Category Archives: democracy

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.

Keep Volunteering Voluntary! Add your church or charity

Posted on by symonhill

This week, the government launched a new scheme that treats unemployment as a crime and unemployed people as criminals. Many people out of work for two years will be forced to carry out unpaid work full-time for six months for a charity, faith group or other voluntary group. This is more than twice as many hours as the maximum community service sentence. Their benefits will be slashed if they fail to take part.

For this scheme to work it requires the participation of the voluntary sector. Over 100 charities, unions, faith groups and other voluntary organisations have already signed up to Keep Volunteering Voluntary, condemning forced labour and saying they will take no part in it.

Please sign up your charity, church or other group to this simple principle. From national organisations to small local churches, all signatories are sending an important message. Thank you.

The faith of Tony Benn

Posted on by symonhill

When my radio alarm clock woke me this morning, I was unsurprised but deeply saddened to hear of the death of Tony Benn. 

I was 18 when I met Tony Benn for the first time. I stood up, nervously, to ask him a question at a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference in 1995. I asked him his views on Christian socialism. He gave a long and rather indirect answer, which mixed criticisms of the hierarchical nature of churches with appreciation of the teachings of Jesus. 

He also said, “Of course, there are some Christians in the churches, just as there some socialists in the Labour Party.” It’s a sentence I’ve never forgotten. 

Later in the conference, I queued up to ask him to sign my copy of his latest book. After signing it, he shook my hand, looked at me directly with his amazingly bright eyes and said “Look after yourshelf, Shymon”. 

I met Tony Benn on another two occasions. The last time was when he spoke at the Yearly Meeting of British Quakers in 2011. He was very frail and hard of hearing but his handshake remained firm as I introduced myself as a news reporter for The Friend, the independent weekly Quaker magazine. 

Tony Benn was not a Christian. Nor was he an atheist. Compared to many left-wing radicals, he was surprisingly positive about Christianity.

I dare say that most of Benn’s supporters are unaware that his mother, Margaret Benn, was the first president of the Congregational Federation, formed in 1972 by those Congregationalist churches that voted against merging with the Presbyterian Church of England to form the United Reformed Church.

In my late teens, I read one of Benn’s most famous books, Arguments for Socialism. In an early section on the history of British socialism, he portrays radical Christian movements in the middle ages and early modern times as forerunners of socialism. 

There are some on the left who make these links but who suggest that such movements were not really Christian, that they simply used Christian terminology because they were familiar with it. Tony Benn never made that mistake. The book quotes the passionately Christian words of the fourteenth-century priest John Ball and the seventeenth-century activist Gerard Winstanley, showing how their Christian faith inspired their belief in sharing the world’s resources. Benn was similarly positive about radical Christian faith in countless other writings and speeches.

I thank God for Tony Benn. However, Benn would be the first to acknowledge that he is one among many. He refused to accept that change happens because of influential individuals, constantly reasserting his socialist conviction that only movements of ordinary people can really change things. I think this faith underscored all his other views – on peace, democracy and economics. 

Tony Benn was a man who believed in people. It’s a rare thing in a cynical, celebrity-driven age. The best way to remember him is to show the faith that he showed in the power of justice working at the grassroots, whatever religion or theology we may (or may not) attach to it. 

Why is a Christian school promoting an arms company?

Posted on by symonhill

The arms company BAE Systems, along with the Royal Air Force, has run a “science roadshow” for pupils at a Christian secondary school in central London. The school is a few minutes’ walk from where I live.

The school, St Marylebone Church of England School, aims to “nurture respect for religious, moral and spiritual values” and to help pupils to “understand the interdependence of individuals, groups and nations”.

BAE Systems is a multinational arms firm, selling weapons to oppressive and aggressive regimes around the globe. 

I heard about the event, which happened on 5th March, when I was contacted by the local paper, the West End Extra. It has now run a story about my criticism and the headteacher’s response. I have also written to the headteacher, Kat Pugh, explaining my concerns and apologising for not having written before my criticisms appeared in print. 

I emphasised to her that I am not criticising the school as a whole. I am pleased to hear that the school has maked Fairtrade Fortnight and run an e-safety event. 

I did not write as a a parent or a schoolteacher (although I teach in adult education). My comments are simply those of a local resident with a good knowledge of the arms industry in general and BAE in particular. There are two reasons why I strongly object to BAE’s role in this event. 

Firstly, there is the issue of BAE’s influence on young people and its portrayal of science.

In her comments to the West End Extra, Kat Pugh emphasised that the event is not about recruitment for BAE or the RAF. I appreciate that it is not a direct recruitment event.

Nonetheless, I doubt that either BAE or the RAF engage in this sort of activity purely as a matter of charity. BAE have an interest in more people choosing careers in science, technology and engineering, as they employ people to do this sort of work. This employment is helped by the UK government, which effectively subsidises the arms industry to the tune of £700 million per year (according to the academic researchers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). 

The headteacher suggests that the name of the company that runs the event is irrelevant because the children will not remember it. This seems rather disingenuous. The way the event is run will inevitably affect the way that science is portrayed, however subtly. 

Secondly, any invitation to BAE helps to confer an image of social and moral legitimacy on the company and its activities. 

This is why the Church of England no longer invests in BAE (or any company making more than ten percent of its turnover from arms sales). It is why nearly all charities now refuse to invest in BAE and and why institutions such as the National Gallery have recently ended sponsorship deals with arms firms. 

In Kat Pugh’s comments to the West End Extra, she refers to the “defence industry”. BAE’s work is not about defence. Its customers include regimes that use weapons in the most aggressive manner against innocent civilians. Saudi Arabia is one of BAE’s “home markets”. I am sure the headteacher does not need me to tell her about the reality of the Saudi regime, its suppression of dissent or its use of weapons against peaceful critics of its royal family.

In 2011, peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain were attacked by their own government with the help of armoured vehicles made by BAE Systems.

If BAE’s representatives were in the school to debate the ethics of the arms industry with their critics, I would be glad that such a discussion was taking place. However, by allowing BAE to run a roadshow at which the company’s values are not questioned or debated, the school implies that it endorses, or at least tolerates, the activities of BAE and their impact on the world.

Having written to the school’s headteacher, I will also be writing to the Church of England to ask about any national policies concerning their schools’ relationships with arms companies.

Ironically, the BAE event at St Marylebone School took place on Ash Wednesday, 5th March. Ash Wednesday is a day associated with repentance, accepting God’s forgiveness and a change of hearts and minds. We all need to repent of our country’s role in the evil of the international arms trade. 

British racist group backed by Egyptian embassy official

Posted on by symonhill

The military government in Egypt has received the enthusiastic backing of Tony Blair. The UK government, while using more cautious language, has continued to license arms sales to this regime, which imprisons its opponents and attacks peaceful demonstrators.

If we needed another reminder of the reality of this regime, one of its press officers has now tweeted – with approval – a link to the website of Britain First, a violent, racist group that split from the British National Party (BNP). 

In January, Britain First held a rally outside the London offices of a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Shortly afterwards, Sohair Younis, Press Counsellor to the Egyptian Embassy in London, tweeted (in capitals): “Demonstration: Britain First holds successful demonstration at London HQ of terrorist Muslim Brotherhood”. This was followed by a link to a story about the protest on Britain First’s own website.

Younis is clearly implying that she supports the demonstration. If she had made a statement about the event with no comment or link, she might get away with claiming that she was merely noting that it had happened. The link to the group’s own account of it, along with her willingness to use their own description of it (“successful”) make clear that this is not a neutral tweet.

I admit I would not have noticed Younis’ tweet were it not for a good friend of mine who campaigns against Egypt’s military regime. She uses Facebook under the name Sarah Antideepstate. Many thanks to Sarah for drawing this tweet to my attention.

You may well not have heard of Britain First. The group’s website is so full of half-truths, fantasy and lies that it’s difficult to know how much of what it says about itself is true.

It was founded by former BNP members who argued with BNP leader Nick Griffin. This appears to have been in part due to Griffin’s decision to allow non-whites to join the party. However, Britain First seem to emphasise religion at least as much as race.

Its members include Paul Golding, a former BNP councillor in Kent, and Jim Dowson, a former BNP treasurer and Christian fundamentalist minister with links to extreme loyalist activities in Northern Ireland.

The group say they want to preserve “British and Christian morality”. They describes themselves as a “patriotic political party and street defence organisation”. They clearly hate Muslims (who they lump together as terrorists and sexists). Their website declares that they are “overtly proud” of putting “our own people before foreigners” (how this fits with “Christian morality” is not explained). The website includes several attacks on homosexuality and applause for Vladimir Putin, the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and countries that have passed laws against LGBT rights.

Despite all their hate-filled, racist, homophobic rhetoric, they say they want to “restore Christianity as the bedrock and foundation of our national life”.

It may be argued that Sohair Younis is not supporting everything Britain First stands for. However, if she does not agree with the group’s other views, she at least regards them as tolerable enough to overlook them for the sake of unity against the Muslim Brotherhood.

I’m no supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, although it is absurd to suggest that all its members are terrorists.

The current Egyptian government is a terrorist regime. So why am I bothering to mention this tweet? You might point out that the regime’s violence against its critics in Egypt, its murder of opponents and its fixing of a referendum are far worse than a tweet about a small group of right-wing extremists in London. You would be right.

However, what’s significant about this tweet is that it’s a comment on British politics. It’s a reminder that when Blair and Cameron get friendly with this regime, their friends’ friends in the UK include racists, Islamophobes, homophobes and fundamentalists who don’t think that the BNP is extreme enough.

If we stopped one arms deal, it was worth it

Posted on by symonhill

“Superglue protesters avoid jail” declared a headline on ITN this week. As one of the protesters in question, I’m pleased to report that we didn’t only avoid jail. We were acquitted.

The judge declared all five of us “Not Guilty” to the charge of aggravated trespass. I really want to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of people who have sustained us with encouragement and support. I also want to give my best wishes to other peaceful protesters arrested at the arms fair, who will be on trial in the same court later this month.

I was one of seven Christians who blocked an entrance to the London arms fair (known euphemistically as Defence & Security Equipment International, or DSEi) last September. We did so by kneeling to pray and sing hymns. We delayed arms dealers for nearly an hour.

Five of us – James Clayton, Chloe Skinner, Chris Wood, Dan Woodhouse and me – were arrested and held in cells for most of the day in a police station near King’s Cross, before being charged and released on bail. The other two – Alison Parker and Angela Ditchfield – played an important role in the protest but left before the arrests took place. Others had also been very involved, standing nearby to support us, join us in prayer and help us to negotiate with the police.

Over the last few months, and particularly the last week or two, we have received hundreds of messages of support. Many have come from Christians, of different sorts. There have been several from people of other faiths. I know that those praying for us on the day the trial began included a Muslim in Birmingham and a Pagan in Oxford, as well as lots of Christians. A good many of the messages came from people of no religion, or who did not mention religion, but who shared a common human disgust with the sale of arms, particularly to oppressive regimes.

I have no doubt that the trial, stressful though it was, would have been many, many times harder without all this support and encouragement, from both friends and strangers. I thank God for everyone involved.

There was a reminder of the foul reality of the London arms fair on the very day that we were arrested. Two companies were removed from the fair for selling illegal torture equipment. This happened only after their presence was raised in Parliament. This is the sixth consecutive occasion on which dealers in illegal weaponry have been removed from the London arms fair (always when revealed in public, never proactively). Despite this, not a single prosecution has been brought against any of the companies involved. It is peaceful protesters who end up in the dock.


A significant moment in the trial came when a Ministry of Defence policeman gave evidence for the prosecution. I won’t give his name, as he came off rather badly and I don’t want to humiliate him. He was the officer who arrested me and I can honestly say that I couldn’t hope to be arrested by a nicer person. There was an amusing moment when he testified that while being arrested, I was “shouting loudly throughout in a religious manner”. Or as I would call it, “praying”.

More importantly, the officer admitted under cross-examination that the police on duty at DSEi had been briefed about possible activity by protesters but been told nothing about possible illegal behaviour by arms dealers. This is despite the removal of illegal weaponry on the previous five occasions.

This is clear evidence that, however decent the motivations of individual police officers, the police are deployed at DSEi for the benefit of the arms dealers rather than the impartial enforcement of the law.

This is yet another reminder that the authorities in the UK are in bed with the arms industry.

After a trial lasting a day and a half, the judge acquitted us on the grounds that we had reasonable grounds not to understand a police warning, which the Detective Constable in charge of the case admitted should have been delivered differently.

I am delighted with the outcome of this case. However, I will be happier when people who sell torture equipment on the streets of London are standing in the dock that we recently left.

Nonetheless, I am aware that we held up the arms and torture dealers for nearly an hour. Trains were backed up at Custom House station. I cannot tell who was stopped getting in, or what meetings were prevented, because of our action. But I can say this: If we stopped one arms deal, it was worth it.

If you think UKIP’s members are extreme, read its official policies

Posted on by symonhill

Nigel Farage has thrown out the latest UKIP member to provoke controversy through bigoted opinions. Farage says he wants to get rid of candidates with “extremist, barmy or nasty” views. But it is not individual candidates who are the problem. UKIP’s official policies are extremely nasty, based as they are on an ultra-Thatcherite free-market extremism.

Earlier this week, I blogged about David Silvester, a UKIP councillor in Oxfordshire who attributed the recent floods to God’s judgment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage (rather than the real sin of human-fuelled climate change). I have now lost count of the number of UKIP members that have been expelled due to racist, sexist or homophobic comments. Farage’s insistence that there are bigoted individuals in every party is true but now wearing thin as an excuse for the number of them who appear to have joined UKIP.

You only have to look at the policies of UKIP to see why. They want to make even greater cuts than the Tories. They are committed to workfare (forcing people to work for benefits, instead of paying them a wage). They want to withdraw from the UN Convention on Refugees, meaning the UK could turn back people fleeing persecution. They would also remove the UK from the European Court of Human Rights, meaning it would join Belarus as the only other European country that is not signed up to it.

Despite slashing the welfare state, a UKIP government would increase military spending by forty percent and push ahead with the renewal of Trident. The party’s education policy includes the promotion of a biased, pro-imperial teaching of history in British schools. They would not, however, teach about climate change, as they deny its reality. Their policies include investment in several new gas-fired power stations.

Shortly after his comments about expelling “extremists”, Farage gave us a reminder of his own perception of reality by claiming that women can succeed just as well as men at the top levels of big business – if, he added, they are prepared to sacrifice their families. Why anyone should be expected to sacrifice their family to “succeed” was not made clear.

Of course, the debate on the number of women on boards of corporate directors conveniently obscures the reality of sexism for people on low and middle incomes. But given the power of corporations, it is telling that Farage is happy with those who are wielding that power.

It is not individual UKIPers who are the problem but the party itself and its own policies. Expelling right-wing extremists from UKIP is like expelling sand from the desert. 

Gates is wrong: We need more cuts to military spending

Posted on by symonhill

My radio alarm clock woke me this morning with the news that the USA’s former defence secretary, Robert Gates, has criticised the cuts that are being made to military spending in the UK.

If a minister, let alone a former minister, from within the European Union had criticised cuts to social security, the right-wing media would be shaking with simulated outrage about “Europe” interfering in British politics.

However, those on the right who object to “Europe” are often happy for the UK to slavishly follow the US, particularly on foreign policy and military issues. Gates said the cuts could weaken US-UK ties. Such ties are based on the UK government following where the US government leads. They are a wilful abrogation of the British people’s freedom to determine their own policies.

There are people who back welfare cuts on the grounds of cutting the deficit but who take a different view when it comes to military spending (or “defence spending” as it’s euphemistically called). Many right-wing commentators cheer as the government snatches the livelihoods from thousands of disabled people, massively increases homelessness and prices working class people out of higher education, but they insist that it is essential that the UK maintains one of the highest military budgets in the world, despite containing less than one percent of the world’s population.

The rarely-mentioned reality is that the UK’s “defence” cuts are much smaller than most other cuts that the coalition government is making. If ministers were serious about cutting the deficit, they might start with the £100bn that will be spent renewing the Trident nuclear weapons systems, which can work only by killing millions of innocent people.

After planned cuts to military spending, the UK government will still have a massive military out of all proportion to the country’s size or to its other expenditure. A country’s influence no longer rests on the size of its army but Robert Gates, Liam Fox and even David Cameron seem to be living in the nineteenth century.

Very little of the “defence” budget is spent on anything that meaningfully defends the people living within the UK. People being thrown on the streets as a a result of the bedroom tax are unlikely to feel well defended. The reality is that the British people are under attack by British ministers and by the rich and powerful whose interests they promote. We need to defend ourselves from our own government.

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.