government's consultation on the subject.  In pursuance of this, her parish priest had recently commended to his flock a petition which was available in church for signature after each mass.  "However", he said, "I only want you to sign it if you're not a bigot". The lady to whom I was speaking, not being a bigot, therefore felt able to sign it, and did.  And seemed to feel some satisfaction for having done so.

Now, nobody thinks they are a bigot, do they? Even if they are. This cunning little ruse enabled almost every member of the congregation to to sign as requested, while feeling inwardly and showing outwardly their lack of bigotry in fulfilling the Church's request.

You have to hand it to them.

Reflections from a spring funeral

Last week I said goodbye to an old friend.  


We had met nearly 25 years ago while in working in the same organisation, and had both become - largely through the irrepressible social zeal of the woman who subsequently became his wife - part of an extended and infinitely extendable grouping of colleagues, friends and partners who shared boozy nights, long weekends, idyllic Umbrian holidays and Wednesdays at the Chelsea Flower Show.  Cast to the four winds as we eventually and inevitably were, the ties that bound us were, and remain, real.  Despite our differences, we were for each other known quantities, and there is a necessary comfort in that.


Those differences included matters of religion.  My friend was a convinced atheist.  He was a rationalist to his fingertips: any proposition that did not conform to principles of human reason, that could not be shown to be true, was by definition superstition and to be resisted.  He believed that religion was, in the main, a force for ill.  He thought the Church, at best, rather ridiculous. Yet he was by no means intolerant of those - including me - who saw things differently.  He was highly intelligent and humane; and as I underwent ministerial formation and ordination, he maintained a genuine interest in my progress and my life as a deacon and then a priest.


For my part, I see atheism as a logical and entirely respectable position to hold.  If you regard human reason as the ultimate arbiter of what may or may not be true; if you can conceive of the existence of nothing above or beyond it; and if you are not disposed to accept a reality that you cannot personally discern, then atheism is where you are likely to end up.  All perfectly reasonable as far as I can see. My own belief is that this form of humanism elevates us to the status of little gods, and that that really is the root of all evil.  But he and I shared, I think, an understanding of humanity's fallibility: that, however firmly held, however well thought-through, however cherished my convictions about anything - I might just be mistaken.  And we live in a post-modern, philosophically anti-realist age, in which no individual's opinion is of inherently greater value than another's.  He and I knew we differed in this matter, and it was never a source of conflict between us.


He died young, of cancer.  His funeral was to be led by a (secular) humanist minister - styled, slightly ironically it seemed to me, "celebrant" - and I was asked to speak.  I knew that my words would need to be carefully judged: this was an emphatically non-religious service, and as a matter of courtesy to him, his wife and family, there was no question of my saying anything of the kind that I would say at a Christian funeral.  I was not unduly disturbed by this: I could see that, under the circumstances, something overtly religious would have jarred, and everybody would be feeling jarred enough.


But then I got a message from his a member of his family, the burden of which was that they would prefer it if I did not wear a clerical collar at the funeral. I confess my back went up at this: not only was I not to say anything "religious" (and in fact had not planned to), I was not even to look as if I might.  They could not be expected to understand that, for a clergyperson of my tradition, a clerical collar is not a statement of my convictions, even less my occupation: it is an expression of who I am.  And so I imagine they would not have realised that they were saying that it was I, personally, who was not acceptable to them.


I did briefly and indignantly wonder if they would have said the same to a rabbi or an imam should any such have been expected to speak, then decided to - as the current argot has it - get over myself.  I wore a black suit and tie, and ended up looking like one of the undertakers.


I said my piece, which included this - which no more than hints at the possibility of a non-physical world.  I was struck afterwards by the number of mourners who asked me about it, apparently wanting me to go further.  Almost none of these were religious people in the conventional sense; but they seemed to need the assurance of a supernatural reality.  I suspect this is hard-wired in us (see this); and that to be "religious" is simply to be human.


What is being rejected by many is perhaps not religion per se, but rather dogma and revealed truth.  The challenge for the Church, I now see more clearly, is how it engages with that.

I'm a Londoner - make me smile

Dwellers of that vorticular, self-referential, glorious city-state that is London may be unaware that there are local elections in other parts of the country this week.  These latter elections will be won or lost on matters of policy, of party popularity, and what politicians like to call "the things that matter to ordinary people". They will not, generally, be fought on the basis of the charisma of the electoral candidates, who will be happy solemnly to proclaim at the slightest provocation that "it's policies not personality that matters" (matters, that is, to the aforementioned ordinary people, obviously).  The point about the London mayoral election is that precisely the reverse is the case.


When New Labour won in 1997, an early if second-level, priority was the creation of a new city-wide government for London.  This was to address a perceived strategic deficit created by the abolition of the GLC in 1986.  London, it was argued, was a "world city": the largest, most populous metropolitan area in the EU, the most important financial centre on the planet, and the engine of the UK economy.  It was ridiculous that no single figure or body was in charge of it.  The 33 separate local authorities which comprise Greater London could not between them hope to provide the necessary leadership, even if they could agree on how to exercise it.  A big, important city needed a big, important leader.  A mayor along the lines of New York or Paris seemed just the job.


But Tony Blair was sensitive to claims that he was creating a new "tier" of local government.  He was also very keen not to (re)create something which could establish itself as a troublesome, opposing political force, as the GLC, under Ken Livingstone, had done in the early 80s.  The Government was also alive to the prospect, even early on, that Livingstone wanted - even expected - to be the Labour leader of any new authority, having been spitefully deprived of his former power-base by the Tories.


The Greater London Authority (GLA) was to be a modern, administratively slimline, US-style setup - a mayor, monitored by a small assembly - both to be separately elected by proportional representation, and housed in a purpose-built, energy-efficient glass bubble near Tower Bridge - way downstream from Westminster.  Its focus was to be strategic - in other words, it was to take the big, city-wide view of the world, and leave the day-to-day management of Londoners' lives to the borough councils.


The London Assembly has no real powers of its own.  It calls the Mayor to account, and can, if so minded, reject the Mayoral budget.  Its members - usually those who are opposed to the Mayor politically - appear from time to time on BBC London TV news (or "Children's Television" as it's known to Londoners) but are generally below the radar.


The Mayor, by contrast, does have a few powers.  He or she is in overall charge of the Underground and the buses (although not of most of London's extensive overhead rail network).  He has responsibility for co-ordinating land-use planning and can override boroughs' planning decisions; and has partial - but crucially non-operational - responsibility for the Metropolitan Police. He oversees collection of the congestion charge, one of Britain's very few hypothecated taxes (the other most important one is the BBC licence fee), the proceeds of which he has by law to spend on transport.  That's about it.  He has no responsibility for health, education, housing or social services.  He does not empty your bins or clean your street.  He can raise or lower tube and bus fares, and invest accordingly.  Otherwise, he does - and I sincerely wish it were otherwise - relatively little that you would notice.


The reality is that, outside transport, the Mayor's executive responsibilities are few.  That, as envisaged by the Blair government, is the whole point.  He is not there as a provider or manager of services; but as a figurehead, a champion, an ambassador.  He is to sell London, to plead its cause at home and abroad, to commend it to visitors and investors, to make the voice of the vast, impossibly diverse, organically uncontrollable, rapidly growing*, counter-culturally religious, thrillingly alive entity that is London heard in the world.


This is beyond party politics.  More than that, it's actually about personality over policy.  It's about which of the candidates most clearly says about London what Londoners want to be said about their city.  Archbishop Cranmer told us last year** that the choice for Londoners is whether they want their city's voice to be one that says "piffle" or one that says "shit". I would put it differently - perhaps because I am an ordinary priest and jobbing chaplain who is not allowed to say "piffle".  I think it might actually be about which candidate most makes you smile.


* Projected population: 9 million by 2020, 10 million by 2030 (Office for National Statistics)
** http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/boris-ken-churchill-hitler-good-evil.html

Born at the Right Time

I am childless.  As a member of that social group so elegantly referred to by Richard Coles as "nature's bachelors", that's not going to be a huge surprise. (Although there are and always have been plenty of childless men who are not bachelors and vice versa.)  But my point here is that my childlessness is perhaps related to my possession of a very decent number of godchildren - and all of a very decent quality.  My eldest (if I may so term him) is properly grown up: he is clever, mature, independent-minded and enlightened. He has a very good job at which he works hard and for which, at the age of 24, he is paid more than I was at the high-point of my (admittedly undistinguished) career. He is also good company and likes a drink. What's not to like?


My youngest is a three year-old, golden-haired cherub. She goes to a nursery near to where I live and from which I sometimes go with her dad to collect her at the end of the day, and where she and her little friends cluster round me and pull at my clerical collar.  When she first sees me, there is that momentary quizzical, processing face which dissolves into a smile of unalloyed pleasure. Her parents are kind, intelligent and sociable people, both in good jobs, and she is their only child. She seems, to their eyes as well as mine, to be the happiest child in the entire world. Was she, pace Paul Simon, simply born at the right time?


Never been lonely
Never been lied to
Never had to scuffle in fear
Nothing denied to
Born at the instant
The church bells chime
And the whole world whispering
Born at the right time.
Listen here: Paul Simon - Born at the Right Time


Yet the timing of her birth, indeed the fact of it, was a matter of anxiety. She was conceived by IVF only after her mum had undergone what seemed like endless courses of intrusive investigation and treatment, and after a number of unsuccessful attempts.  Even when conceived and returned to the womb, there were many weeks of uncertainty before it was clear that a child would indeed be born.  When she arrived, she felt like both a miraculous gift and a reward to her parents for the months of stress and pain they had undergone.


And yet they are preparing to go through it all again. In their situation, I'm not at all sure I would have the strength.  They've made the journey before and they know the road that lies ahead. They know it could be hard and may end in disappointment.  Yet such is their desire, their need, for another child that they've already taken the first steps.


I'm not one of those who believes that having children is a human right.  I've always understood that they are a gift from God which comes to some and not to others.  I find myself wanting to say to tearful couples who cannot have children that this state is not the end of the world: because of their childlessness, other possibilites will present themselves, and other gifts will be given.  I feel this to have been true in my own life.   I would like to have had children - very much, actually - but I haven't; and God has found other uses for my time, energies and affections.


But I'm also aware that the desire to reproduce is primal and extremely powerful.  I reflect that, like the sex-drive itself, it is not something that humanity has invented for itself: it, too, has been given to us, installed and instilled within us, and most of us cannot be deaf to its call.  For that reason, I can understand those who go through so much to have children who do not arrive in the natural course of events.  They are, to some extent, just responding to their programming.  And that's profoundly human.

Paul Simon lyrics courtesy of Universal Music Publishing Group
Photo courtesy of Paul McRae (Delta Niner)

Empire Day

In the course of the 20th century, Britain underwent two world wars which decimated its young manhood, devastated its cities and bankrupted its economy.  It lost the most extensive empire the world has ever known, and almost the entire manufacturing base on which its wealth and expansionist zeal was predicated.  Despite this (and its diminutive size) it is still the world’s seventh largest economy by GDP. Extraordinary, when you think about it.  And even more extraordinary that this loss of power and relative wealth was a largely post-war phenomenon: in a few brief decades, the work of two or three centuries was undone; and Britons found themselves being invited to atone for their former global destiny and to get used to being just another country.

Against this background, any attempt to re-appraise the legacy of the British Empire is a risky enterprise.  Children of my mother’s, inter-war, generation were raised to see the Empire as a Jolly Good and Necessary Thing, and the British as a sort of chosen race, destined to bring civilisation, Sung Evensong, and a proper cup of tea to the earth.  While my father (whom she would not meet until 1948) was growing up in 1930s British India, she was at school in east London where, on Empire Day (24 May) they waved union jacks and sang:

Red, white and blue

What does it mean to you?

Surely you're proud

Shout it aloud

Britons awake!

The Empire too

We can depend on you.

Freedom remains

These are the chains

Nothing can break.

Well, they may not have broken, but clearly they do not bind in the same way. This is the theme of Jeremy Paxman's BBC TV series, Empire.  In it, Paxo visits various Commonwealth countries - apparently wearing the same powder-blue linen shirt throughout - in an attempt to re-assess the British Empire's legacy.  The tone and content is one designed to avoid any charge of revisionism on the one hand, and mindless 1970s-style repudiation on the other.  It doesn't quite achieve objectivity, perhaps because that is not really possible, and the series is in any case billed as a personal account.  But there is evidence of an honest determination to get at the facts, combined with Paxman's celebrated "come off it" inquisitorial style designed to get people to spit out what they actually think.

He is, for instance, able to ask an east African man of Asian race (whose forbears were effectively transplanted by the British) if he is not grateful to the British for building the trans-Africa railway which he so admires; and also to ask an Indian if she does not hate the British for their cruelty and snobbery.  The answers are typically nuanced, and can be summarised as "yeah but no but". The conclusion that the viewer is invited to draw is that the British Empire was in some senses a very good thing, and in other senses a rather horrible one.  Not very exciting or ground-breaking; but perhaps in need of being said.

The late, great Bernard Levin coined the term "The Fallacy of the Altered Standpoint", to describe the difficulty of judging something - particularly a historical event or circumstance - free of the insidious prejudices imparted by subsequent events and subtle changes in social mores.  This applies rather sharply to post-war attitudes concerning the British Empire, which have been conditioned by Britain's radically (and, in historical terms, rapidly) changed status.  Perhaps the relatively balanced take espoused by Empire is a small sign that we are beginning to shake off our post-war, post-imperial shroud of self-denigration, and to view our historical selves both more kindly and objectively.

History is neither good not bad. It just is.

The NHS and Me

There is a poster in the window of the office of the attendants (they would be called concierges in more westerly postal districts) who look after me and the other residents of my City apartment block: "SAVE OUR NHS" it screams in a huge cerise font.


Now, I am a very child of the NHS: born in 1953, I was delivered by said service in east London (I could almost have been a Call the Midwife baby) and enveloped by it from both my and its earliest days.  It tended to my childhood ailments (often involving a GP's home visit), routinely tested my ears and eyes, inspected my feet and drilled my teeth.  It inoculated me against various diseases, the names of some of which - probably partly because of its existence - are rarely heard these days. It gave my mother concentrated orange juice for me to drink and - less welcome - cod-liver oil to swallow.  It even gave me my very own number which - though long since superseded by one with 10 digits - I remember to this day: MMQS 439.  And, notwithstanding the occasional recourse to private treatment, eg for slipped discs (believe me the physiotherapy's no less painful because you're paying for it), it is the NHS on which I continue to rely - quite heavily - to keep me healthy.  I am 58, not rich, and have had lifelong access to free basic healthcare.  My personal experience of a widish variety of hospital and specialist care has been variable but, on balance, positive.  I am, if you like, almost a walking testimonial for the comprehensive, free-at-the-point-of-use, cradle-to-grave care provided by the NHS.  I have as much reason to be sentimental about it as anyone.


And yet sentimental about it I am not. Someone has said that the NHS is the nearest thing we have to a national religion and, depressing as that is, it does perhaps help to explain the reaction to the Health Bill currently going through Parliament.  Some of this borders on the hysterical, and can be readily disregarded. Some is fairly crude political opportunism, and can be received accordingly.  Other criticism is more measured and/or more independent; and it makes sense to heed the reservations of those who actually work in the NHS, and on whom people like me depend for our care.  But there's no doubting the emotion involved.  I wonder if the proposed dismantling of the Church of England (which is our actual national religion) would provoke such passion?


I use the word "dismantling" because that is the word used repeatedly by its critics to summarise the present Government's intention with regard to the NHS; and it is that fear which is undoubtedly exciting much of the reaction.  I do not claim to have more than a layman's insight into it, but it seems to me that nothing like "dismantling" is actually on the cards.  Of the two main provisions, one (the extension of competition) is not on the face of it very controversial.  Competition within the NHS was introduced under Thatcherism and significantly extended under New Labour.  Some are and have been, perfectly rationally, opposed to it all along; but it is now, in one form or another, a reality of at least some aspects of almost of all public services. It's reasonable to question the extent of its influence, but a bit anachronistic to recoil in horror from the very idea.


The second of the two main provisions - the concentration of power and money in the hands of GPs - is a big change.  Who knows - it may well not work.  But does it constitute the dismantling of the entire structure?  I doubt it.  In fact the more you look at the Bill, the less radical it all seems; and I'm beginning to wonder if that's the real issue.


You see, if you treat the NHS less like a religion and more like any other taxpayer-funded service; if you can appreciate its strengths but admit its shortcomings; if you can be honest about your experience within it it while being realistic about what it can deliver in its present form, you may begin to think that nobody is being radical enough.  In the last 15 years, overall spending on the NHS has more than trebled - and even now, is continuing to rise slightly.  It's true that the rate of increase is now falling well behind increasing costs (which is why "net" cuts are necessary). But I cannot be the only NHS user on whom it has dawned that the recent massive increase in spending has still not given us the health service we want (ie one free of horror stories of the kind that pre-occupy the early evening news bulletins).  I cannot be the only NHS user who has observed that, satisfactory though my overall health care is, there are some things badly amiss with the NHS that do not seem to be susceptible to increased funding. Have you ever spent a night in an A&E unit? Have you ever been with a loved one during a serious health emergency and extended hospital stay? Have you tried to co-ordinate post-operative care when the hospital and the community health service don't appear able to talk to one another, and you are exhausted?  And, if so, are you still of the opinion that what is needed is simply increased funding?


I don't pretend to know what the answer is.  But I have a growing conviction that what is wrong is with the NHS is embedded in its very culture, which no amount of mere reform (or money) can hope to change.  This culture is one which bears little resemblance to that which existed when I was a child, and which instinct leads me to associate with the gradual disappearance of a certain sort of health professional driven primarily by vocation - this itself perhaps the result of wider social change.  I don't think the re-introduction of Hattie Jacques-style matrons - which some prescribe - would work.  Such people, and those whom they managed and mothered, simply do not exist any more.


This leads me to suspect that what we need is a completely new health service for a new society.  This means actually dismantling the NHS and replacing it with something else - perhaps something closer to the universally admired French system.  Now that would take political courage.

Ash Wednesday

In the sitting room of my flat is a lime-green balloon with a smiley face.  It is gas-filled and weighted with a plastic disc which sits on the coffee table, so that the balloon floats just below the ceiling, turning very slowly in the otherwise undetectable eddies generated by the mildly overheated atmosphere.  Sometimes the balloon is smiling out of the window at the City beyond, sometimes it is smiling at me, gormlessly. It twists noiselessly on its tether.

The balloon came in a cardboard box which also contained a small basket of fruit, some of which has since been consumed.  They were gifts from a kind parishioner to my friend and vicar of my parish who is staying with me.  He is staying with me because, three weeks ago tonight, he had an Acute Myocardial Infarction (what we used to call a heart attack) while alone in his vicarage.  An ambulance was called and he was taken to hospital where he was observed, stabilised and investigated, and subsequently underwent what medical folk call a cabbage (CABG - Coronary Artery Bypass Graft).  Although he has never smoked, is quite thin, and had an apparently fairly healthy lifestyle, the bloodflow through three of his coronary arteries had become restricted.  A cabbage was the only solution if he was to avoid further heart attacks and possibly an early death.  In a 5-hour operation, they took two veins out of his legs, stopped his heart, and grafted the veins on to it, bypassing the restricted arteries and restoring a full bloodflow to his heart.  A small miracle.

He was discharged from hospital on Ash Wednesday which dawned, well, ashen.  A typical English day in late winter.  Blank, off-white nimbo-stratus covered the sky without a chink from horizon to horizon as I helped him slowly and carefully down the steps of the hospital and into the streets of east London - he, like someone emerging from a space-craft into the strange, blinding light of a new planet.  He looked, well, ashen. I eventually saw and hailed a taxi, and we got back to my apartment block.  We entered via the car park.  

Now, in the Barbican, the common areas have what I always think of as a rather brave, uncompromising Mitteleuropa character, reminiscent of the continental estates on which I believe they were modelled.  Between the car park and the lift lobby is a strange sort of antechamber.  This small space has two steel and plate-glass doors, a tiled floor, and a grid in the ceiling which admits air and, inevitably, a certain amount of dust and leaf-litter from the walkway above. It is lit by a single, wall-mounted fluorescent light. If you come in this way, you open the first door with your key, and then the second (which does not need a key) and you're in the lift lobby.  The doors bang securely and satisfyingly behind you. Five seconds max. It's a functional space (though its precise function is unclear) and not one in which you linger.  

On this Ash Wednesday, we got inside the first door, and he asked if we could pause for a moment for a rest.  He rested his back against the wall - which he promptly slid down so that he was sitting on the floor, then keeled over, blocking the outer door.  His face was so pale as to appear almost colourless.  There seemed to be no breath or pulse.  I could not open the door to alert the attendant outside, and fumbled for my phone to dial 999.  "Please, God", I prayed, "don't let him die here - not in this hard, cold, comfortless place." I could hear unconcerned voices and footsteps from the walkway above, and a dead leaf skittered on the tiled floor.  For the life of me, I could not think of any of the proper prayers for the dying.  I felt utterly without power or resource. I wondered, uselessly, why, of all the places in which it might have happened - an Umbrian hilltop, a friendly bar in midtown Manhattan, the sanctuary of our own church - a chilly, dusty, pointless no-man's-land of a cell should be this priest's point of departure from the world.  I felt a tear roll down my cheek.  

Then he stirred.  Still deathly pale, he opened his eyes and smiled weakly. "What happened?" he asked.  "You must have passed out. But I thought you'd died."  "When I do die" he said, "I hope it's like that.  It was rather peaceful."

On Women Bishops

My introduction to education was via a tiny infants school set among the soft wooded hills and babbling brooks of mid-Surrey. In this idyll I was taken daily to school by my mum along with another boy and his mum who lived in the same road.  The boy's name was Michael and his dad was a policeman.  He was my best friend, and we would stand in his back garden waving to the drivers of the (steam) trains which ran behind his house.  They would usually wave back, and we both wanted to be train drivers when we grew up.

Except, weirdly, we both grew up to be civil servants.  Even more weirdly, we ended up in the same government department, and thirty years after our train-waving days, in the same division of the same department.  Michael was cleverer than me, and more senior. He was also rather handsome, popular, and of a lively disposition.  A bit of an all-round golden boy, destined for success.

One of the things the British civil service does well is what it calls policy development.  The government of the day sets out its aims in a particular policy area, and the departmental officials set about translating those aims into proposed legislation and/or whatever else is needed to give them practical effect.  They do this by analysis, discussion and consultation; by identifying "rocks in the water" and developing ways of avoiding them; and by refining, clarifying, and finessing the proposals so that they meet the political intention while minimising disruption and such negative consequences as can be practically minimised.  Much of this process takes place at meetings in which ideas are thrashed out, suggested ways forward are scrutinised, and the advice of professional staff (eg lawyers, engineers, economists, doctors) is taken.  The decision eventually reached is thus the result of thorough examination and reflection; and those involved in implementing it - even if they do not agree with it - have been involved in its development and understand why they are doing it.  They have not necessarily abandoned their own views; but they accept the decision as having been properly made and, in the interests of their department's success and reputation, devote their energies to making it work.

Michael was involved in many of these meetings; and was good at promoting his view and adpating his thinking when confronted with differing ideas and objections.  On one occasion, however, he was so convinced he was right about how to implement some policy, that he refused to compromise.  As the necessary series of meetings progressed, and although most of them thought he was wrong, his colleagues did their best to accommodate him, and to find ways of meeting his objections to opposing ideas.  But he would not budge.  Eventually, as the group's thinking coalesced and broad agreement reached, he found himself in a minority of one.  Still he would not give in.  Everyone continued to be very polite about it, and to acknowledge the integrity of his position.  But his obstinacy reached a point at which it was preventing progress, and the senior official in the group was obliged, reluctantly, to overrule him.  "Michael", he said, " you are a very bright young man, and I predict you will go far.  But you must learn to recognise the point at which you have lost an argument."

Choose your scandal

What constitues a moral scandal?  I only ask because of the debate which grew out of yesterday's Government defeat in the Lords on the proposed benefit cap.  The charge was led by the Lords Spiritual, who with the unexpected and opportunistic help of Labour and the opposition of some Liberal Democrats, managed to prevent Child Benefit from being taken into account when the cap is calculated.  Although the Government is likely to try to reverse this when the Welfare Bill comes back to the Commons, the Bishops were momentarily and unusually hailed as heroes by those who oppose the cap, the Coaltion, and all its detestable enormities.  One commentator said that it was the best publicity the CofE had got since the Royal wedding.  Well, it was certainly the most publicity it had got since then; but how good it was depends on what it yields in terms of the Church's public standing. Opinions on this may differ.  And sure enough, differ at least one of them did this morning, in the form of an article by Lord Carey in the unspeakable Daily Mail.  In it, the former ABC criticises (in fairly reasoned terms, it must be said) the Bishops' opposition to the Government's proposals on the grounds that he couldn't "possibly believe prolonging our culture of welfare dependency is in the best interests of our children"; and that "the sheer scale of our public debt... is the greatest moral scandal facing Britain today".

This did not go down well Churchside.  It was a bit disloyal to start with; but worse, it took the shine off what had looked like a much-needed clear win for the Church and those who oppose the Welfare Bill and the Coalition generally.  Now while I have to confess myself not the former Archbishop's greatest admirer, I do think he has a point - our huge public debt is indeed scandalous, it cannot be blamed entirely on bankers, and is at the root of a lot of other unwelcome measures - of which the benefit cap is, partly, one.  And while he might have mentioned a few other contributory scandals - eg the sheer greed of some people inside the banks and elsewhere - to rubbish his view quite as comprehensively as some have done today, strikes me as both unfair and an over-reaction.

But it has led to some interesting discussion about what constitutes a moral scandal.  There are a good few to choose from at the moment.  Phone hacking, bankers' bonuses, MPs' expenses, gay bishops, abortion advertising, and assisted dying are among them.  We all have our favourites.  But all these issues involve our being scandalised by others, safe in our own moral fastnesses.  Is there anything closer to home? No? Sure?


A colleague confessed that he was recently very badly affected by a visit to his elderly mother who is in care, suffering from Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.  While she is ill and confused, she is being looked after perfectly well.  Pretty much everything that can be done for her is being done.  The moral scandal for him is our (including his own) failure to care for our own elderly and infirm as he perceives we used to, and as some cultures still do (even here). He is her only relative; he was moved and upset by her condition, and conscious that, despite the best comfort that could be provided, despite the presence of carers and neighbours, she was utterly alone.  Because that is what we do with mad, ill, old people. 


Phone hacking, did you say?