Category Archives: Human rights

English people and the Scottish referendum

Posted on by symonhill

I’ve been wary of blogging about Scottish independence, not least because I’m well aware of how many English people are writing about it in a way that implies they know more than the Scots. It seems that the referendum debate is engaging thousands of people in Scotland who were previously seen as apolitical. I don’t doubt that they know more about the issues than commentators in London.

I’ve therefore resolved to focus on the effect of the referendum on the rest of the UK.

Throughout the last few months, I’ve been intrigued and fascinated by the attitudes of English people towards the question of Scottish independence. Many seem to have strong views, or at least feelings, on the issue. Some have remained indifferent but now that the London media have finally realised that the Yes side might win, the referendum seems to have become a major issue of popular discussion down here as well. Unfortunately, the London media seem to be helping to distort English people’s perceptions.

One of the oddest aspects of English discussion is the way so many people speak of Scotland “leaving us” or “going away”, as if Scotland were to be physically detached from the rest of Britain. Some talk of Scotland “leaving Britain”, when they mean “leaving the UK” (Britain, of course, is a geographical area). Some English people seem to regard the idea of Scottish independence as a personal afront, as if Scotland were collectively refusing their company rather than choosing between different methods of government.

Scotland will still be there. Travelling to it from England will still be easy. We will still be welcome. We will not have to queue up at some sort of military checkpoint just north of Berwick-upon-Tweed, nervously clutching a passport in one hand and a Gaelic phrase book in the other.

Newspaper headlines refer to the Yes campaigners as “nationalists”. Some of them undoubtedly are. Many of them are not. People are voting Yes for all sorts of reasons: a belief that Scotland will more democratic outside the UK, a hope for a fairer society, a desire to avoid Tory government, opposition to Trident, desperation that something has to be better than the present set-up. We can debate whether these beliefs are accurate or right, but it is absurd to label them all as “nationalist”.

The No campaign also includes nationalists, such as people who are fiercely proud to be British. I fear that the referendum has also triggered a rather ugly strain of English nationalism, with a (hopefully small) number of people in England attacking Scotland for having the temerity to consider independence.

By voting No, Scots would not be rejecting nationalism. They would be choosing the United Kingdom over a Scottish nation-state. In England, left-wing supporters of the No campaign frequently condemn nationalism and tribalism. I hate nationalism as much as they do, but I wish they would admit that they are, on some level at least, advocating for the United Kingdom.

Defending the union in yesterday’s Independent, George Galloway tied himself in knots trying to avoid this reality. He referred to “the 300-year old Britain”. This is a ludicrous phrase; this island’s been here a lot longer than that and will remain here whatever the outcome on Thursday. But Galloway was avoiding referring to “the 300-year-old United Kingdom”, which is what he is really defending. It is a United Kingdom built on monarchy, warfare and empire.

Nationalists of various sorts can be found in both the Yes and No camps. Both sides also include people who thankfully reject nationalism and are motivated by other, and often better, considerations.

So what are people really voting about if not nationalism? Both sides in this debate are reluctant to admit that the idea of “independence” is an anachronism. Nowhere is really independent in today’s globalised world. Different decisions have to be made at different levels. Some things are decided at the level of your street, some as a town, some as a region and so on, up to those decided at the level of Europe or even the world.

Labelling one of these levels as a “country” and demanding that it is the one that has our greatest loyalty, seems arbitrary, not to say absurd. What we can do is to ensure that all levels are as democratic as possible. We can also choose what decisions we want made at what level. It is this that the Scots are voting on, not on nationalism or “going away”.

Of one thing we can be certain: the UK will change forever on Friday. If London politicians and commentators think that a No vote means business as usual, they will quickly find themselves mistaken. Politics in Scotland has been shaken up, with people from all walks of life are engaging in political issues in ways not seen for decades. Whatever the result, I hope that some of that enthusiasm, excitement and engagement will spread to the rest of the UK. Scotland isn’t going away. Indeed, if their democratic fervour spreads southwards, our politics may be getting closer to theirs.

Mourning Ian Paisley

Posted on by symonhill

The political figures of my youth are gradually dying off. Ian Paisley has joined Tony Benn, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the ranks of dominant figures of the 1980s who are no longer with us.

That said, Paisley wasn’t a dominant figure only in the 80s, but in the 70s, 90s and 2000s as well. He’s been around for so long that it was quite a surprise when I realised today that he was in his forties before he became an elected politician.

Today, I’m mourning Ian Paisley, a man who I disagreed with very strongly on almost every major issue of politics and theology. I am not mourning him out of politeness, or out of a difficult effort to love an enemy, but mainly because I admired him. This may come as a shock to some of those who know me or my views.

The former leader of the Alliance Party, John Cushnahan, rightly said yesterday that we should not be “rewriting” Paisley’s life and overlooking the “pain and suffering” to which he contributed. There can be little doubt that he often stirred up sectarianism and acted as a block towards power-sharing agreements several times. He also led the vicious “Save Ulster from Sodomy” campaign against the legalisation of sex between men in Northern Ireland in 1982 (responses included the slogan “Save Sodomy from Paisley”).

None of this should be overlooked, even as commentators naturally focus on his good points in the wake of his death. Many people who met Ian Paisley, including journalists and critics as well as opponents, say they were surprised by his friendliness and gentleness. His speeches in the Commons contained much more humour than is sometimes acknowledged. It’s also good to see a politician who sticks by his principles.

However, principle in itself is not enough. The truly admirable quality about Ian Paisley was his willingness to apply those principles in a new way that contributed heavily to reconciliation, even though he alienated former friends and supporters in doing so.

Cushnahan was right on one level when said that Paisley’s support for power-sharing was “too little, too late”. It can reasonably be argued that Paisley and Martin McGuinness, along with the other Sinn Feiners and Paisleyites, may not have needed to lead Northern Ireland in such a painful peace process if they had not spent so long stirring up division and resisting reconciliation.

But that of course is the point. For reconciliation to be meaningful, it must involve those who are hard to reconcile. Peace cannot be built solely by people who have always been trying to build it, but must involve those who have long resisted it. Reconciliation, paradoxically, can only be achieved by those who are not sure that they want it.

I’m not rewriting history. I’m not forgetting the sectarianism, the homophobia and the barriers to peacebuilding for which Ian Paisley shares responsibility. I don’t blame those who were affected by these things for being considerably less complimentary about Paisley than some of the commentaries in today’s papers. But Paisley showed that there was more to him than that. To make a major transformation so late in life cannot be easy.

Paisley died too early to give us his response to the result of next week’s Scottish referendum on independence. Today, Orangemen have travelled from Northern Ireland to join a pro-union march in Edinburgh. In discussing questions of national identity, the British media’s focus has moved from Ulster to Scotland.

Messy and complex struggles for peace with justice continue. Let’s stand against many of the ideas which Paisley often represented, while being ever open to the spirit of reconciliation to which he eventually turned.

Terror threat: Let’s not fall for it again

Posted on by symonhill

Do they expect us to believe it all again? With weary familiarity, I have been reading the government’s claims that we face a heightened “terror threat”. UK governments have been making this claim every so often since 2001. It is usually followed by a fresh restriction of civil liberties or the departure of British troops to yet another war zone.

Despite Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destructions, despite the killing of the entirely innocent Jean Charles de Menezes, despite the absurdity of tanks sent to Heathrow in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, despite the widespread distrust of politicians, we are for some reason expected to fall for it this time.

When the “terror threat level” was raised a few days ago, I predicated a new assault on civil liberties. I’d barely typed the prediction on Twitter before Cameron and Clegg began to fulfil it. We can apparently expect some sort of announcement from them on Monday about new measures to tackle the “threat”. Cameron has spoken of filling the “gaps in our armoury”.

Ed Miliband has loyally weighed in with his own suggestions for reducing our freedom. In his article in today’s Independent, he makes some good points about tackling the root causes of support for IS and working multilaterally. He then ruins it with a call for the return of control orders and a “mandatory programme of deradicalisation for anyone who is drawn into the fringes of extremism”. I’m not sure what this phrase is supposed to mean, but it seems to imply that people should be punished for their beliefs rather than their actions.

The odd thing is that the “terror threat” claim might be true. It could be the case that we face a greater than usual threat of terror attacks on British soil. But we’ve got no idea, because the claim has been used so often to mislead and manipulate us that a true claim would not stand out.

Certainly, the announcement is convenient ahead of the NATO summit in south Wales next week. The front page of today’s Independent shows residents of Cardiff passing through metal detection barriers in order to be allowed to walk around their own city. Restrictions on peaceful anti-NATO protests, and the arrest of protesters, will no doubt be justified on the grounds of the threat of terrorism.

The concept of protecting NATO from terrorism would be funny if it were not so sickening. Unlike Iraq, several NATO members actually do own weapons of mass destruction (the US, UK and French governments own nuclear arms). NATO’s explicit policy is to encourage high military spending among its members, inevitably reducing spending in socially useful areas such as healthcare and education. NATO’s attitude to Ukraine is every bit as aggressive and imperialist as the Russian government’s.

In short, the leaders of NATO have at least as much blood on their hands as anyone that they want “protecting” from.

I’m not denying that there is a chance, perhaps a strong chance, of terror attacks in Britain. The British government’s killing of innocent people around the world makes it likely that some will wish to respond by killing innocent people here. I am not for a moment suggesting that this makes such killing justified. To identify someone’s motivation is not to condone it. Nor will I pretend that the UK government is in a better moral position than those it condemns.

Cameron’s government sells weapons to the vicious regimes of Bahrain, Israel and Saudi Arabia. British drone pilots have been killing civilians in Afghanistan for years. George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith have snatched away the livelihoods of some of Britain’s poorest people, who may well feel more under threat from their own government than from terrorists in Iraq.

Whatever the “terror threat”, I cannot support efforts by Cameron and Clegg to defeat it. I detest “Islamic State” as it now calls itself. It is a gang of mass murderers and no decent-minded person of any religion will offer them the slightest measure of support. Nor do I support the terrorism carried out by the US and UK governments. I oppose NATO as much as I oppose Putin, and the IDF as much as Hamas.

In short, I will not unite with one group of killers against another. The people of Britain, of Iraq, of Ukraine, of Palestine, of Israel, of Russia and of the US share a common identity and future as human beings. We have too much in common with each other to give in to those who kill in our name.

Reflections on Greenbelt

Posted on by symonhill

Having got back from the Greenbelt festival a few days ago, I’ve mostly (but not completely) caught up on sleep. I’ve also had time to reflect on the festival.

If you would like to read my thoughts on this year’s Greenbelt, I had two articles about it published yesterday.

The first was in the Morning Star. This is a short article aimed at a mostly non-Christian audience (and I didn’t choose the headline myself!). The second, which goes into more detail, forms my latest column on the Ekklesia website.

After Beeching, where are the bisexual Christians?

Posted on by symonhill

Vicky Beeching’s decision to come out publicly as a lesbian is so important because she is such a prominent figure in evangelical circles. As I mentioned on this blog yesterday, there is good evidence that the news has given many other gay Christians the confidence to come out.

Of course, there have been comings-out before this, including among evangelicals. Sally Hitchiner, an evangelical Church of England priest, was outed as gay on national television last month. I confidently predict that the number of comings-out, among Christians generally and evangelicals in particular, will increase over the next few months.

The phrase “coming out” tends to be used as short hand for “coming out as gay”. I find this slightly irritating, as there are lots of things you can came out as, whether to do with sexuality or otherwise. I hope we will also hear about the coming out of bisexual, asexual, trans and other Christians who have been wrongly excluded from equal inclusion in the Christian Church.

I admit this desire is influenced by the fact that I am bisexual. I know lots of bisexual Christians, but I cannot think of any prominent Christians in the UK who are openly bisexual (please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this).

Sadly, much of the media, and even parts of the LGBT movement, seem to regard “bisexual” as simply a variant on “gay”, and barely worthy of being mentioned in its own right. I’ve been introduced on the radio as a “bisexual Christian writer”, only to be described as “gay” a moment later by the same presenter who has introduced me. While most gay and lesbian people are very supportive of bisexual people’s rights, there are a small number of gay people who are just as prejudiced against bisexuals as any homophobe is against gays.

I sometimes come across Christians who say they are OK with people being gay but have a problem with bisexuality. In some cases, this is because they believe that gay people “can’t help” being like that, but bisexuals could simply choose to enter only a mixed-sex relationship. This is as offensive to gay people as to bisexuals, implying that attraction to members of the same sex is some sort of pitiable condition.

All these issues relate not only to whether LGBT people are given equal inclusion in the Christian Church, but why they should be. There are a range of arguments in favour of equality and inclusion, some of them contradictory. Pro-equality Christians hold the views they do for varied reasons and I sometimes find myself disagreeing with liberal Christians on sexuality just as much as conservative ones.

The more Christians talk about their varied sexualities and gender identities, the more it will be possible to have a real discussion on Christian sexual morality and how it relates to life, faith, ethics and politics today.

Nick Baines is mistaken: Cameron’s policy is coherent, but morally foul

Posted on by symonhill

This morning, I was invited onto BBC Ulster’s Sunday Sequence programme to discuss my response as a Christian pacifist to the situation in northern Iraq. Our discussion followed headlines reporting that English church leaders have criticised the UK government’s response to Islamic extremism.

The story appears in more detail on the front page of today’s Observer, which declares that the Church of England has launched a “bitter attack” on the UK government’s Middle East policy. The “attack” consists of a letter to David Cameron from the Bishop of Leeds, Nick Baines, backed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

I don’t object to bishops criticising the government; I wish they would do it more often. However, this “attack” – which is really more of a polite criticism – is far too soft on the government, making no mention of the militarism and commercial exploitation at the hear of UK foreign policy.

Baines’ letter suggests that UK foreign policy is not “coherent”. In contrast, I believe it is fairly consistent – and morally wrong.

On one issue, I applaud Nick Baines’ intervention. The letter raises vital questions about asylum, saying:

“As yet, there appears to have been no response to pleas for asylum provision to be made for those Christians (and other minorities) needing sanctuary from Iraq in the UK. I recognise that we do not wish to encourage Christians or other displaced and suffering people to leave their homeland – the consequences for those cultures and nations would be extremely detrimental at every level – but for some of them this will be the only recourse.”

The bishop is quite right to push the government on the question of asylum. There are several right-wing columnists who want to bomb Iraq, supposedly out of concern for the plight of Yazidis and Christians. I have no doubt that many of them would show far less concern about these people’s plight if they were to turn up claiming asylum in the UK.

If Baines had confined his letter to the asylum issue, it would be stronger and the press reports would be focusing on it. But his letter includes comments on the Middle East generally, as well as UK government policy on “Islamic extremism”. Predictably, much of the media have picked up on these questions rather than on asylum. Baines’ comments on these issues may well do more harm than good.

Baines writes:

“We do not seem to have a coherent or comprehensive approach to Islamist extremism as it is developing across the globe. Islamic State, Boko Haram and other groups represent particular manifestations of a global phenomenon.”

In this passage, “we” appears to mean the UK (in effect, the UK government). The examples that Baines gives are both manifestations of Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, talk of this “developing across the globe” plays down the many differences between types of extremism and the variety of contexts that have given rise to them. It also implies that Islamic extremists are somehow more of a problem than other violent and terrorist groups – from the Israeli government carrying out massacres in Gaza to Buddhist extremists burning mosques and churches in Sri Lanka.

The bishop unfortunately writes about Christians in an equally unhelpful way:

“The focus by both politicians and media on the plight of the Yezidis has been notable and admirable. However, there has been increasing silence about the plight of tens of thousands of Christians who have been displaced, driven from cities and homelands, and who face a bleak future. Despite appalling persecution, they seem to have fallen from consciousness, and I wonder why. Does your Government have a coherent response to the plight of these huge numbers of Christians whose plight appears to be less regarded than that of others?”

This, frankly, sounds petty. Baines is right to speak up for the plight of persecuted people and we all naturally tend to be more worried about the suffering of people with whom we can identify. But these comments add to the impression that Christians should be more worried about the persecution of other Christians than about the persecution of Yazidis, Shia Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Jews, atheists or anyone else. Let’s challenge persecution because it is wrong and because we are called to love all our neighbours as ourselves. Let’s not sound as if we think the rights of Christians matter more than the rights of others.

Early on in his letter, Baines says that “it is not clear what our broader global strategy is – particularly insofar as the military, political, economic and humanitarian demands interconnect”.

Again, the use of “our” identifies Baines – and by extension the rest of the Church and the British population – with Cameron’s government. Cameron’s foreign policy is, if not clear, then at least more coherent than the bishop suggests. It may seem inconsistent for politicians to wring their hands about Islamic extremists in Nigeria while preparing to bomb Islamic extremists in Iraq. It may appear absurd for Philip Hammond to condemn Russia for arming separatists in Ukraine while happily selling weapons to Israel, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

But while ministers’ words are inconsistent, their actions are not. The government’s foreign policy is based on the commercial and strategic interests of those who hold power in the UK and the class that they represent. This is a government thoroughly committed to promoting the concerns of the super-rich. This has after all the basic purpose of the Tory Party throughout its existence. While I’m sure that some ministers believe that they are acting out of humanitarian concern, their domestic policy has involved rapid redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. We cannot expect their foreign policy to be any more ethical.

The problem is not that UK government policy is incoherent. The problem is that it is wrong. It makes sense within the context of the values by which Cameron and his cronies abide. These are the same repugnant values of militarism and colonialism that led Cameron to back Blair in invading Iraq, triggering a downward spiral to sectarian civil war.

In his letter, Nick Baines follows the common practice of using the words “we” and “our” when he really means the UK government and its armed forces. This is unhelpful, as it implies that nationality is the primary aspect of our identity and that we are basically on the same side as those who hold power.

As Christians, our loyalty is to the Kingdom of God. I owe no more loyalty to David Cameron’s government than I do to ISIS.

Don’t bomb Iraq (again)

Posted on by symonhill

The stories from Iraq are getting worse. There is news of massacres and threatened massacres, reported deaths and abductions, the sufferings of Yazidis, Christians and the many Muslims who reject the message of ISIS. It makes me sad and angry in equal measure.

In 2003, the peace movement predicted that the US-led invasion of Iraq would lead to sectarian violence and possibly civil war. I take no delight in seeing our predictions fulfilled, and on an even worse scale than most of us expected.

But some of the militarists who spoke of “liberating” Iraq eleven years ago seem to have little self-awareness and no shame. The likes of Liam Fox are now popping up in the media to argue that UK forces should join US forces in bombing Iraq, supposedly out of humanitarian concern for the victims of ISIS.

These people were warned in 2003 that their actions would lead to disaster. The disaster has come, and they respond by advocating the very same thing that triggered the disaster in the first place. They want to go to war in Iraq again.

However many times the are proved wrong, the most naïve kind of militarists always believe that the solution to any problem is to drop bombs on somebody.

As usual, it is not clear who they would be bombing. We could debate whether it is ethical to secure one person’s freedom by taking the life of an aggressor. But this is not what is happening in Iraq. The US bombs will kill civilians just as surely as they will kill ISIS fighters. Warfare has never been about killing aggressors. At most it involves killing people who are the same nationality, the same religion or simply in the same place as an aggressor.

Every civilian killed by a US bomb will give ISIS another argument with which to appeal to potential supporters. The very existence of US bombing will help this vicious gang of fundamentalists to present themselves as the true defenders of the Iraqi people. ISIS can be defeated only if its support is undermined, yet Obama and his allies are acting in a way that can only increase its popularity.

I respect the fact that many supporters of the bombing are motivated by a genuine horror at the ISIS butchery and an urge to do anything to stop it. As some have said to me on Twitter, “We must do something”. But responding to this feeling by bombing Iraq again would be like seeing a house on fire and pouring petrol on the flames – on the grounds that you had to do something.

While I respect the humanitarian motivations of some supporters of bombing, I find it difficult to take such claims seriously when they come from politicians and commentators who would never apply the same principles in other areas. The behaviour of ISIS is horrific, but it is sadly not unique. The vicious fighting between Christians and Muslims in the Central African Republic has rarely made headlines in the UK, despite the atrocities committed by both sides. The kidnapping of schoolgirls in Nigeria went from being a global outrage to forgotten news in a matter of days, with the girls no more free when they disappeared from the headlines than they were when they disappeared from their classrooms.

The Israeli government and its army have massacred hundreds of innocent civilians in Gaza. The Tory MPs and columnists who want to save the Yazidi from the terrorists of IS are quite happy for the UK to continue to license weapons sales to the terrorists of the Israeli government – and to the regime of Saudi Arabia, whose ideology is hardly a million miles from the views of IS.

Indeed, the UK government sold weapons to Saddam, then helped the US government to remove him and sold weapons to the regime they put in his place. As ISIS have captured weapons belonging to the Iraqi government, there is a good chance they are using some British-made weapons. British ministers now look set to sell weapons to Kurdish troops so that they can use them against the British weapons held by ISIS troops, who have taken them from a government supplied with arms by the UK after the US and UK went to war with the regime that they had previously armed. In this context, it is difficult to regard any supply of weapons as a moral and humanitarian act.

Imagine if the Iranian government were to bomb Israel, saying it was doing so to save the innocent people of Gaza from being massacred. This is substantially the same argument as the US government makes when it justifies bombing Iraq with talk of saving innocent Iraqi Christians. If the two arguments seem different, it is only because we are used to seeing actions by the US and UK governments as inherently liberal and humanitarian. This is not how they are seen in much of the world.

I do not have any easy answers to the dangers of ISIS in Iraq. I do not have solutions to offer with a promise that I can save the enemies of ISIS from being massacred. The cheap answers and supposed solutions are provided by militarists who believe that violence can save us from violence. Their promises are empty, although no amount of evidence will stop them repeating them.

It is odd that pacifists are so often accused of being naïve, when it is militarists who repeatedly offer the same response, no matter how many times it fails. Someone asked me a few days ago if the situation in Iraq means that pacifism is no longer credible. On the contrary, the situation in Iraq means – sadly – that the warnings of pacifists have been proved right. It is not pacifism that has been discredited, but militarism.

Ten better ways to honour the dead of World War One

Posted on by symonhill

The British establishment, like much of the country, has seemed quite confused about how to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.

I’m pleased to say that William Windsor last week spoke of the “power of reconciliation” to an audience that included the presidents of Germany and Austria. He unfortunately undermined his own words by saying, “We salute those who died to give us our freedom”. Freedom in Britain was suppressed, not enhanced, as a result of the first world war.

David Cameron speaks of honouring the dead while continuing to trade arms around the world and pouring billions into nuclear weapons. Many people turned off their lights for an hour at 10pm on 4th August. I respect that many of them were truly honouring the millions killed in war, but I did not join in with this is activity, backed as it was a by a hypocritical pro-war establishment.

So I have some suggestions for better ways of honouring the victims of World War One. Some may appeal to you more than others and I appreciate that many of them are focused on the UK. However, I hope they help. Please feel free to suggest others!

1.  To remember the thousands of WW1 soldiers who were under 18 (the youngest known to have died was 14), sign this petition against the recruitment of under-18s in to the UK army. The UK is the only country in Europe to recruit 16-year-olds into its armed forces. Although they are not sent to the front line before turning 18, they are committed to staying in the army until they are 22, bound by an agreement they made before becoming legal adults.

2.  Wear a white poppy, to remember the victims of all wars – people of all nationalities, including both civilians and soldiers.

3.  Honour those who resisted the power of the arms trade, which fuelled WW1 (the Austrian fleet was supplied by Vickers, a British arms company whose shareholders included the UK’s Under-Secretary for War, and which is now part of BAE Systems). Sign an email to the Foreign Secretary calling for an end to UK’s arms exports to Israel.

4.  Remember the conscientious objectors imprisoned and sometimes tortured for refusing to fight. You can send a message of support to one or more of the many conscientious objectors in prison around the world today. War Resisters International keep a database of Prisoners for Peace.

5.  Honour the victims of war by working to prevent future wars. Join Action AWE in taking nonviolent action at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Berkshire in the run-up to the general election.

6.  Learn about those who said “no” to the war by reading the White Feather Diaries, an online storytelling project about the lives and struggles of five Quakers during WW1 (I must declare an interest here, as I’ve been involved in editing it).

7.  Help to prevent war by understanding its causes. Read about the role of the arms trade in WW1. You can invite a speaker on the issue to your church, mosque, synagogue, school, university, union branch or other group.

8.  Honour those who were pressurised into joining up by resisting attempts to militarise young people today. You can support the Military Out of Schools campaign, run by Forces Watch.

9.  If you’re a school student, teacher, parent/carer – or know someone who is – suggest the use of Quaker resources for schools on conscientious objectors in WW1, ensuring a different side of the story gets heard and that the complexity of WW1 is respected.

10. Pray for all those affected by war today.

Remembering the people who resisted World War One

Posted on by symonhill

A week today (on 28 July), it will be 100 years since World War One began. Two weeks today (on 4 August), it will be 100 years since the UK entered the war.

Amidst all the many discussions of this centenary, there has been relatively little discussion about the people who opposed World War One and campaigned against it. Yet the leading anti-war group of the time – the No-Conscription Fellowship – had 100,000 subscribers at its height. There were at least 16,000 conscientious objectors (far more than the government expected), of whom over 6,000 went to prison. Other peace activists were imprisoned under laws restricting criticism of the war.

For the last few months I’ve spent lots of time researching the peace activists of World War One. It has been a real privilege to spend time reading diaries, memoirs and letters from prison, many of them unpublished. Most of this work has been because I was hired by Quakers in Britain to edit the White Feather Diaries, an online storytelling project exploring the lives and dilemmas of five pacifists from the time.

The White Feather Diaries will go online on 4 August.

I will also be teaching a course on the World War One peace movement for the Workers’ Educational Association in Richmond (in London). It will begin in September and run on Tuesday afternoons. And I’ll be writing about these issues in various places over the coming weeks and, I hope, years. Many thanks to everyone who has encouraged and questioned me and is continuing to do so. Watch this space!

We need a right to live, not a right to die

Posted on by symonhill

A friend of mine who uses a wheelchair was recently approached by a stranger who crossed over the road to talk to her. Without knowing anything about her, he told her that he supported her right to die with dignity through assisted suicide. She told him that she was more concerned with her right to live than her right to die.

This man’s clear implication was that any disabled person would want to die. The assumption that a disabled person’s life is not worth living lies only slightly below the surface of the debate on the Assisted Dying Bill, presented in the House of Lords today.

In the midst of depression some years ago, I contemplated suicide several times. I am more grateful than I can say that I never acted on those thoughts and that I have them no longer. I am grateful to the friends who helped to dissuade me. Today I am wondering whether, if I had also had a physical illness, some of them would have encouraged me to kill myself.

I am not suggesting that all supporters of the Assisted Dying Bill take this attitude. However, the debate in the media is going ahead with very little reference to the realities of life for the thousands of disabled people thrown into poverty and isolation by the abolition of Disability Living Allowance, the end of the Independent Living Fund, the bedroom tax, the biased Atos assessments, the cuts to Disabled Students’ Allowance and the removal of hundreds of local disability services following cuts to local authority budgets.

It is well documented that some of these cuts have already led to deaths. They will lead to more. There is something horrifically ironic about Parliament debating the right of disabled people to die (if they choose to do so) when they have recently approved measures that have led to disabled people dying when they have not chosen to do so.

Middle class columnists in both right-wing and left-wing newspapers are demanding their right to die in articles that attribute the opposition to narrow-minded religious leaders. You would never guess from these columns that most disability rights campaigners are against this bill.

The campaign group Not Dead Yet – formed by disabled people opposed to euthanasia – points out that “Opposition to assisted dying is not confined to the medical profession and religious groups. Most importantly, it includes the very people whom would be most affected by any change in legislation.”

Significantly, not one disabled people’s organisation is backing assisted dying.

Today’s Times lists supporters and opponents of the bill. Thankfully, they do list “disabled campaigners” amongst the bill’s opponents, but they are last on the list, after “doctors”, “religious figures” and “party leaders”. Are the views of disabled people not more important than that?

The media have focused on the cases of terminally ill individuals who have wanted the right to assisted suicide. I have no wish to judge these people. I cannot even begin to imagine what they are going through. If they are certain that they wish to kill themselves, it would of course be wrong to treat their relatives as out-and-out murderers for helping them to do so. This is very different from arguing that this should be legal, let alone that mechanisms should be set up to kill such people in hospitals or similar settings with state approval.

We are not debating an abstract ethical question in a university seminar. We are discussing real ethics in a real context. I will not support assisted dying when there is a good chance that people might choose it because they cannot cope with physical or mental pain that could be alleviated by treatment or services that are denied to them by a state that slashes services for the most vulnerable while ploughing billions into weapons.

There are some on the left who oppose the government’s cuts but make no mention of them when they declare their support for assisted dying. Then again, there is a hideous consistency in the views of former archbishop George Carey, who strongly backs welfare cuts and now wants those who suffer from them to be allowed to die.

The few ministers who back assisted dying include care minister Norman Lamb, who has colluded with cuts and presided over growing poverty amongst disabled people. It is also supported by Anna Soubry, a “defence” minister whose job involves maintaining a military system that had killed thousands of innocent people in recent years and has the potential to kill millions more.

There are those who will dismiss my argument against the Assisted Dying Bill on the ground that I am religious. Thankfully, most non-religious people are not this prejudiced. My position is shared by many people who do not share my religion. For me, it is my Christian faith that leads me to support equality and human rights, but these principles are supported equally strongly by others. My faith also leads me to believe that society should share its resources and give to each according to their need.

I will never support any proposal based on the idea that one person’s life is worth less than another’s, or that offers death as an alternative to a decent welfare state.