Author Archives: symonhill

Planning land warfare – in the Church of England’s HQ

Posted on by symonhill

Where will a group of generals and arms dealers gather tomorrow to discuss the future of land warfare? A military camp? The Ministry of Defence? An underground bunker? No, it’s the headquarters of the Church of England.

Church House Conference Centre is part of Church House, the building in Westminster that houses the administrative headquarters of the Church Commissioners, the Archbishops’ Council and other parts of the Church of England. The Conference Centre is a wholly owned subsidiary company of the Church House Corporation, whose president is the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This is sad news for many Anglicans, other Christians and other people of goodwill. The Christian Church is founded on Jesus, the Prince of Peace, whose life was a model of active nonviolent resistance to injustice. That’s why the Fellowship of Reconciliation have organised a silent vigil outside tomorrow’s conference.

The Land Warfare Conference is organised by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a military thinktank. It is sponsored by SAAB, an arms company. The speakers include top generals from the UK, US and elsewhere as well as NATO.

Topics for discussion include “Generating fighting power” and “Preparing for future operating environments”. Another topic is “honouring the equipment programme beyond sustainment to development of future capabilities”, which sounds incomprehensible, though I suspect it may be about pushing for high military spending.

Church House came under considerable criticism for hosting an arms dealers’ conference booked by RUSI in November 2012. People gathered to pray outside the event and hundreds more emailed to complain about it. I was invited to meet with a senior member of Church House staff, who defended the decision to host the event.

Despite all those discussions, they are doing it again. And this time it’s worse – because it’s happening twice. In addition to tomorrow’s event, there will be an Air Power Conference on 9th-10th July. That one will be sponsored by some of the world’s largest and most vicious arms dealers, including BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Finmeccanica, all of whom sell weapons to dictatorships as a matter of course. Speakers include not only top air force officers but the head of exports at the Ministry of Defence.

Christians have a variety of views on warfare. I can respect Christians who believe that violence is sometimes justified, even though I disagree with them. But these conferences are not about dialogue or discussion on ethical issues. They are about planning international warfare, which by its nature involves the deaths of countless innocent people. Furthermore, arms companies would hardly be sponsoring these events if they did not think it was good for business. These are conferences that will help the arms trade.

The Church of England rightly rules out investments in companies that make more than ten percent of their money from arms. Several of its bishops – along with many of its clergy and other members – have spoken out strongly against certain forms of warfare, particularly nuclear weapons. Many have condemned the arms trade. Justin Welby and other bishops have rightly attacked many of the coalition government’s cuts to public services and social security, although they have not generally pointed out that cuts to military spending have been minor by comparison (the UK has the sixth highest military spending in the world).

No Christian church should be running a conference centre in an ethically neutral way that merely takes bookings from whoever comes along. To allow these bookings confers an appearance of moral legitimacy on them that they do not deserve. While churches understandably run businesses to fund their work, it is this work – the promotion of the Kingdom of God – that should be our focus. I lose that focus as often as any other Christian; we need constantly to be brought back to it.

Let’s remember Jesus’ teaching that “a bad tree cannot bear good fruit”. Or, as Gandhi put it, “the means are to the end as the seed is to the tree”. We cannot promote the Gospel with profits from arms companies. Let’s seek to be loyal to the Kingdom of God, not the idols of money and militarism.

I hope to see you at the silent vigil tomorrow, running from 8.00am until about 9.00am (if you can’t get there for 8.00, you’re still very welcome). Please feel free to bring banners and placards with messages about peace, faith, nonviolence and the arms trade (without any personally abusive messages of course – let’s love our enemies).

The vigil’s been organised by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (England). The vigil is listed on Facebook. Please invite your friends. If you can’t make it to Westminster in person, please keep the conference and the issue in your prayers and thoughts.

And let’s urge Church House to tell the militarists and death-dealers that they will need to find a new venue for the future.

Where do “British values” come from?

Posted on by symonhill

Schools in which pupils are taught to follow the same values as the government are usually associated with totalitarian regimes. This has not stopped Michael Gove and David Cameron from saying that “British values” should be taught in all British schools.

Despite their repeated use of the word “British”, Gove can determine only what’s taught in English schools, as education in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is handled by the devolved administrations there. This is a thus a policy that fails before it gets to the end of its first sentence.

There have been a lot of jokes about attempts to define “British values”. Will children have lessons in moaning about the weather? Will there be exams on the rules of cricket? Will pupils have to demonstrate an ability to glare at people who jump queues while never actually challenging them?

Perhaps all these jokes going round social media demonstrate that one “British value” is a belief in the importance of laughing at ourselves.

Gove’s supporters suggest that “British values” include concepts such as democracy, free speech and human rights. The irony of teaching people what view they should take on free speech and democracy seems to be lost on them.

There are many countries that can take pride in their traditions of democracy and human rights. Nonetheless, I see nothing wrong with people in Britain being proud of what has been achieved in these areas in Britain. But before we do so, let’s remember two overlooked realities.

Firstly, Britain’s traditions of democracy and free expression have sat alongside other traditions – of oppression, racism and violence. The British Empire was rooted in economic exploitation and justified by a racial view of conquered people. It diverted attention away from poverty at home by telling people to be proud of what their masters were achieving abroad. Wars were fought not only against subject peoples but against other imperial powers that threatened the British Empire’s dominance – the first world war is the obvious example. During that war, the government exercised heavy censorship, lied to the public about what was going on at the front and imprisoned 6,000 critics of the war.

Secondly, progressive traditions of free expression and human rights have survived despite all this. When democracy has triumphed in Britain it has done so in spite of the powerful and not because of them. The great parliamentary reforms of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were dragged out of a reluctant elite by mass public campaigns. In some cases, reforms were desperate attempts to avoid revolution or to buy off one section of society so that they would not ally with another. But such changes would not have happened at all without the reality of grassroots campaigns, even if the reforms often did not go as far as the campaigners wanted. Society was changed from below, not from above. Going back to the seventeenth century, the rule of law was established only when King Charles I was convicted of treason after waging war against his own people, establishing the principle that no-one was above the law.

The human rights and relative democracy that we have in Britain are due to millions of ordinary people going out and campaigning for them over centuries. They did so in defiance of the rich and powerful. Michael Gove and David Cameron have far more in common with the politicians and monarchs who resisted such progress than they do with the people who championed it.

What could illustrate this better than Cameron’s deals with the vicious regime of Saudi Arabia, to whom he continues to sell weapons? Or the government’s use of drones in Afghanistan, killing civilians in a way largely indistinguishable from the “extremists” who Gove is so keen to challenge with “British values”?

Let’s celebrate our democratic traditions. Let’s do it by campaigning against the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few, and by insisting that school pupils must be free to hear a wide range of views, ideas and interpretations – not just those of Michael Gove.

Are disabled people now expected to rely on charity from arms dealers?

Posted on by symonhill

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Berkshire has recently been given £2bn by the UK government to construct new facilities. The AWE has just donated £1,200 to local disability charities in Basingstoke.

Ministers gave the £2bn to AWE in anticipation of the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. But Parliament has not yet made any decision on whether to renew Trident. The decision is not due until 2016.

AWE gave £1,000 to Basingstoke Dial-a-Ride and £200 to Basingstoke Shopmobility.

£1,200 is 0.00006% of £2bn. It is the equivalent of six pence out of £100,000.

The AWE, based at Aldermaston and Burghfield, is run by a consortium of Lockheed Martin, Serco and Jacobs. The warheads for Trident are developed and maintained there (the missiles are loaned from the US). It’s no surprise that the owners of AWE want to whitewash its reputation. There have been growing protests there as the UK gets closer to a general election that could determine the future of Trident. Only this week, members of Action AWE and Trident Ploughshares succeeded in blocking all road entrances to the Burghfield site for nearly five hours.

The charities in Basingstoke are understandably glad to have the money. Disability services across the UK are under pressure as a result of cuts from local authorities, whose own budgets have been cut by central government. The manager of Basingstoke Shopmobility told the Basingstoke Gazette that “our running costs are increasing each year, but our grants are decreasing each year”.

Cuts to the welfare state have snatched away the livelihoods of thousands of disabled people, while the government continues to maintain the sixth highest military budget in the world. Such expenditure includes the billions of pounds pumped into AWE, whose weapons are designed to kill millions of people – and disable millions more.

What sort of society have we become, that we are asking disabled people to rely on the charity of arms dealers?

A civilised society would fund a welfare state from which we all benefit rather than preparations for warfare. Trident is supposed to protect us, although we are never told who it will protect us from. With government cuts driving up poverty to previously unimaginable levels, the British people are under attack not from a foreign power, but from their own government.

Now unemployed people are sent on army training schemes

Posted on by symonhill

Poverty and militarism feed off each other. Unemployment has always been good news for army recruiters in need of people desperate for a livelihood. So it’s no surprise that the recruitment of unemployed people has been formalised in a scheme in the English Midlands. Could this be a sign of the way things are heading? The government is already forcing unemployed people to carry out unpaid labour through “workfare” schemes. Will they soon be forcing them into army training?

This might seem an odd suggestion at a time when regular soldiers are being made redundant due to army cuts. But let’s not forget that spending on warfare – or “defence” as it’s euphemistically known – has been cut by far less than many other areas of public expenditure. War is increasingly digitised and reliant on such tools as armed drones rather than large numbers of troops. The government’s policy is to increase the number of army reserves.

The scheme in the Midlands is named “SPEAR”, which stands for “Supporting People into Employment with the Army Reserve”. Perhaps this was the only military-sounding word that they could turn into an appropriate acronym.

Eighteen people in Telford joined the pilot scheme, which involves going through a month-long training programme run by the army. At the end of the scheme, ten of the eighteen applied to join the army reserve. At the other pilot scheme in Stoke-on-Trent, five applied to join the reserves and three to join the regular army.

I don’t know how the participants were selected. It may well be that the people who volunteered for them were more likely to be interested in the army, so more likely to sign up when the scheme was over. This may change as the scheme is extended. It is already set to be run in Coventry, Walsall and Wolverhampton. According to a report by Guardian journalist Ben Quinn, the army now believes the scheme may be implemented across the UK as a result of support from ministers.

SPEAR is run by the army in conjunction with Job Centre Plus. It is not the first time they have worked together. Earlier this year, the army set up recruitment offices in Job Centres, under a project called “More Than Meets the Eye”.

It is just another example of everyday militarism, normalising the role of the army in civilian life and helping the authorities to justify high military spending along with nationalism, hierarchy and other military values.

Labour MP Alex Cunningham has already expressed reservations about the army going into Job Centres. He’s also concerned about unemployed people feeling “pushed into the army” because of a lack of opportunities. He’s now told the Guardian that he would be anxious if benefits were ever to be linked to acceptance of military training.

Cunningham is right to be worried. The government is already forcing people to undertake full-time work for no pay or lose their benefits. Under the most recent scheme, misnamed “Help to Work”, long-term unemployed people will be forced into unpaid labour full-time for six months. Over 300 charities and other voluntary groups have already refused to participate, although the government is still insisting that the scheme will go ahead.

Could compulsory military training for unemployed people be another step in this direction? A few years ago it would have seemed impossible, but then it seemed just as impossible that any British government would introduce forced labour.

The SPEAR scheme is supposed to help people to gain “self-esteem and skills”. No doubt the same words will be used if the scheme becomes widespread, or even compulsory.

In reality, you don’t need an institution based on warfare and hierarchy to gain self-esteem and skills. I do not see how self-esteem can be linked to military ideas such as unquestioning obedience and signing away your right to make ethical decisions. As an institution, the army exists to carry out acts of violence, however decent and selfless some of its individual members may be. Everything else the organisation does is secondary to this.

Furthermore, high unemployment is a result of economic factors; it is not caused by a national lack of self-esteem. It needs economic solutions, not dodgy training schemes and military intervention.

Mainstream parties have been defeated by the monster they created

Posted on by symonhill

Nigel Farage’s smug grin is all over the media this morning. But the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties have been defeated by a monster of their own creation.

They have failed to speak up for the benefits of migration, they have not provided decent housing, they have bailed out banks and punished the poor, they have pandered to the super-rich. It’s no surprise that people look for an alternative.

Unfortunately, the alternative is provided by Nigel Farage’s ragtag army of racists, sexists, homophobes and climate change deniers. Farage, a privately educated former stockbroker, presents himself as anti-establishment. UKIP’s policies include a tax system that would harm the poor and those in the middle while slashing taxes for the rich. UKIP politicians also advocate a big increase in military spending at the same time as greater cuts to the welfare state.

Most of these policies are barely mentioned in the media, which concentrates on UKIP’s views on migration and the European Union. The BBC must bear some responsibility for UKIP’s success. Fascinated with Farage, keen on sensational change, they have given the party vastly disproportionate attention.

Not that this is any excuse for voting for UKIP. I won’t patronise UKIP voters by suggesting they don’t know what they’re doing. Let’s not forget, however, that around two-thirds of UK voters did not even vote in this election. UKIP have received the support of about one in ten of the adult population. Even the majority of those who did vote supported parties that favour EU membership.

The Tories have already shown their willingness to cave into UKIP’s agenda, attacking migrants and the EU at the same time as they demonise the poor to justify their austerity agenda. Labour have a chance to speak up for migration and point out the real problems of spiralling poverty and inequality. Sadly, Labour politicians are already mentioning the need to talk more about immigration – a euphemism for being more anti-immigration and blaming migrants for problems they have not caused.

Thankfully, there is more to politics than choosing between four parties that marginalise the working and middle classes in the interests of the rich. There are alternative ways of voting – such as Green, Plaid Cymru and others.

More importantly, we can aim for a better world in our own lives and communities – by refusing to scapegoat migrants, Muslims or benefit claimants; by staging grassroots campaigns against austerity, prejudice and war; by supporting each other in resisting poor working conditions and dodgy landlords; by choosing kindness over consumerism. We can defy this rotten system not just on polling day, but every day.

Challenging the arms trade on the edge of Farnborough

Posted on by symonhill

This evening, I’ll be speaking about the arms trade on the edge of Farnborough – the home town of the multinational arms company BAE Systems.

The talk will be at 8.00pm in the Chapel in Ash Vale, which is on the edge of Farnborough (just over the country border in Surrey). Many thanks to St Mary’s Church, Ash Vale for organising the event.

Lots of the local people work in the arms industry. This is not surprising; many people have little choice but to take what jobs are available.

I’ll be engaging in discussion with people who disagree with me. I’ll also be challenging the arms industry’s claims about providing jobs. For years, BAE and others have talked about the jobs they offer, only to move thousands of jobs out of Britain when it suits them to do so. Rather than rely on the whims of arms dealers, we need an economy that provides meaningful, long-lasting and socially useful jobs so that the skills of those currently working for BAE can be put to better use.

The talk is also an opportunity to challenge the Farnborough Air Show. This biennial event combines a trade fair (for both the arms industry and the civil aviation industry) with a much more fluffy public air show. This year it will take place from 14th-20th July.

The event this evening is open to the public. More details can be found here. I’m looking forward to it.

British Baptists take a step foward on sexuality – but need to go a lot further

Posted on by symonhill

Ministers in the Baptist Union of Great Britain who bless same-sex partnerships will no longer be disciplined for doing so if they have the support of their local church. I think this is brilliant news.

The news has been misreported in some places, with the decision being overstated as a sudden change of Baptist attitudes to same-sex marriage. However, the Baptist Union’s own spokespeople are downplaying the news, implying that they’ve just made a minor tweak to the regulations. To me, this seems to understate the significance of this development.

To be clear: I’m no expert on the Baptist Union of Great Britain and I’m still struggling to understand just what has happened. The key point to grasp is that Baptists believe strongly in the autonomy of the local church. The Baptist Union is not a church in the same way as the Methodist Church and the Church of England. Rather it is a union of churches.

As Stephen Keyworth, the Union’s team leader for Faith and Society, put it in a recent interview with Adrian Warnock, “The supreme authority in all things is the person of Christ, as revealed in scripture, discerned in community, through the power of the Holy Spirit… each church has liberty to discern that for themselves. This is the basis by which churches belong and function within our union.”

Because a lot of Baptists are passionately committed to this structure, there are Baptists who do not personally endorse same-sex relationships but who believe in the right of each local church to make its own decisions on the matter.

Despite this, many Baptists ministers have until recently feared that they would be disciplined for blessing same-sex partnerships. Some seem to be claiming that the position was unclear and that the Baptist Union was merely clarifying things. I am not convinced by this, as I know of Baptist ministers who have feared for their jobs after effectively blessing same-sex partnerships in secret.

I must thank Adrian Warnock for asking lots of questions to the Baptist Union’s Stephen Keyworth and thus getting some answers about what’s going on.

Keyworth said:

“First I need to correct you, there was no decision made last weekend. What happened was a very small part of a very long, thorough and prayerful journey… We are not a denomination that makes central decisions and policy – we discern the Mind of Christ through the prayerful deliberations of His people gathered together in church meetings.

“On this issue, over the last year or so we have encouraged churches, minsters and associations to engage in conversations through a whole series of approaches, and what was offered last Saturday, was a very simple update from the Baptist Steering group – which in essence said to the wider Baptist Community – this is what we believe to be your view on this matter.  This is what we think we have heard.”

This answer suggests that the Steering Group discerned that most people within the Union wanted ministers and churches to be allowed to follow their differing consciences on the subject and therefore made clear that ministers would not be automatically disciplined for blessing same-sex partnerships. This is fair enough. Nonetheless, there are two ways in which I find the statements of Baptist Union spokespeople to be highly questionable.

Firstly, there is Stephen Keyworth’s insistence that “no decision was made last weekend”. This is not really believable. The steering group may have been responding to what they discerned to be going on within the Union as local churches discerned the mind of Christ. But in doing so, they made a decision. They changed – or at the very least, clarified – the regulations concerning ministerial discipline.

However much they try to play it down this is potentially very significant for Baptist ministers who want to affirm loving same-sex partnerships, as well as for gay and bisexual Baptists who want their relationships to be blessed in their own church.

Of course, it does not go nearly far enough for those of us who wish to see equality in Christian churches.

This leads on to the second problem. At the same time as saying that Baptist ministers would not be disciplined, the Baptist Union reaffirmed “the traditionally accepted biblical understanding of Christian marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, as the continuing foundation of belief in our Baptist Churches”.

I find it hard to see how this could not be contradictory. More worryingly still, the Baptist Union still maintains that its ministers are required to follow guidelines that state that “a sexual relationship outside of Christian marriage (as defined between a man and a woman) is deemed conduct unbecoming for a minister”.

So it seems that ministers can bless same-sex partnerships but not enter such a partnership themselves. This is an incoherent position (reminiscent of the sort of baffling compromises adopted by the Church of England).

Furthermore, it remains very unclear what will happen if a Baptist church wants to go further and carry out a legally recognised same-sex marriage. The legislation allowing same-sex marriages in English and Welsh churches seems to say that the national body of a religious organisation has to apply for permission to hold them. As I pointed out when the legislation was going through Parliament, this would rule out an individual local church applying for permission, even in a denomination such as the Baptists in which authority has always been located in local congregations.

This week’s news does not indicate a sexual revolution in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. It does not mean that Baptist ministers and churches are truly free to make their own decisions about loving sexual relationships. But it is a far more significant step forward than some seem to think. The chance to celebrate your love in the context of worship is not a minor thing, and I’m sorry that anyone should imply that it is.

During his interview, Stephen Keyworth said, “I’m tired of speaking about sexuality and its complexities when what I would like to do is tell the world about Jesus. I’d like us to be known as spirit-filled and spirit-led communities who are able to make a difference in the world living as disciples of Jesus Christ.”

I can understand Keyworth’s frustration. But I’m sure he would agree that following Jesus in our daily lives has a deep effect on our relationships. This includes relationships with friends, colleagues, enemies, and strangers as well as sexual relationships. We can’t avoid talking about them by talking about Jesus. Those of us who believe that Christ has freed us from the law to live by love will keep resisting regulations and structures that prevent this from happening.

White Feather Diaries – remembering the people who resisted world war one

Posted on by symonhill

Yesterday saw the formal launch of the White Feather Diaires, a social media project exploring the lives of British pacifists during the first world war. The project’s run by Quakers in Britain, who hired me as a writer and an editor for the project. I’m really pleased to be working on this project. Yesterday we announced the names of the five individuals whose writings will form the basis of the project, when it goes online in the summer.

The White Feather Diaries, using blogging methods and Twitter, will serialise the real writings of these five very different people, beginning on 4th August, the centenary of the UK’s entry to the war.  The writings include diaries, letters and memoirs, the majority of which have never previously been published.

As the Guardian reported yesterday, the five people to feature will be Howard Marten, a 30-year-old clerk from London; John “Ted” Hoare, an 18-year-old student from Derbyshire; Hilda Clark, a 33-year-old doctor from Somerset; Laurence Cadbury, a 25-year old engineer from Birmingham; and John “Bert” Brocklesby, a 27-year-old teacher from Conisborough in Yorkshire. There will of course be references to several others too.

Between now and August, you can follow news about the project on Facebook.

The public launch of the project was held yesterday because it was International Conscientious Objectors’ Day, when people around the world remember all those who have asserted and are maintaining the right to refuse to kill. The Day received far more attention than usual because of the centenary of the outbreak of world war one.

We remember the past because it affects the present and the future. Hundreds of conscientious objectors are still in prison around the world. Members of the British armed forces who have a change of heart are not provided with meaningful opportunities to register a conscientious objection. As recently as 2010, Michael Lyons, a member of the Royal Navy, was sent to a military prison for refusing to pick up a rifle, after his views on war changed.

In the UK, our taxes go to fund one of the world’s highest military budgets and a constant stream of messages tell us to admire “our” troops and to believe that violence is the ultimate response to conflict. Our bodies are no longer conscripted, but our minds and money are conscripted instead.

So let’s learn from those who showed the way a hundred years ago and had the courage to say no. We will remember them.

Arrested for quoting Churchill?

Posted on by symonhill

If you believe the Daily Mail, then a European election candidate has been arrested “for quoting Winston Churchill”.

It seems that Paul Weston, leader of the tiny far-right Liberty Great Britain party, was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial and religious hatred.

Whatever view we take on the rightness or wrongness of Weston’s arrest, it should have nothing to do with Churchill. If it’s right (or wrong) to stop him expressing bigoted views, then it’s right (or wrong) regardless of the identity of the person he was quoting.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about whether someone should be arrested for expressing opinions, however hateful and prejudiced they may be. Inciting violence should certainly be illegal. When it comes to bigotry that can inspire hatred, I find it hard to know where the line should be. Of course, I don’t even know whether Weston’s account of the event is accurate. I wasn’t there.

But if anything good comes out of this squalid incident, it’s that the publicity around it will make more people aware of Churchill’s real views. Churchill was a racist and strongly prejudiced against Muslims. No amount of lauding him as a national hero (based on some questionable national myths about the second world war) can make this less true.

Take the words of Churchill that Weston quoted. Churchill, in many ways an intelligent man, nonetheless descended to the level of ill-informed nonsense when it came to Muslims. He said they were cursed by “fanatical frenzy” and “fearful fatalistic apathy”.

He wrote, “The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.”

Churchill insisted that “No stronger retrograde force [than Islam] exists in the world.”

We cannot excuse all this by saying that Churchill was a man of his time. Plenty of British people at the time had a better knowledge of Islam, while many who did not were still able to understand the unfairness of sweeping generalisations not backed up by evidence.

Unfortunately, the arrest and associated coverage has probably increased the number of people who have heard of Liberty Great Britain several times over. I decided to find out a bit about it.

Paul Weston, a former UKIP candidate in central London, was briefly chairman of the British Freedom Party, formed largely by ex-BNP members with links to the English Defence League. He then went on to set up Liberty Great Britain, which is to field three candidates in the south-east region for the European election. The third candidate on the list, Jack Buckby, recently stated that no real Muslim is peaceful and that “not all nations are necessarily equal”.

No-one should be giving much publicity to these people without pointing out the far-right, racist nature of their party. The article in the Mail barely mentioned it.

According to Liberty Great Britain’s website, their main concerns are “mass immigration from the third world, the steady rise of fundamentalist Islam and the hijacking of traditional British culture and institutions by well-organised left-wing progressives”.

Speaking as a left-wing progressive, I only wish we were as organised as that statement implies.