Think what you say; say what you think

Posted on 13/11/2017 by
It is often difficult to think with the utmost clarity and then to say what you actually think. I was reminded of this recently on reading an article, published in the Australian Daily Review, about the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO).
There is to be a forthcoming postal survey in Australia on the matter of same-sex marriage. The Board of the SSO informed staff that the Board had decided not to publicly support the ‘yes’ campaign in the postal survey. The reason the SSO Board gave for this directive was that it did not want to politicize music. In taking this stance, the Board of the SSO was, in the words of one critic, “defying the palpable solidarity of the arts community and its manifold supporters.” The latter included the vast majority of major performing arts companies in Australia.
It would seem, however, that the SSO Board’s desire not to politicize music has not always been consistent. It has performed in countries and for organisations that would counteract a consistent position on the matter. Yes, indeed, it is often difficult to think with the utmost clarity and then to say what you actually think.
We live in an age of rapid change: in social philosophy and societal trends, expression and communications (of these changes); the desire for personal freedoms that co-exist with the relics of community conservatism (still a major component of Australian life, as it is of life in the UK, and not to be confused with genuine liberalism – politicians take note); the frustration of living in that ‘in-between time’ when ideology, morality and levels of social awareness of the ‘other’ are struggling to catch-up with and maintain its co-existence with the realities of contemporary living.
This is true whether we talk about political persuasion, human rights, religious beliefs or social equality. It is true also of the life we live within the confines of our own personal and individual cosmos as it is of the community or the nation. But this is not new to those who have lived longer than a single generation.
Many of yesterday’s intellectual and practical causes are today’s living realities. Today’s praxis forms the basis for the arguments and eventual realities of tomorrow. Therefore, it is to be celebrated that human freedoms have been extended, in the area of human identity as much as in any other field.
However, the value of continuing deliberation about, even opposition to, those ideals and practices we now hold dear and consider to be a further liberation of the human being, is that we are forced to maintain the practical and intellectual efforts we have made in order to consolidate the gains that have been won, the efforts that form the basis of further advances. Time moves on, and with it opinion and further challenges to the evolution of the human spirit.
Perhaps the SSO (and its existential views) has purposes beyond merely making marvellous music in which to be immersed. In this event, it is to be noted that an update from the SSO Board stated the following: “It has always been the case that the SSO has engendered organisational initiatives and performances that reflect an abiding commitment to inclusiveness, fairness and acceptance and that the company has at its core a commitment to everyone in our community – regardless of gender, orientation, cultural background or religious belief – of performing music to the highest calibre for which the orchestra is celebrated around the world.”
In making this further statement it seems that the company came to the view that it did not have the right to take a position that would commit its stakeholders to one side or another of the debate. Therefore, the Board of the SSO has decided that it should remain neutral. However, it also stated its desire that all Australians should “respect the democratic process of the majority decision, one way or another, in a spirit of goodwill and cooperation towards each other in a peaceful resolution.”
Australians have yet to vote in the national market research project ‘referendum’ on same-sex marriage and, in so doing, to decide as to whether or not it will join the twenty-two other countries that have legislated for same-sex marriage. This is an opportunity for Australian to think with clarity and then to speak what they actually think.
In the meantime, Leo Schofield (a former chairman of the SSO Board), considers that the Board has indicated that, at least, it will not align the organisation with “the antediluvian Catholic Archbishops of Sydney and Brisbane, the ginned-up contributors to the skewed letter pages of The Australian, the smoke-screening nonentities of the Christian right and those parliamentarians too cowardly to put the issues to a vote on the floor of the House.”
The Board of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has decided its position in the matter of same-sex marriage. In changing its initial stance from one of not publicly supporting the ‘yes’ campaign in the postal survey to its present position of neutrality, it has shown that it is often difficult to think with the utmost clarity and then to say what you think. What is true of the world of music is mirrored in life generally.

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A relic ripe for reform

Posted on 30/10/2017 by
Many of those who voted in the referendum for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union did so in order to ‘restore democracy’ to the British people. What specific shape this restoration of British democracy would take was only loosely stated, but for the supporters of this argument it meant that we would no longer have to live with what is wrongly considered to be an un-democratic EU system.
What is not realized, or is conveniently forgotten, by too many zealous anti-Europeans is the actual political constitution of the EU.
The main legislative body of the EU is the European Parliament. This is an institution composed of members who have been democratically elected by their home countries, including the UK.  The European Parliament has equal legislative and budgetary power with the European Council. The latter is made up of the leaders of the EU member states, once again inclusive of the UK. It defines the EU’s overall political direction and priorities but does not pass laws.
A third constituent part of the EU is the European Commission. This is the EU’s politically independent executive arm. It is alone responsible for drawing up proposals for new EU legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the EU treaties and managing the day-to-day business of the EU. It is responsible to the European Parliament.
The whole of the above EU organization represents the second largest democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India). It is interesting and instructive, therefore, to compare the relative political institutions of the EU with the British Parliament.
The UK House of Commons (the ‘lower house’) is directly elected by the people, as is the European Parliament. The UK House of Lords (the ‘upper house’) is composed of ‘selected’ persons and is not directly elected by the people. The nearest equivalent in the EU is the European Council. The Cabinet of the British Government in Parliament, made up of elected political representatives of the government of the day, is effectively the executive body in Parliament and, being responsible to Parliament (though, in recent years, not always seeing itself as such), could be viewed as the equivalent of the European Commission.
Therefore, to those opponents of the EU who utter the anti-democratic chant, it could be stated that the British system of governance is not as democratic as may be popularly believed, and the EU is not as undemocratic as it is critically thought to be. These equivocal viewpoints again came to mind when I recently read about what has been called ‘the cash for no questions scandal’ in the British House of Lords.
It seems that as many as seventeen members of the House of Lords have been claiming as much as £400K of taxpayer’s money ‘for doing nothing’.
These members turn up to the House of Lords, do nothing by way of business in the chamber or its committee system, nor submit a written question to the house, and then claim thousands of pounds of expenses for doing so – or not, as the case may be! One tabloid editorial considered the House of Lords to be ‘the exclusive club for cronies and former Cabinet ministers’. Harsh, but no less true for being so and, it would seem, that there is little appetite amongst club members to change the club constitution. No surprise there, then!
It is sobering to be reminded that, generally speaking, these so-called ‘peers of the realm’ have been appointed by the monarch – under advisement by an outgoing Prime Minister . They have been selected from, amongst others, former House of Commons MPs, business leaders, philanthropists, sports and entertainment personalities, old public school buddies, and persons from the fields of art and culture. Add to this array the ‘presence by right’ of the bishops of the Church of England, the institutional State Church of the UK, but no formal representatives of any of the other religious faiths operative in the UK, and what is on show can hardly be called ‘democratic’.
Of course, the inclusion of the bishops is sanctified by the official full name of the house: The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled. Historically, this assembly has been dominated by men and it is only since 1958 that women have been selected for a seat in the House of Lords. Women members of the house are given the title of Baroness, not Lord, and their numbers in the House of Lords are substantially fewer than those of their male counterparts. It is to be further noted that it was not until 2015 that the first woman bishop of the Church of England took her seat as a ‘Lord Spiritual’.
It is an interesting, even illustrative, statistic, that the House of Lords is the only upper house of any bicameral parliament to be larger than its respective lower house. In the UK there is a movement afoot to reduce the number of elected MP’s in the House of Commons, but there is no present intention to reduce the excessive numbers of members in the selected House of Lords.
Under normal circumstances, it is quite unlikely, though not impossible, that these ‘pillars of British society’ who compose the House of Lords would ever have been financially insolvent. Yet, here we go again, another indefensible financial scandal at the heart of British government. Though memory can be fleeting, I cannot recall any similar situation at the centre of the European Union – singularly or in multiples.
Surely, and financial scandals notwithstanding, the UK Parliament’s House of Lords is ‘a relic ripe for reform’. The British people have had enough – financial scandals, rip-off merchants who cheapen the values of parliamentary democracy, and political hucksters hitching a ride on the back of past achievements, the British taxpayer, social privilege and favouritism. That, of course, is not to discount the energetic and devoted work done by the few, if not the many, who wear the ermine.
Notwithstanding, it is time that genuine British democracy had an elected upper house, a legitimate and fit-for-purpose chamber of review within government that, as with the House of Commons, has been chosen by and would be responsible to, the people of the UK. Along with its unelected privilege would go its anachronistic nomenclature, the ‘House of Lords’, and the bogus status of its individual members being addressed, in private life as well as in government, as ‘Lord’ or ‘Baroness’.
The only genuine ‘peers of the realm’ are those considered to be so by the citizens of the state – the peers of those elected to political office. So too, it is quite evident that those who favoured an exit from the EU on the grounds of the UK restoring its democracy, should make sure that their own house is in order before casting political, economic, social and anti-democratic aspersions at the wider European community, its political institutions and the practice of democratic government.
There is an old saying that ‘people who live in glass houses should not throw stones’. There is another which states: ‘If the cap fits, then wear it’. The ‘relic ripe for reform’ cap that sits neatly on the Westminster Parliament’s House of Lords, does not have a ‘Made in Europe’ label.
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The time is now

Posted on 24/09/2017 by
The United Kingdom is no longer a Christian country. There are British people who will say that this has been an evident fact for some time; others will consider this to be a statement just short of blasphemy; still others will simply respond with ‘who cares?’ Well, for those who, one way or another, do care, it is instructive to report on the findings of a new study carried out by the National Centre of Social Research.
According to the data researched by the NCSR in 2016, 53% of British people now say they have ‘no religion’. This statistic comes from the results of the NCSR’s highly-respected British Social Attitudes Survey and shows that the figure of those stating that they have ‘no religion’ has risen from 48% in 2015. It was 31% in 1983. It is now at a record high.
In particular, the findings of the BSA survey shows that affiliation to the Church of England – the so-called ‘state church’ – is in decline. Just 15% of respondents called themselves Anglican – half the proportion who said the same thing in 2000. Even more startlingly, only 3% of 18-24 year olds said the same thing. This will have worrying implications for the Anglican hierarchy.
The BSA study suggests a number of speculative conclusions, for example, will tomorrow’s parents have ‘the desire to entrust their children’s education to the church?’ Will the Anglican Church’s schools be ‘an attractive, even acceptable, option for tomorrow’s parents?’ So too, it calls into question ‘the appropriateness and sustainability of the Church of England’s role in running our publicly funded schools’.
It is to be noted that, going forward, the de-sacralization and further secularization of the British population will inevitably have a major effect on other religious denominations and faiths. The findings of the BSA survey are consistent with a recent Scottish Social Attitudes survey which found that 58% of Scots have ‘no religion’.
It is indubitable that Christianity has played a major historical role in shaping the life and times of the British people, but it has been only one influence amongst others. The UK is no longer, however, the homogenous social, cultural and religious nation it may once have been. Indeed, the UK is now one of the most religiously diverse – even non-religious – nations in the world. This is a fact much-lamented by some, but, nevertheless, is unarguable.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is that this massive change has not been recognized by the nation’s political structures. There needs to be a further evolution that significantly advances the secular democracy that the UK has become, a nation where religion and the state are separate.
Earlier this year, I became a member of the National Secular Society. This move to the NSS seemed to me to be natural progression from where I stood as a member of the Sea of Faith movement
Briefly, the Sea of Faith is a movement where belief in God, and all religion that follows from this belief, is a human construct, an invention of the human imagination, or, as Hector Garcia has persuasively argued in his book Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression, religion has its genesis in our primate origins. This is a philosophical position called ‘non-realism’ and is the virtual opposite of the ‘realist’ position that asserts that God is an actual being – as believed by most, if not all, of the world’s major religious faiths.
It follows from this that all discussion about religious faith and belief should be unrestricted by religious considerations, as all such discussion is not “divinely” based but is simply an aspect of human cultural and social discourse. This, of course, would seriously imply that all public services and service delivery should be free of religious bias and discrimination of any kind.
In summary, therefore, recent research and surveys have uncovered the dramatic changes in the religion and belief landscape of the UK and, in the view of the National Secular Society, these changes demand a policy response. In being of this view, the NSS goes well beyond where the Sea of Faith movement is presently at.
The NSS recognizes that the UK has an incredible religious diversity and, for the first time, a non-religious majority. These findings should ‘prompt an urgent rethink about religion’s public role and the relationship between church and state. Britain isn’t a Christian nation, and we shouldn’t have a state church. Of course, people should have freedom of religion, but it should end when it infringes on others’ rights and freedoms’.
To set out its vision for a secular Britain, a vision which I share, the NSS recently published a comprehensive report, Rethinking religion and belief in public life: a manifesto for change (http://tinyurl.com/natsecsoc). In the words of the NSS: “This outlines constructive and specific proposals to reform the role of religion in public life…it works towards a society in which all citizens, regardless of religious belief or lack of it, can live together fairly and cohesively”.
In its manifesto, the NSS considers how the state should respond to the fundamental demographic changes as outlined in the above, particularly in our institutions and policy responses. It seeks to make known its message across national and local media, but especially to make its case before the nation’s policy makers. For this purpose, a copy of the NSS manifesto was sent to all MPs at Westminster.
The manifesto sets out proposals to reforms in education, public services, institutions and public ceremonies needed to ensure fairness for all regardless of their religion or belief. It also evaluates the state of the law on human rights and freedom of expression where it concerns religion. It is a manifesto for its time and place – the place is Britain; the time is now!
Now is the ideal time to focus on the nature of the UK as a secular democracy – to celebrate the fact and work towards its further realization.
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The man defined his work – a tribute

Posted on 18/08/2017 by
Throughout a lifetime, there are persons whom one meets who, although circumstantially they never become friends, colleagues or even close associates, nevertheless, they leave an indelible impression on one’s life. There have been a number of such persons who have imprinted my life in this way. One of these is Professor Stephen Haseler.
I first became aware of Stephen Haseler when he was key speaker at a seminar sponsored by the British Republican Movement. He was a convinced republican and his public address expressed his firm and deeply held republican principles. I was later to re-acquaint myself with Professor Haseler when he was a member of a panel at an event organized by The Federal Trust, a pro-European Union organization that seeks to enlighten debate on good governance.
Once again Stephen Haseler impressed me with the scope of his vision, the depth of his principles and the conviction with which he spoke on his subject. When first I listened to Professor Haseler, I was convinced that he was an Australian – for such seemed the derivation of his accent. However, he was to later inform me during a private conversation that he was, in fact, an Essex boy – born in Colchester, Essex, in 1942!
My last attendance at an event at which Professor Haseler spoke was on 28th June, 2017. It was a seminar sponsored by The Federal Trust and located, appropriately,  in Europe House, Westminstert. The title of the event was “Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? No Brexit?” Professor Haseler’s line of argument wondered whether or not there would actually be any kind of Brexit at all! His address was powerful, factual and uncompromising. It was to be Stephen Haseler’s last speaking engagement at a public meeting of its kind.
Sadly, Professor Stephen Haseler died suddenly on 20th July, 2017.
As previously stated, Stephen Haseler was a well-known British republican and was the chair of the British Republican Movement from 1990 to 2004. The current CEO of Republic, Graham Smith, alludes to the fact that Stephen Haseler was instrumental in getting him involved in the movement at the end of Professor Haseler’s time in that role (although he continued as the honorary chair from 2004-2007).
Professor Stephen Haseler, who was awarded his PhD by the LSE in 1967, was an authority on British politics and economics. He was notable for his critique of the British monarchy and an advocate of radical constitutional change, including a written constitution and a republican form of government. Amongst his many engrossing publications, is the The Grand Delusion: Britain after sixty years of Elizabeth ll (2012). In this book, written in the public glow surrounding Elizabeth Windsor’s Diamond Jubilee, Professor Haseler critically explores the history of Britain’s post-war ‘establishment’ – with the Queen and her prime ministers at the heart.
He argues that, over a period of sixty years, the British monarchy has been central to the ‘delusions of grandeur’ suffered by the British establishment – including politicians of various stripes. It is a book that provides a political and social history of post-war Britain. Characteristically, the writing is provocative, informative and entertaining, while at the same time shedding a deeply questioning light on the essence of Britain’s identity today.
Stephen Haseler had a long history of political involvement in Britain. This saw him active in standing for the Westminster parliament, involvement in the Greater London Council, and associations with several political parties – including being a founder member of the Social Democratic Party in 1981.
In a recent tribute to Professor Stephen Haseler, the chair of The Federal Trust, Brendan Donnelly, said the following:
“The Federal Trust is deeply saddened to have lost one of its most distinguished members through the sudden death of Professor Stephen Haseler, a member of the Trust’s Council and Director of the Global Policy Institute. For all of us at the Trust he leaves a gap, both personally and intellectually, that can never be filled.
“Stephen Haseler occupied a rare and valued place in British public life as an unashamed controversialist whose views were always underpinned by academic rigour and deep reflection.
“As a writer and broadcaster his concern was always to present his audience with the real political and social choices that he believed confronted them. These choices, in Stephen’s view, rarely corresponded to the traditional party divisions of British politics. The clarity and good humour with which Stephen presented his ideas ensured that he had friends and admirers on all parts of the British political spectrum.”
“The Federal Trust… will have an abiding memory of his robust and invigorating contribution to our debate on the European issue. The Trust has been exceptionally lucky in recent years to have benefitted from Stephen’s defining participation in our activities. The Trust’s work in future years will be encouraged and reinforced by his memory.”
Fittingly, The Federal Trust will hold a memorial event in the autumn to celebrate Stephen Haseler’s life. This event will include contributions from the Federal Trust and other academic organizations with which Stephen Haseler was associated. These were many, including the London Metropolitan University, where he was formerly the Director of the Global Policy Institute, and a number of academic institutions in the USA – including Georgetown University, Washington DC.
There will be many, including this writer, who will retain an abiding memory of Stephen Haseler’s robust and invigorating contribution on many topics and in a variety of forums, as well as, of course, his contribution to warm private conversations. The man defined his work.
Professor Stephen Haseler: 09/01/1942 – 20/07/2017. RIP

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More than a mere convention

Posted on 22/07/2017 by
A week ago the British Republican Movement held its Annual Convention in Newcastle. The theme of the 2017 Convention was “Taking Back Control – Just how democratic is Britain?” The Annual Republic Convention is a follow-up to the movement’s Members’ Day and Annual General Meeting, which this year was held in London during the month of March.
Republic’s Members’ Day is an opportunity for the movement’s members to discuss the Republic campaign, debate the issues with which it is involved and to hear about the movement’s plans for the year ahead. The Annual Convention provides the opportunity for Republic members to delve more deeply into the issues with which Republic is involved and campaigns for, and to share these issues with like-minded individuals, groups and organizations.
More specifically, the role and function of this year’s Convention was in order to discuss, debate and evaluate such critical questions as, (a) If we really want political control, what reforms do we need in Westminster?, (b) How does the monarchy shape and reflect a centralized and secretive British state?, and (c) Can we learn from our European neighbours?
The 2017 Republic Annual Convention featured a number of prominent political figures addressing important issues, for both the country and Republic Movement.
Two speakers spoke to the first general title of ROYALS AND REFORM.
Natalie Bennett, the former leader of the Green Party, addressed the issue of “Making our government work: the wider democratic reform agenda”. Ms Bennett was of the view that, if we’re going to make government work for the people, then it needs to be democratic. That means wider democratic reform, changing the way that parliament works, devolving power and improving the quality of governance.
In the recent General Election, Emma Dent Coad MP narrowly won the London seat of Kensington and Chelsea for the Labour Party- shortly before the tragedy of the fire in Grenfell Tower (with which she has been heavily involved). No surprise, therefore, that Emma Dent Coad spoke on the matter of “The Royals in the Royal Borough of Kensington – monarchy and equality”. In her address, the MP raised the dual question of what relationship do the royals have with the local community in Kensington and, following, can that relationship show a link between monarchy and equality in Britain?
Two different speakers addressed the second general title of LESSONS FROM ELSEWHERE.
As the Senior Lecturer in International Politics at Newcastle University, Dr Simon Philpott is well versed in matters  relating to democracy and republicanism. His address focused on “Republicanism and democratic reform in Britain and abroad”. In particular, he looked at the values and principles that lie behind republicanism, and what lessons we can learn from other countries. Of special interest was whether other heads of state, written constitutions and elected upper houses offer guide to reform in Britain?
The Swedish MP, Christina Örnebjär, sought to bring “Lessons from Sweden: Sweden’s monarchy and the case for abolition”. In doing so, she informed the Convention that Sweden’s constitution is more democratic that Britain’s, but further asked about what that country’s constitution really looks like and why is it still important for Sweden to become a republic?
The third general title of the Convention was TAKING BACK CONTROL, and this topic brought three further speakers to the microphone.
Graham Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of the British Republican Movement. He spoke to the Convention about ”“Taking back control: Parliamentary democracy made democratic. Where does control lie in the Westminster system, and how can we take the parliamentary idea and make it genuinely democratic? What would be the role of an elected, effective head of state?
The same general title was addressed by the Newcastle University historian, Dr Martin Farr. He focused on the matter of a “Modern monarchy: some perspectives on a peculiar phenomenon”. Dr Farr’s reflections centred on the phenomenon of monarchy – something he considers to be a prominent, yet overlooked, subject. His contribution was gleaned from years spent in archives, media and seminar rooms.
This topic’s third contribution came from Chi Onwurah MP. Ms Onwurah is the Labour Party’s MP for Newcastle Upon Tyne Central. Her primary concern for the Convention was the issue of “Democratic reform in post-Brexit Britain”. In particular, how do we make parliament and politics more democratic, more relevant and better suited to the needs of ordinary people? So too, what are the challenges that face Britain’s democracy in the years ahead?
The Convention programme, as outlined above is certainly contemporary, is seen to be urgent by the Republican movement and is entirely relevant to the British people. The matters focused on at the Convention will have a significant impact on Republic’s campaigning in the future.
In the week prior to the Republic Convention a short article appeared in a tabloid newspaper under the title “Avoid that throne call”. The article said: ‘I’m not sure why Prince Harry got quite such a kicking for saying that “no Royal wants the throne”. Prince Charles has long made it known he doesn’t “hanker” to be king. While the Queen Mother was furious for a lifetime that Edward VIII’s abdication sent her husband to the throne and an early death. And Queen Victoria definitely didn’t want her partying to be interrupted by having to become queen at 18. So nothing has actually changed – other than a bit of (what I’d call rather refreshing) honesty.’ I’m unsure if the author of this bit of news attended the 2017 Republic Convention, but the items commented on are not unrelated to that event.
There are members and supporters of all the major political parties in the overall constituency of Republic. So, as a supporter (but not a member) of the Labour Party, it was no surprise that, prior to the Convention, I received an email from an organizer of the Labour for a Republic movement. The latter is a campaigning group within the Labour Party aimed at promoting the cause of democratic republicanism. As an affiliate of the national Republic campaign, its aim is to engage with Labour members, supporters and elected representatives in pursuit of their republican concerns.
Contacting me was, in part, due to the Labour Party’s participation in this year’s Republic Annual Convention, especially by the Labour duo of Chi Onwurah and Emma Dent Coad. This should not really come as a surprise because the 2017 Republic Convention was, amongst other things, asking how citizens can really take back control from the powerful institutions of Westminster, how ordinary people can take back their rightful powers in a genuine British democracy, rather than be dominated by the British establishment. This is a cause close to the heart-beat of the contemporary British labour movement.
As Ken Ritchie, the Labour for a Republic organizer, pointed out: “Just a couple of weeks ago we saw MPs take an oath of allegiance to the Queen, but some chose to show that their allegiance is to the people – many of them Labour MP’s, so it’s an exciting time to hear other Labour MPs speak at Republic’s biggest event of the year.”
Indeed it was, and it was more than a mere convention!

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Rumours and leaps

Posted on 16/06/2017 by
I squirmed as I listened to the discussion on the BBC’s “Sunday Morning Live” programme. The question under discussion: “Is there an afterlife?” The protagonists said nothing that was particularly original, or newly challenging, or exciting. The antagonists said little that could genuinely enter the discussion at a meaningful level. It has seemed to me that the latter was an aspect of the gap that the Sea of Faith was envisaged, by some at least, to fill.
This gap is not necessarily one of belief, faith, moral and social outlook, but a space in the conversation that offers sensibility, if not intellectual liberation, to 21st century “non-realists” (those who no longer literally believe, or may have never believed, in the literal existence of God).
Further reflection suggests to me that it is becoming commonplace to speak of “spirituality” as a replacement for belief in God. This conversation includes all of the associated rituals, paraphernalia (personal and organisational) and writings that appear to enter easily into the concerns that once seemed to be the very life’s blood of those who saw – may still see – in the Sea of Faith a supportive way forward into a godless future. As well as being commonplace and convenient, this view is now passe.
I am persuaded that that the Sea of Faith movement is presently at a stage in-between “rumouring” and “leaping”. Is the Sea of Faith movement an ending looking for a new beginning – or a new beginning that is unsure where to go? Does the movement possess a melancholy for what is perceived as being left behind – or is it apprehensive about the new wisdom it may discover? Is the Sea of Faith circumscribed by the limits of its present non-realist imagination?
Or, perhaps there is the need to face-up to the challenge presented by Richard Dawkins: “There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding”. (The God Delusion, p.355). Perhaps it is inevitable that those who sail on the sea of faith are susceptible to the winds that blow.
One thing seems incontrovertible, namely, that the history and traditions of the Christian church, no matter what branch, pre-suppose a belief in a God who is regarded by the faithful as real and active in human affairs. The traditional narrative is meant to be understood in a “realist” way. This is axiomatic in each of the great monotheistic world religions and the religious world from which these faith systems derived.
This belief in a supreme divinity has had profound influence on the thinking, development and practices of the Christian Church. It follows, therefore, that to adopt the (still) radical notion that there is no God is to adopt a situation-in-life that will have equally radical consequences for the adoptees. Further, it is a “revisionism in extremis” to suggest, as seems increasingly to be the present-day case, that Jesus was simply an apocalyptic (a word that affords revelatory or prophetic powers to whomever it is applied) preacher/teacher of a humanitarian ethic that required to be practiced in the “new age” that was imminent.
This view requires qualification in terms of the genesis and “humanitarian” nature of these ethics within the life and experience of Jesus, as well as a critical contemporary appraisal of the practicality and consequences of its mass adoption. So too, the humanitarian ethic that is being put forward as the intention of the teaching of Jesus does not appear to have been original.
Apart from the teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path, the core ethical teaching of the Buddha (India), other great philosophers/teachers of what has been termed the First Axial Age (800-200 BCE) conveyed similar and complementary ethical ideas. Zoroaster (Persia), being concerned to maintain truth, considered that this was achieved through participation in life and the exercise of constructive thoughts, words and deeds. Still earlier, the ethical philosophy of Confucius (China) emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity.
Of course, these teachers, including Jesus, were embedded within a particular context. They were not universal figures in possession of a universal message. This fact cannot be conveniently ignored. Jesus was a Jew, not a Christian, was thoroughly schooled in the Jewish Law and conversant, at least, with the Jewish prophets. The latter were themselves active during the First Axial Age and were very likely the pre-cursors of the apocalyptic events about which Jesus is reported to have preached.
Amongst other responses to his radical message, there was the requirement to practice a new ethical life-style. However, even though he instructed in what we could term a “new age” ethic, Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi and carried with him all of the nuances that such an office carried with it. Therefore, this raises the issue as to the sources of religious, and specifically Christian, ethics and the inter-relationship between ethics and beliefs.
Despite, perhaps in spite of, the influential views of some theologians and philosophers of religion, it is axiomatic that both the Jesus movement (the community of the Jewish followers of Jesus), and its parallel formation in the “Paulinist” approach to the Jesus legacy (with its tentacles into Jewish Law and Greek philosophy), possessed beliefs in a personal and institutional God. Each is a major factor in the genesis and growth of the Christian religion.
The Jesus movement had to deal with internal divisions as it sought an identity that was distinctive from its Jewish origins. The theology of the Apostle Paul is riddled with other-worldly, mythical ideas of existence, divine figures and events almost beyond human understanding – what Ronald Dworkin calls “a Sistine God” and “extensions of the human imagination”. From such beginnings came the Christian Church. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, the Christian Church’s vast system of sacred law, order and dogma, its realist belief in a divine being and the prescribed institutional and personal ethics that eventuate from such belief, is seriously being called into question. The Sea of Faith movement is one outcome of this critique, even if significant numbers of its membership maintain institutional links with the assemblies of this church.
One strand of this critique is the idea that the Christian Church can be saved from the God-believers and be resurrected into some Christian “other” – something, it is tenuously suggested, more purely representing the historical intention of Jesus. It is further insinuated that, in the process, this “other” would facilitate the overturning of nearly 2000 years of what the New Testament historian Bart D. Erhman has called the victory of “proto-orthodox church history, teaching and tradition”.
The whole enterprise of rescuing the Christian Church from its historical and theistic owners seems to me to be an attempt, in words purportedly spoken by Jesus, to put “new wine into old wineskins”. Why bother!?

RSC

 

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His many missteps notwithstanding

Posted on 06/06/2017 by
(Occasionally I am sent an article from another blogger with an invitation to share the material with as wide a circle of readers as possible. What follows is one such article. For reasons of length it is an edited version of an article from a blogger called “The Colossus”. Looking ahead to the snap election on 10 June, 2017, it was originally posted on 23 April, 2017. Whilst it is the view of one blogger, it is posted on this blog as I am sympathetic to much of its content)
His many missteps notwithstanding (not even the most blithely optimistic of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters can deny that there have been missteps – they have been well-documented in recent months), Jeremy Corbyn is still the most progressive party leader that the political mainstream in this country has ever thrown up.
The Labour Right, full of sound and fury since September 2015, has failed in all that time to articulate even a single substantive critique of Corbyn’s policy proposals, many of which continue to enjoy a large measure of popular support. Instead, his colleagues in the PLP have chosen to busy themselves with snipes about the a priori ‘unelectability’ of their twice-elected leader. As Richard Seymour has written, “statements about someone’s ‘electability’ contain a performative element, in that they are usually trying to help create a consensus that they claim to be describing.”(Jacobin Magazine, April 2017).
In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, such statements must be viewed within the wider context of a well-evidenced campaign of vilification, the viciousness of which makes sense only if you understand, as John McDonnell (the Labour Shadow Treasurer) does, that it is in the interests of private capital, media corporations included, to “destroy a socialist [sic] who is trying to transfer power from the establishment to the people”
If all of the above is true, then aren’t the fake progressives who wrung their hands about Corbyn instead of rolling up their sleeves little more than the useful idiots of the oligarchic class which McDonnell and others have identified?
A few short months ago, vis-à-vis Donald Trump, the same liberals recognized very well the necessity of lesser-evil voting; now they prepare to abandon that logic in favour of a man who refused, point-blank, to say if he thought being gay was ‘a sin’. At all times these liberals think of themselves as informed electors exercising independent judgement; but never more fixedly than now have they been fastened to the feeding tubes of a ‘profit-orientated propaganda system’ whose every smear they have ingested and internalized. These people ought to be reminded that the sincerity of their own progressivism – of their rage against the Tories – will be gauged by their willingness or otherwise to back Corbyn’s Labour in the coming election.
At any rate, two things must be noted at this juncture in respect of Labour’s plight. Firstly, as far as this snap election is concerned, an eventuality other than bruising defeat is difficult if not impossible to imagine. The aim must be to “defend as many Labour seats as possible, blunt the edge of the [Labour] Right’s sabotage, and thus limit their chance to do further damage after the election.” (Jacobin Magazine, April 2017).
Secondly, it should be just as obvious to us all that Labour’s malaise predates the rise of Corbyn and goes far deeper than his leadership. The glossy neo-Thatcherism of Blair and his entryist cadre Progress cost the party 5 million voters between 1997 and 2010, very many of them in the decrepit red heart of post-industrial England. Its share of the vote seven years ago was its smallest since the calamity of 1983, and party membership fell to its lowest recorded level at about the same time. In 2015, the austerity-lite agenda pushed by Miliband and Balls was a factor in the decimation of Labour in Scotland, with the effect that the party could only scrape together a total of 232 seats, its lowest haul since 1987. And in the leadership contest triggered by Miliband’s resignation, the Blairite Liz Kendall failed to obtain even 5 per cent of the 422,000 votes cast, as Corbyn cantered to a landslide victory which he proceeded, when challenged, to repeat the following summer.
If those on the Labour Right are going ‘to start lecturing people about winning elections or the supremacy of their neoliberal creed’, let them try first to account for each of these facts, which taken together seem to tell a tale of terminal decline.
We should remember that for a party shadowed by the prospect of death by pacification, Corbyn’s clear-cut progressivism offered something of a lifeline. Indeed, membership ballooned to an historic peak of more than half a million last July, making Labour not just the biggest party in Britain but one of the biggest in all Europe. Yet the party establishment, with help from the corporate press, has sought to thwart at every turn this bottom-up re-animation of the party’s spirit.
It has been understood since Victorian times that ‘the principle of Parliament is obedience to leaders’. In his magnum opus The English Constitution, Bagehot wrote that the penalty of non-adherence to this principle is ‘the penalty of impotence’. To violate it – as Corbyn, qua backbencher, often did – is a necessity when your leader’s agenda is murderous, draconian or neo-Thatcherite – as Tony Blair’s often was. But when that agenda questions the wisdom of austerity and war, and promises tax justice and greater protections for workers, and there is in power a Conservative government of almost unexampled callousness, such recalcitrance is unforgivable, and paralysis does indeed ensue.
Since September 2015, Corbyn’s colleagues in the PLP have continuously undermined their leader by means of endless briefings, plots and resignations and a pre-arranged ‘death-wish coup attempt amid the country’s most urgent political moment.” (Jacobin Magazine, April 2017). (Since the snap election was announced) no fewer than a dozen Labour MPs have decided to stand down rather than contest their seats in June, with at least one stating publicly that he ‘cannot countenance’ voting for Corbyn. Behaviour such as this amounts to a sustained and pathologically treacherous campaign of wilful sabotage.
Over the past eighteen months the petulance, cynicism and irresponsibility of Corbyn’s critics within the PLP has served no purpose other than to splinter the party in the face of Tory rule, obstruct the business of opposition and heighten the perception of dysfunctionality that is causing so many voters to turn away from Labour or stay firmly at barge-pole’s length. Still we are asked to believe that the blame for this ‘omnishambles’ is all Corbyn’s!
Meanwhile, the party management, troubled by shifts towards greater democratization, has spent the better part of the past two years waging war on Corbyn-supporting members and prospective members as well as constituency parties, all with the ultimate aim of dislodging a man possessed of the largest personal mandate of any party leader in British political history. It seems self-evidently true that no leader who found themselves hobbled in this way, by their own colleagues and their own party machine, could ever hope to lead effectively from day to day, let alone win a national election.
It doesn’t help that the supposedly liberal wing of the corporate media, whose output is consumed by millions every day, has treated the Labour leader with intense and near-unanimous hostility from the moment he announced his candidacy for the leadership. We were wrong, of course, to have been surprised by the rabidity of such treatment.
In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman explained that “the ‘societal purpose’ of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state”, and that the techniques it employs to serve this purpose include “selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and… keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.” Corbyn’s social-democratic platform puts him at odds with such an agenda, and so the media corporations responsible for shaping elite opinion have brought all of the foregoing techniques to bear on him.
Hence a study produced jointly by Birkbeck, University of London and the Media Reform Coalition, for which hundreds of news items were analyzed, found “clear and consistent bias in favour of critics of Jeremy Corbyn and against his supporters” – in particular on the BBC – and “a domination of comment and opinion articles opposed to the Labour leadership in all but one” of the news websites under scrutiny (needless to say, the sole exception was not The Guardian).
Research by the London School of Economics concluded that Corbyn had been “delegitimized [by the national press] as a political actor from the moment he became a prominent candidate, and that he had been represented unfairly… through a process of vilification that [goes] well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and disagreement in a democracy.” The BBC Trust acknowledged in January that the corporation’s political editor had breached accuracy and impartiality guidelines in misreporting Corbyn’s position on shoot-to-kill policies – delivering some measure of vindication for the 35,000 people who had signed a petition calling for Laura Kuenssberg to be dismissed on account of her persistent anti-Corbyn bias.
The Guardian‘s Owen Jones, well aware of the role he plays in defining the limits of the Left in public discourse, has by now more or less disavowed the Labour leader, having told the Evening Standard at the start of the year that “I’d find it hard to vote for Corbyn”.
Of all the various smears flung at Corbyn by the press, two stand out above the rest for their malignancy and are therefore worthy of comment. The first is that this lifelong anti-racist foments or tolerates hatred of Jews; the second is that he is responsible for Brexit. Both were exposed as smears before the respective rows around them properly exploded; the weaponization of anti-Semitism by Jamie Stern-Weiner (and later Norman Finkelstein), and Corbyn’s alleged indifference on the question of Brexit by none other than Angela Eagle, who had stated 10 days prior to the referendum that “Jeremy is up and down the country, pursuing an itinerary that would make a 25-year-old tired”.
But of course, repeat a lie often enough in the execution of your ‘system-supportive propaganda function’ and it will quickly reach critical mass, taking root in people’s minds and distorting their judgement.
To focus exclusively on the Labour Right and hostile hacks in any analysis of anti-Corbynism would be to ignore the existence of a third implacable force, namely that reactionary segment of the population for whom Corbyn is, and perhaps will always be, no more than one of the ‘bearded fruit-juice drinkers’ or ‘vegetarians with wilting beards’ skewered by George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier. Subconsciously, this diffuse mass likes its superiors to conform to a phallic ideal of leadership – to resemble Gerald Crich at the level-crossing in DH Lawrence’s Women in Love. It is as deeply opposed to Corbyn and his mildly left-wing program as it is to the triangulations of Blairite neo-liberalism. It prefers the Queen.
But many of us are appalled and disgusted by the Tories as they continue apace with their ideologically driven evisceration of society. At the same time, we happen to be seized by fear about the viability of the Left in Britain going forward. It seems utterly inarguable that in most constituencies on June 8, such concerns as these will be best addressed by voting for Corbyn’s Labour.
RSC
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