Category Archives: class

Celebrating revolution at Christmas

Posted on by symonhill

Tonight and tomorrow, millions of people will gather in churches to tell each other a truly subversive story.

They will tell of a baby born to a semi-homeless family living under a viciously oppressive regime. They will declare that the mother’s husband was not the baby’s father; this was a very unconventional family. They will tell of how the puppet ruler of the area was so frightened by this obscure baby that he killed all the children in the town to try to get rid of him.

They will add stories about visits to the child from migrant travellers, who foiled the king’s attempts to hunt down the baby. They will say that the child was visited also by people whose work was looked down on, but to whom God chose to reveal the news of the birth.

In many countries throughout history, and in some today, the authorities have tried to suppress Christians telling these stories to each other. After all, they challenge authority, monarchy, national loyalty and family values.

Over time, the people with power have become more subtle and effective in their methods. They have found it much easier to tell these stories themselves, repeating them so often that they become familiar and disconnected from the realities of life, death, power and politics today. Some of us can be quite comfortable with this. We can enjoy the stories, but not the challenge they bring to our lives. Even those of us want to change the society we live in can still cling on to the comfort of familiarity.

No king, no dictator, no burner of books has ever suppressed the Christian message as well as those who have domesticated Christianity. Turning subversion into a fluffy story is much more effective than banning it.

At times, we glimpse the transformative potential of Christmas. On Christmas Day ninety-nine years ago, German troops on the Western Front displayed a sign reading “We no fight. You no fight.” The British responded in kind, and the opposing soldiers were soon shaking hands and playing football. The authorities on both sides responded by criminalising such behaviour to make sure it didn’t happen again. If people realise that they are fighting people who are just the same as them, they might decide that there are better causes to fight for, and better ways to fight for them. If the troops had gone on playing football into Boxing Day, they might have stopped the war.

The baby we’re talking about this week grew up, despite the king’s murderous intention. He continued to be in conflict with authority. He welcomed and challenged all whom he encountered. He declared his solidarity with the poor and marginalised, while offering just as much love to the rich and powerful as he called on them to repent. He spoke of the kingdom of God, a revolutionary notion in an empire whose emperor expected to be worshipped. He was executed after a rigged trial by the local rulers, helped by the collusion of religious leaders. Some of us have faith that the oppressive powers could not hold him and that God raised him from the dead to continue to lead and liberate us.

That really is something worth celebrating. Merry Christmas.

Social mobility: Cameron is ignoring Major, not listening to him

Posted on by symonhill

David Cameron has today declared that lack of social mobility is a problem. He was responding to comments by his predecessor John Major, but he ignored the main point that Major seemed to be making – the power of private schools.

Only seven percent of the UK population attend fee-paying schools. But the majority of judges, finance directors and top journalists attended them.

This grotesque reality shows how far we are from true democracy, let alone equality. Your birth and therefore your schooling play a bigger part than anything else in determining your chances in life and how much power you have as an adult.

As a child, I felt resentful of private schools. I was angry at the idea that those with the money to do so could buy a better education. I knew that my family and other working class families could never afford this.When I went to university, I came to a partially different conclusion.

I realised that some middle class parents are indeed motivated by a desire for a better education for their children. Some make sacrifices so that their children can go to private schools. But studying in Oxford, I met a good many people who had been to the top private schools – the so-called “public” schools such as Eton and Harrow. It became very clear very quickly that the super-rich who send their children to such places know that they will mix with other people like them and that the values and habits of the ruling class will be passed down (they may not put it like that themselves of course). It is not about getting a better education. It is about being in the right place. 

Private schools, particularly the most expensive ones, ensure that it is the children of the rich and powerful who become rich and powerful.

Cameron’s rhetoric about “social mobility” is not going to address that. Cameron’s policies have played a major role in ensuring that half a million people in the UK are dependent on food banks while even people on middle incomes are struggling to pay the heating bills. By talking about social mobility, he is only rubbing salt into the wound.

Those who talk of social mobility usually suggest schemes for helping some of those who are born in poverty to rise above it. It is usually the “gifted” young people who these plans are aimed at. It is rarely explained why rich people get to be rich despite not being “gifted” or why poor people who are not “gifted” should be expected to stay in poverty.

We don’t need social mobility. We need meaningful equality and democracy. We will never have it until we ban private schools.

Benefit payments and the Living Wage

Posted on by symonhill

UK ministers and their allies are fond of talking about the need to reduce the welfare bill. They give the impression that the welfare bill goes to feckless scroungers, but almost never mention any statistics about who is actually claiming the money.

In reality, less than two percent of the welfare bill goes to non-disabled unemployed people. The biggest chunk goes to older people in the form of pensions, but a sizeable amount goes to people in work. Much of this is paid in tax credits and housing benefits.

Tax credits go to people who are in work but who are not paid enough, while housing benefit is high because there is no cap on private sector rents (so in this case, the real benefit recipients are landlords).

This week is Living Wage Week, when faith groups, unions and individuals across the UK are pushing for all employers to pay a Living Wage. Payment of a Living Wage would reduce the welfare bill and, more importantly, tackle poverty.

Currently the vast majority of the UK’s largest companies do not guarantee a Living Wage to their staff. The organisation Share Action is urging people who own private pensions to email their pension fund about the living wage.

If you have a pension, you can urge the fund to add to the pressure for a Living Wage within the companies in which it invests. Share Action have produced an online form to make the process quick and easy.

This tactic is already working. When Share Action launched their “Just Pay!” campaign for living wages two years ago, just three of the biggest 100 hundred companies in the UK paid the Living Wage. Due to the campaign, ten more of these massive corporations have now responded to public pressure by signing up.

Although I don’t have a pension myself, I wish the best of luck with this tactic to those of you who do. If you want to find out more about the Living Wage, and what you can do to promote it, you can visit the Living Wage site and Share Action.

All baptisms are royal baptisms

Posted on by symonhill

When I complained on Twitter last week about the excessive amount of media coverage given to George Windsor’s baptism, somebody replied with the understandable opinion that it was a welcome change to see Christian sacraments featuring in the news.

I can see his point, although as the week went I on I became convinced that the coverage was bad rather than good news for Christianity. The reporting reinforced prominent misconceptions about baptism, including the idea that it is about conforming to tradition rather than making a radical statement.

The media told us that George was baptised in a “private” ceremony. My idea of “private” does not involve an event that is pictured on the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, but I suppose it’s literally true in that the ceremony was not open to everyone. George was surrounded by people as wealthy and privileged as he will one day be. Media comment focused on the details of the clothes he was wearing and his godparents’ ancestral backgrounds.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of Justin Welby’s prayers, nor of the worship through which the baby was welcomed into the Christian church (although George himself is too young to have much say in the matter). He was splashed with water from the River Jordan, where John the Baptist immersed Jesus two thousand years ago.

That was a rather different event, when people voluntarily walked into a river to repent of their sins and to ask God’s forgiveness. Following Jesus’ resurrection, his disciples continued to practise baptism in water, while also experiencing baptism in the Holy Spirit, a more internal matter of cleansing and rebirth.

It is not known whether the early Christians baptised children as well as adults (the question is the subject of a never-ending debate amongst historians and theologians). What is clear is that baptism was a dangerous business. Being baptised helped to mark people out as Christians at a time when they were marginalised at best and executed at worst.

Christianity gradually became less radical, accepting dominant norms of slavery and gender roles. Then in the fourth century, the emperor Constantine sucked the power out of this once subversive movement by making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and thereby domesticating it. As church leaders were given positions of power and privilege, they found themselves defending ideas they had previously been against (think of Liberal Democrat ministers in the UK government and you’ll get the idea).

With the beginning of Christendom, the church and state became allies, offering support and sanction to each other. All parents were expected to have their children baptised. Baptism, far from being a sign of rejecting the powers of this world, became a symbol of acceptance.

Among the groups who reacted against this were the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. Emphasising that following Jesus is a matter of personal choice, they baptised each other as adult believers. In many countries by this time, refusing to hand over your child for infant baptism was a criminal offence punishable by death. Anabaptists were martyred in their thousands.

Some Anabaptists survived by fleeing to North America and a few continued to live in Europe. Their influence on other radical Christian movements, such as Quakerism and some strands of the Baptists, is debated but should not be underestimated. Quakers and the Salvation Army developed a different, but equally radical, interpretation of baptism, rejecting the use of water and focused on inward, spiritual baptism alone. The early twentieth century saw the birth of the Pentecostal movement, which emphasises baptism in the spirit as well as in water for adult believers.

To be fair, many supporters of infant baptism see it as a case of welcoming a child into a community rather than simply going through the expected procedure. They also believe they are preparing a child to make a decision for themselves at a later date, despite applying the water in infancy. I am not persuaded by their arguments, but their approach is very different to the popular conception of “christening” as something that is about celebrating birth rather than about joining the church.

It is this misconception that was reinforced by George Windsor’s baptism last week. George is starting out on a life in which – despite enormous wealth – he will be required at every stage to do exactly what is expected of him. Baptism for him looks likely to be the first step on a journey of commitment to the powers of privilege and earthly power.

In baptism, said the apostle Paul, we die and rise with Christ. We dedicate ourselves, in all our fallible humanity, to Jesus Christ. All baptisms are royal baptisms, because they mark out the participants as citizens of the Kingdom of God. Loyalty to that subversive kingdom means rejection of the kingdoms of this world.

Baptism is not about conformity. As early Christians, Anabaptists and Quakers knew to their cost, baptism is an act of rebellion – and it leads to trouble.

———–

The above article appeared as my latest column for the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. Please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill. 

I love Britain. The Daily Mail hates it.

Posted on by symonhill

What is Britain? This question doesn’t seem to have been asked much in the many arguments around the Daily Mail’s vicious attack on Ed Miliband’s father. Ralph Miliband, the Mail maintains, “hated Britain”.

Is “Britain” simply a geographical area? Or does the Mail really mean the United Kingdom, which is a political entity? Or the British people? We talk so much about countries that we can easily forget that nationality is an abstract and ill-defined concept.

The Daily Mail‘s deputy editor Jon Steafel now seems to have come up with a definition of Britain that few British people would recognise.

Defending his paper’s claims, he attacked Ralph Miliband’s “views on British institutions, from our schools to our royal family to our military, to our universities to the church [of England]”.

Steafel’s implication is that to oppose powerful institutions in Britain is to hate Britain. This is nonsense. There is more to Britain than its rulers. It is possible to love a country’s people, to love it as a place and to oppose its political and economic systems. Indeed, love for a country’s people should surely lead to a desire to be rid of unjust institutions that harm them.

I’m not too keen on the United Kingdom as a political entity, but I love the places and people within it. You may be surprised to hear that I also love many aspects of its politics.

I love British traditions of free speech, religious liberty and fair trials (although they’re abused). We have these things because people went out and campaigned for them, not because our rulers kindly handed them down.

I love the radical traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Radical egalitarian forms of Christianity became popular in these islands in the seventeenth century, just after England had abolished its monarchy (over a hundred years before France did so; sadly, it didn’t last).

I love the stunning scenery in Snowdonia and the Antrim coast. I love the mix of cultures, languages and religions on the streets of London. I love the friendliness of Cardiff and the feeling of homecoming as the bus goes over Magdalen Bridge in Oxford. I love the rural Midlands roads that I walked down as a child, greasy spoon cafes in Birmingham, the sight of the castle in Edinburgh and the passion of people whose poverty is no barrier to resisting injustice. I love the British people.

The Daily Mail stirs up hatred of the British working class, British Muslims, British LGBT people, British people who were born outside the UK and British people who claim benefits. It is the Daily Mail that hates Britain.

———-

The above article appeared as my latest column for the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. Please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill. 

The Christian lobby group and the far-right party

Posted on by symonhill

I blogged earlier this week about statements from the homophobic lobby group Christian Concern ahead of the local elections. They encouraged people to vote for candidates opposed to same-sex marriage. Most of these candidates are likely to be UKIP or on the right wing of the Conservative Party. They are therefore likely to be very right-wing on economics. Until now, Christian Concern have largely avoided taking a stance on economic issues.

Today, Christian Concern sent out their weekly email bulletin, which includes a message from the group’s director, Andrea Williams, about the local elections. She writes in a celebratory tone. This is not, of course, because Labour have taken so many seats from Tories, but because UKIP have done so.

She writes:

“The local election results are showing massive losses for the Conservative party. This was by no means inevitable but David Cameron’s insistence on pursuing the same sex ‘marriage’ agenda has undoubtedly contributed to this dramatic result.

“His determination to dilute marriage has alienated not only Conservative supporters but voters at large. UKIP is notably the only party that supports marriage and their success in these elections is in large part due to that.”

Contrary to the above statement, there are in fact several other parties that oppose same-sex marriage (BNP, English Democrats, Christian People’s Alliance, etc), but Christian Concern seem happy to ignore them today.

Should we take this as indicating that Christian Concern is happy to support – or at least overlook – UKIP’s other policies? They include cutting taxes for the rich, raising taxes for the poor and people in the middle, increasing military spending, renewing Trident, going further than the Tories with cuts to public services, increasing workfare, banning all immigration for five years, withdrawing from the UN Convention on Refugees, scrapping human rights law and teaching children a pro-imperial view of history.

Do Christian Concern think that these are appropriate policies for Christians to support? I think they should tell us.

IDS and the bishops: Some overlooked facts

Posted on by symonhill

I have often been critical of the Church of England’s leadership for being slow to speak out on issues of economic justice. I’m therefore delighted that 43 CofE bishops have criticised the coalition for cutting benefits (or technically, for raising them by one percent, which is below the rate of inflation and therefore a cut in all but name).

It’s good news that Justin Welby has backed their stance, in one of his first high-profile acts as Archbishop of Canterbury. I am hoping that this is a sign of how he means to go on.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has responded to the bishops with a statement that (while not containing any direct lies) gives a very misleading impression of the welfare budget.

He said:

“This is about fairness. People who are paying taxes, working very hard, have hardly seen any increases in their salary and yet, under the last government, the welfare bill rose by some sixty percent to £200bn. That means they have to pay for that under their taxes, which is simply not fair.”

There are several things that Iain Duncan Smith knows to be true but is not mentioning.

He knows that the majority of the welfare budget goes on pensions and other benefits for older people that the government is not, in any case, proposing to cut.

He knows that many benefits, such as housing benefit and disability living allowance, go to people who are employed as well as people who are unemployed. Some of those “working very hard” are among the beneficiaries of the welfare budget.

He knows that unemployed people, as well as working people, pay taxes. They do not pay income tax, but they pay VAT. Even homeless people pay VAT.

He knows that a major reason for the rise in the welfare budget is that tax credits are subsidising poverty pay, while housing benefit is going into the pockets of landlords at a time of rising private sector rents. But it’s not landlords and employers who will lose out from the coalition’s cuts.

Iain Duncan Smith knows all these things. But he’s not going to mention them. The bishops – and the rest of us – need to proclaim them loudly and clearly.

Living activism (ten years after the Iraq march)

Posted on by symonhill

Ten years ago today, I joined millions of other people around the world in marching against the planned invasion of Iraq. This morning, I was effectively banned from my local branch of Costcutter. It’s been a strange decade.

My conflict with Costcutter began when the manager told me I should not pick up and look at the newspapers before choosing which one to buy. I nearly always buy one (and sometimes more than one) and always put the others back neatly. But I often look at them before making my decision.

The manager told me this is not allowed. I politely asked for the reason, and he was unable to give one. He resorted to repeating that it was not allowed without explaining why. I find legalism like this particularly frustrating. At one point, he suggested that all newspapers basically carry the same news – an alarmingly inaccurate statement.

The discussion went on for some time. He told me I was not welcome to buy newspapers there. I told him I would not be buying anything else there either.

Of course, resisting unreasonable rules in local shops is a very trivial issue compared to resisting the invasion of Iraq. The invasion led to at least 200,000 deaths (by conservative estimates). Ten years later, international NGOs rate Iraq towards the bottom of the world’s league tables when it comes to political freedom and other human rights. The worst fears of those of us who campaigned against the invasion have come to pass.

And yet, many people who marched against the war feel that they made no difference. For first-time activists, it was particularly disheartening. At the time, I had little doubt that Bush and Blair would push ahead with their vicious plans regardless of our action, although I believe that we may have made them more cautious about starting more wars immediately afterwards.

Unfortunately, after that march, the anti-war movement effectively tried to replicate it with more central London marches characterised by long dreary walks and endless repetitive speeches (OK, some were better than others). I made this point when interviewed by Ian Sinclair, author of a new book, The March That Shook Blair. I’m about to go to the book launch.

A few years later, activism took a different turn. Groups such as the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) combined direct action with media activism and court cases. The coalition’s cuts agenda was greeted by a rise in nonviolent direct action greater than I dared to hope for. Imaginative actions by UK Uncut and their allies saw tax-dodging shoot up the political agenda.

Marches are sometimes important, but they are rarely, if ever, enough in themselves. We need more diverse tactics, more effective tactics and a greater understanding of active nonviolence.  More importantly, we need to root activism in our daily lives.

I’m not suggesting that alternative lifestyles are a substitute for explicit political campaigning. Rather, I believe we should seek to resist injustice in everyday actions and choices. As Jesus of Nazareth put it, they who are faithful in small ways will be faithful in big ways.

Challenging Costcutter’s unfair rule about newspapers is of course a minor example, but I’m glad I did it. There are many (greater) injustices around me that I fail to challenge. And of course, we are all complicit in the unjust systems that we live under and sometimes benefit from.

But I believe we can aim to live out our values in such a way that our very existence is an act of rebellion. It is something to which I aspire. I have a long way to go.

No (tax) credit for Iain Duncan Smith

Posted on by symonhill

It’s New Year’s Eve, newsrooms are quiet and casual comments by ministers are enough to make top headlines. Today, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has made the news with some vaguely worded attacks on the system of tax credits.

Duncan Smith says that tax credits (government payouts to people on low incomes) are “not fit for purpose”.

Now, there’s very little about which I agree with Iain Duncan Smith. However, I agree that tax credits are not fit for purpose. I suspect that he and I have different reasons for thinking this.

Many tax credits are paid to people who are working in very low paid jobs. In other words, they are a taxpayer-funded subsidy for poverty pay. Employers can get away with paying people unreasonable wages because the taxpayer will foot the bill through tax credits. They are thus not a subsidy for the poor but for the rich (I accept that not all employers are rich, but most major employers certainly are).

However, other people receive tax credits because they can work only part-time, for example because of disability or childcare responsibilities.

Duncan Smith’s planned “universal credit” is likely to be far worse for many of these people than the existing tax credit system.

If Duncan Smith really wants to cut the tax credit bill – as he should – he needs not to introduce new systems that will penalise the poorest but to look to the real reason for such a high bill.

A considerable increase in the minimum wage would make many tax credits unnecessary. Of course, some will argue that this would lead to mass sackings from employers who claim they can’t afford it. This prediction was made when the minimum wage was introduced in 1998. It didn’t happen.

We can reduce the welfare bill, like so many other bills, in ways that cause inconvenience to the rich rather than suffering to the poor.

Disability, abortion and UKIP

Posted on by symonhill

What must life be like for UKIP’s press officers? Just as the party’s support is rising, their candidates keep expressing views that are even farther to the right than UKIP’s official policies. Last month, UKIP’s culture spokesperson described adoption by same-sex couples as “child abuse”. Now one of their local government candidates in Kent has suggested that disabled children should face compulsory abortion.

Geoffrey Clark, who is contesting a council by-election in Gravesham, believes that the NHS should (you might have to brace yourself before reading this) “consider compulsory abortion when the foetus is detected as having Down’s, spina bifida or similar syndrome which, if it is born, will render the child a burden on the state as well as the family”.

He also wants the NHS to offer “free euthanasia advice to all folk over eighty” because their treatment is “extremely costly”.

Clark has chosen a bizarre moment to make these disgusting suggestions. He’s not even standing for Parliament but for local government. Does he want the power to carry out compulsory abortions to be put into the hands of Gravesham Borough Council?

Clark’s views are too much even for some members of UKIP to stomach. He has been thrown out of the party, with a UKIP spokesman saying that “the party was not aware of these views when it allowed him to stand under our name”. The fact that someone who believes in eugenics can be selected as a UKIP candidate – even without going into his views on certain issues – says a great deal about far to the right UKIP is.

One of Clark’s oddest claims is that he wants to promote “Christian values”. Some socially conservative Christians share his view that same-sex marriage is an “abhorrence”. They might back his desire to ban the niqab. They may well applaud his attacks on the Qur’an. But they would not back compulsory abortion, or – in the cast of some of them – any abortion at all.

Nonetheless, many anti-abortionists overlook some of the concerns that Clark is exploiting. His claim that disabled people are a “burden”, implying that they only take from society and give nothing to it, is both morally repugnant and demonstrably untrue. Presumably he means that being disabled often costs more. This is true. The answer is not to abort babies but to ensure that society and the state provide adequate support so that individuals and families are not punished for something over which they have no control.

Exactly the opposite is happening. The government is cutting benefits for disabled people and local councils are cutting disability services. It is almost certain that this will lead to more parents choosing to go ahead with an abortion when they discover their child has spina bifida, Down’s syndrome or one of several other conditions. Indeed, the rise in poverty caused by the economic crisis and the government’s cuts will lead to an increase in abortions generally, as more people decide they can’t afford to bring up a child. For most of these parents, that decision will not be made lightly. It will be horribly traumatic.

But in the face of all this, debates over abortion are still conducted with little if any reference to poverty or disability. Some talk of the rights of unborn children, but condemn mothers making unimaginably horrific decisions. Others are suspicious of any talk of the rights of unborn children. This is understandable given how that rhetoric has been used to attack women, although it is possible to believe in the rights of mothers while still valuing unborn children.

Banning abortions wouldn’t stop them happening. It would simply condemn mothers already facing trauma and pain to receiving more trauma and pain at the hands of backstreet abortionists. If anti-abortion groups really want to reduce the number of abortions – or at least to stop the number increasing – they need to campaign against poverty, prejudice and the government’s cuts. Only when they do so will they have any moral claim to describe themselves as “pro-life”.