Cheer Rochdale, not Galloway

Posted on by symonhill

I’m giving three cheers for the people of Rochdale for having voted for a left-wing candidate standing on an anti-war ticket. I’m offering no cheers for George Galloway, who is sadly the candidate in question.

In the last few weeks, the people of Rochdale might be wondering what they have done to deserve the choice of candidates with which they were faced. The Labour candidate was disowned by his own party for antisemitic comments. This was shortly after the Green candidate had been disowned by his own party for Islamophobic comments.

Other options included two former Labour MPs standing for different parties: Galloway was standing for the Workers’ Party of Britain (the latest version of the George Galloway Party). The far-right Reform Party (the current incarnation of the Nigel Farage Party) was represented by former Labour MP Simon Danzcuk, who previously had to leave Parliament after sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl.

The Conservative candidate was, of course, standing on a platform of supporting the most incompetent government in living memory.

It would be entirely understandable if the people of Rochdale had opted for the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate on the grounds that he seemed a more serious option than most of his opponents.

By electing a candidate who stood primarily on a platform of opposing the war in Gaza, people in Rochdale have shown the strength of anti-war feeling among large parts of the British population, and disproved the common claim that people vote only on narrow domestic issues.

The fact that a local independent candidate came second has clearly taken the London-based media by surprise, given their tendency to overlook local and regional differences and see everything from the perspective of Westminster.

Between them, the three “main” parties scored only 26.7%. It is impossible to know what would have happened if the Labour candidate had retained the party’s support and fought an effective campaign. It is possible that Labour may have won. But looking at the size of Galloway’s victory last night, I find it hard to believe that a Labour candidate would have beaten him if that candidate had not departed from Keir Starmer’s position on Gaza.

One lesson to take away from Rochdale is that independent candidates and alternative parties are on the march.

This is encouraging. I just wish it was someone other than George Galloway who had benefited from it.

In 2020, Galloway described me as a “hero”, for taking nonviolent direct action against the arms trade. In 2022, he mocked me and then blocked me on Twitter after I encouraged him to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as opposing NATO.

The problem with Galloway is not simply that he is a supporter of homophoba and transphobia, and increasingly anti-immigration. It is also that he is not really anti-war.

I share Galloway’s opposition to the murderous Israeli attacks on Gaza and to the nuclear-armed expansionist alliance that is NATO. Unike Galloway, I also oppose other warmongers, including Vladimir Putin and Hamas.

When Ukraine was invaded, I was working as Campaigns Manager of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), Britain’s leading pacifist organisation. We condemned Putin’s invasion and kept in touch with our comrades in the Russian Movement of Conscientious Objectors, as well as other Russian peace activists and the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. We also criticised the UK and US governments’ cynical use of the invasion to expand NATO power, and their resistance to peace talks.

Despite this, we received abusive messages from angry militarists accusing us of being Putin apologists. Meanwhile, actual Putin apologists were sending us angry messages accusing us of supporting NATO. People who think that war solves problems often seem unable to understand that anyone might oppose all militarism and not support any armed forces on any side.

While this is the PPU’s usual approach, we were pleased that the Stop the War Coalition also clearly and repeatedly condemned Putin’s invasion as well as NATO. While we would expect Galloway to disagree with the PPU, he also seems to have fallen out with the Stop the War Coalition.

Galloway has not issued a word of condemnation for Putin’s aggression. Shortly after Galloway’s election in Rochdale this morning, his deputy party leader Chris Williamson refused in an interview to condemn the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on 7th October.

Galloway and Williamson are not anti-war. They are pro-war – it’s just they’re on a different side to the one that the British establishment expect us all to support.

I think the people of Rochdale were right to vote for an apparently anti-war MP. Hopefully they will replace him with an actual anti-war MP at the next election.

Sunak says democracy is under threat – but it’s people like him who are threatening it

Posted on by symonhill

Rishi Sunak thinks that democracy is under threat in the UK. I agree with him. The difference is that I think it’s under threat from people such as Rishi Sunak and he seems to think it’s under threat from people like me. 

In the last few years, successive UK governments have eroded fundamental civil liberties and human rights, imposing greater restrictions on peaceful protest than have been seen in Britain since the Second World War.

The police have been allowed to exceed even these powers with virtually no consequences. My personal experience of this reality came with my unlawful arrest by Thames Valley Police when I objected to the proclamation of Charles Windsor as king in September 2022. Many others have faced far worse consequences. 

But now, Sunak and his allies in the right-wing media want to restrict the right to protest even further. They are justifying this assault on democracy by claiming that they are doing it to protect democracy. 

Sunak claims that there is a “growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule”.

I find it difficult to believe that such a claim could be taken seriously by many people at all, let alone that there is a “consensus” about it. Sunak’s assertion makes about as much sense as Suella Braverman’s fantasy statement that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now” (I’m pretty sure the Tories are still in charge, though of course some of them are indeed extremists and anti-Semites).

According to Sunak, the threat of mob rule comes from left-wing protests. In recent days, a number of ministers have attacked the overwhelmingly peaceful anti-war marches that have been regularly taking place against the Israeli forces’ murderous assaults on the people of Gaza. Home Secretary James Cleverley says that protests should stop because protesters have “made their point“. He has not suggested that Israeli forces could stop killing children because they have made their point. I would much rather not be spending time protesting against the slaughter of innocent people. The need to do so will end only when the slaughter ends. 

Parts of the media are whipping up talk of the fear and threats faced by MPs. I strongly oppose death threats to anyone. Having received quite a few of them myself over the years, I sympathise with MPs who receive a lot more and who genuinely fear for their safety. But banning protests will not make them any safer.

Six MPs have been killed in the UK in the last century – a much lower number than in some countries, but still outrageous.

The first four were killed by Irish Republicans. Of the most recent two, David Amess was killed by an Islamic fundamentalist and Jo Cox by a far-right white supremacist. Both these murders were horrific and any humane person rightly condemns them. Neither Cox nor Amess would have been saved by restricting rights to protest.

Some papers have focused on the very small number of protests that have taken place outside MPs’ homes. I agree that protesting at people’s homes is generally wrong – especially if there are children there, as they may be frightened and are not to blame for their parents’ actions. The reality is that demonstrations at politicians’ homes are relatively rare and usually small-scale.

I suspect that most of the commentators calling for a crackdown on protests know this. But talking them up diverts attention from the reality of peaceful and diverse groups of people who are marching every week against violence. 

We already have laws to deal with the vile instances of antisemitism that have increased since October. Such outrages are in no way representative of the anti-war marches that have brought together Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists and many others to oppose the Israeli government’s military aggression. The vast majority of them also oppose Hamas’ aggression. 

The only major violent demonstration in central London in recent months was not an anti-war protest but was in effect a pro-war protest. Far-right activists fought with the police near the Cenotaph, which they claimed they had come to “protect” from people protesting against the war in Gaza on Armstice Day. Their fury had effectively been whipped up by the likes of Sunak, Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, who all must have known that in reality the anti-war march was going nowhere near the Cenotaph.

Democracy is not simply about walking into a polling station every five years and then shutting up until you’re allowed to vote again. Sunak apparently sees no irony in talking of democracy despite having been elected as Prime Minister only by the Conservative Party, and appointed to the post by a monarch elected by nobody at all. Under First-Past-the-Post, a winning party never receives more than half the votes, but is declared to have been elected democratically. 

Nonetheless, we are lucky to have more elements of democracy in the UK than can be found in much of the world. The democracy we have – however limited – is something to celebrate.

We have it not because the rich and powerful generously handed it down to us. The only reason we have any democracy at all is that our ancestors went out onto the streets and campaigned for it. Chartists, Levellers, women’s suffrage campaigners and others struggled and in some cases died for the elements of democracy that we now enjoy. It is not Sunak and the Daily Mail, but people marching against war in Gaza, who stand in the tradition of such people. 

In a country in which the super-rich have vastly disproportionate power, wealthy individuals such as Rishi Sunak are the last people likely to support taking democracy further. We can expect no help from them in working towards real democracy, in which we would have democratic control of local communities and democratic control of workplaces. 

Sunak’s government sells arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia and suppresses peaceful protest. Anti-war demonstrators are exercising their rights to resist war with active nonviolence. One side in this argument is anti-violence and pro-democracy. And Sunak is on the other side. 

Calls for conscription follow years of rising militarism in the UK

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote the following article for the Morning Star, who published it in today’s issue.

The last week has seen a flood of headlines about a possible war with Russia — and the chances of military conscription in Britain.

Twenty years ago, calls to “bring back national service” seemed to be confined to right-wing pub bores and retired colonels writing angry letters to the Telegraph. So what has changed?

Well, relations between the British and Russian governments have got worse. But that cannot explain it. In the last two decades, British governments have subserviently followed the US in sending troops to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria without calls to introduce conscription.

Nor would war with Russia necessarily involve lots of troops. Indeed, given that it would be a war between nuclear-armed powers, the whole thing might be over in a matter of days — or hours.

No, what has changed is the place of militarism in everyday life in Britain.

In 2003, Tony Blair sent troops to help the US to invade Iraq without the support of the majority of the British population. In 2006, British troop numbers in Afghanistan were increased — and support for their presence declined. In September 2006, British public support for keeping British troops in Afghanistan reached a low of 31 per cent in a BBC/ICM poll.

That same year, the then chief of the general staff (head of the army), Richard Dannatt, wrote to a defence minister about the “single biggest danger” facing British troops.

What was this danger? The Taliban? The Afghan population? The unpredictability of Blair’s US allies?

It was none of these. Dannatt wrote, “Losing popular support at home is the single biggest danger to our chances of success in our current operations.”

So according to the head of the army, the biggest threat to the British army was the British people. So much for the idea that the armed forces protect the British public.

Dannatt and his allies launched what amounted to a public campaign to drive up support for armed force. In October 2006, Dannatt gave an interview to the Daily Mail arguing that the “military covenant” between the armed forces and the public had broken down.

The term “military covenant” was soon commonplace, with militarist commentators demanding that the public should “honour” it. Some maintained that the military covenant dated back 200 years.

In reality, the first recorded use of the term “military covenant” was in an army document published in the year 2000. Even Dannatt later admitted that the concept was “the brainchild of a handful of officers.”

Dannatt broke the longstanding convention that British military leaders should not comment publicly on government policy. There followed a “militarisation offensive” — to use the term employed by Paul Dixon of Birkbeck College, University of London.

The following years saw the introduction of Armed Forces Day and local councils signing the “armed forces covenant.” The Cameron-Clegg government stepped things up with multimillion pound funding for new military cadet units even as other youth services faced swingeing cuts. Arms company BAE Systems began running science and technology roadshows in schools with the RAF.

The Peace Pledge Union describes this situation as “everyday militarism”.

This is the context in which the current Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, said on 24th January that the UK government should “mobilise the nation” for a possible war with Russia.

Sanders suggested a “citizens’ army.” Despite the headlines, he did not explicitly call for conscription. He seems to have some idea of civilian volunteers ready to leap into action if war breaks out with Russia. It is difficult not to think of Dad’s Army. Whether they would have time to leap into action before much of the world is obliterated with nuclear weapons is not a question that Sanders raised.

Assorted politicians, commentators, armchair generals and actual generals have piled into the debate. It reached its most absurd moment when Boris Johnson declared his willingness to be conscripted. He is 59 and way over any likely conscription age. Johnson’s offer is therefore as unlikely to be fulfilled as most of his other promises.

Conscription in Britain still seems unlikely in the immediate future. Nonetheless, I think we should be worried — for three reasons.

Firstly, ministers and generals are openly talking up war with Russia with ever-increasing enthusiasm. Imagine the head of the Russian army urging Vladimir Putin to “mobilise the nation” for war with Britain. Sanders’s words do not sound too different.

There is relatively little ideological difference between Putin and most Nato governments. As before the first world war, we have capitalist governments ramping up military tension, with both sides claiming to be acting defensively and demanding their populations follow them.

Secondly, we have given up any pretence that military leaders cannot comment on policy. Their influence is on public display and is at odds with democracy. Such influence has contributed to a situation in which the British government has the fourth-highest military expenditure in the world.

Thirdly, the last week has made clear where everyday militarism leads. Armed Forces Day, “military covenants,” multiple increases in cadet forces — it has all been leading in this direction.

A society in which generals make policy speeches on TV, politicians consider a “citizens’ army” and we are told to be ready to go and fight other working-class people because their government has a quarrel with ours. And at the same time, new draconian anti-protest laws make it all harder to resist. It is a militarist’s dream.

Many of us would be conscientious objectors if conscription were introduced. Let’s not wait until then. Let’s conscientiously object to plans for war and to wars already going on. Let’s conscientiously object to military spending and arms sales.

Let’s conscientiously object to everyday militarism, and to the dangerous lie that British troops fight for the British people. And let’s stand in solidarity with conscientious objectors in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and everywhere else.

We don’t need a “citizens’ army.” We need citizens’ resistance to war and militarism — in Britain, in Russia and around the world.

The pope’s right: of course sex is a gift from God

Posted on by symonhill

“Thou shalt have rumpy-pumpy” declared the front page of the Daily Star last week, along with a picture of Pope Francis. They returned to the theme on the front page yesterday.

Their story concerned the pope’s comments that sex is a gift from God (does anyone who is not a tabloid journalist actually refer to sex as “rumpy-pumpy”?). This really should not be news. Many church leaders have been saying for years – and in some cases centuries – that sex is a sacred gift.

Admittedly, the pope has made the comments in the context of a controversy over a book written by a Roman Catholic cardinal, which makes it a bit more newsworthy. However, I doubt the Daily Star is especially interested in internal Catholic squabbles. What really makes it newsworthy is the reality that mamy readers will find it surprising, because so many people expect Christians to be negative about sex.

As a Christian, I think we’ve only got oursevles to blame for this perception. The Christians who tend to speak loudest in public and media debates are those who want to condemn same-sex relationships and sex outside marriage. If pushed, the tend to say that sex is a gift from God if rightly used, but such additional comments are rarely much heard. Those Christians who disagree with them have rarely done a good job of speaking up as clearly as we should do.

The Bible is positive about sex. Of course there are a few more negative attitudes in certain parts of it – it’s a vast collection of books – but I maintain that the Bible is on the whole sex-positive (I recommend the Song of Songs, an erotic poem found in the middle of the Bible). There’s not space here to go into debates about particular biblical passages (though I readily do so elsewhere!), but I suggest that sex-negative interpretations of scripture are influenced by centuries of negative attitudes that did not really begin until some time after the Bible was written.

Chrisitanity in western Europe really became negative about sex from around the fourth century onwards. Augustine of Hippo developed the doctrine of Original Sin, arguing that sin is passsed on by sex and that babies are born guilty. This doctrine was rejected by some (but sadly not all) Protestants from the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century.

It’s notable that Augustine was writing shortly after the Roman Empire had effectively stifled Christianity by domesticating it and turning it into the imperial religion. Wheras Christian theologians had previously challenged violence and imperial rule, they began instead to defend them. Augustine himself played a major role in developing Just War Theory, which replaced early Christian nonviolence.

As Christianity moved from challenging empire to upholding it, the focus of discussions about sin moved from violence, oppression and poverty to concern for individuals’ sexual behaviours. For Christians, being negative about sex has often gone along with being positive about power, wealth and war.

So for left-wing and inclusive Christians today, positivity about sex shold naturally go along with seeking to demonstrate the solidarity with the marginalised that is displayed in the New Testament.

I am not of course saying that we should support all sex! Christians should be at the forefront of condemning sexual abuse, sexual violence, violations of consent and sex entered into for selfish reasons or with disrespect for others. These things are sinful. They are sinful not because they involve sex, but because they involve the intrusion of sins such as violence and inequality into what should be loving and Godly activity.

So let’s get out there and start championing the good things about sex. Just as long as we don’t have to call it “rumpy-pumpy”.

A knightood for Bates would undermine what the sub-postmasters have fought for

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote this article for the ‘i’ paper, who published it online on 11th January, with a shorter version in the print edition the next day.

The statistics are shocking enough – more than 700 innocent sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted in the Horizon IT scandal – but it is the personal horror stories that really hit home. Seema Misra in Ashford, sentenced to prison while pregnant, who gave birth wearing an electronic tag. Sathyan Shiju in London, who tried to take his own life after being accused of stealing £20,000. Christopher Head in Newcastle, unable to secure another job after being sacked and told to pay £88,000 that he did not have.

It would be an insult to suggest that any amount of money could adequately compensate these people.

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak seems to be practising government by TV drama, talking seriously about compensation only since the ITV broadcast of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which depicted former sub-postmaster Alan Bates decades-long fight to expose the Horizon system scandal.

Now there are calls to give Alan Bates a knighthood. He and the others who challenged these outrageous convictions should certainly be celebrated, but the calls for an honour will do nothing to stop something like this from happening again. It just papers over the cracks.

There is a long tradition of using titles and honours to buy people off, or as an easy way to superficially endorse a popular person or cause. The reverse is also true. Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells has returned her CBE. She is no longer a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

It has been reported that Vennells earned over £400,000 in her final year at the head of the Post Office. This is not true. She was paid over £400,000, whether she earned it is a different question. It is perhaps easier to return a CBE than to pay back an unimaginably large salary. It is also much easier for the Government to give Mr Bates a knighthood than to address the root causes of the problem.

It would also seem that Alan Bates, too, believes this. Speaking about turning down an OBE, he told Good Morning Britain last week: “It would have been a slap in the face to the rest of the group because Paula Vennells, the CEO for many years of Post Office, received a CBE for her services to Post Office. Well, what service has she actually done?”

Worryingly, the highest honour that some people can imagine is to kneel before an hereditary head of state and be tapped with a weapon. It is a ceremony that upholds and entrenches inequality. The irony is that inequality was one of the causes of the Post Office scandal in the first place.

True, the initial cause was a faulty computer system. When one or two sub-postmasters were convicted, senior managers may have assumed they were indeed guilty. But when the number of convictions rose to the hundreds, why did the people in charge not ask questions. Did they really think it likely that 700 sub-postmasters were all simultaneously corrupt?

Part of the answer has been revealed by whistleblowers and Freedom of Information requests. In a document from 2008, Post Office investigators used a racial slur to describe suspects. An Indian sub-postmaster has also revealed that a member of Post Office staff had said that “all the Indians” were defrauding the Post Office. Such comments go beyond unconscious bias. They represent out-and-out up-front racism.

The failure of senior people at the Post Office to question the convictions starkly demonstrates another problem rooted in inequality: the tendency of senior people not to trust their workers or to listen to more junior people. In a hierarchical business, what chance did workers on the ground have of influencing policy?

Until we have democratic, egalitarian workplaces based around mutual respect and co-operation, injustices such as the Horizon scandal will continue. Instead of focusing on knighthoods and CBEs, the best way to honour the victims of the Post Office scandal is to change the way we work.

Justin Welby conflates submission to the state with the service of God

Posted on by symonhill

The Archbishop of Canterbury has used his New Year’s Day message to promote militarism and armed force even while Palestinian Christians continue to criticise his position on Gaza and Israel.

Justin Welby’s message comes only days after two Christian pacifists were arrested for pouring fake blood on the gates of Downing Street in protest at the UK government’s complicity in genocide in Gaza.

There are times when I gladly defend Justin Welby. I think he does a better job than many Archbishops of Canterbury have done – though I admit that’s a low bar. He has spoken out about poverty and the rights of refugees. Sadly, when it comes to armed force and monarchy, he is fully in tune with the values of the establishment.

Welby began his New Year message by talking about Charles Windsor’s coronation last year. He said that “our” military were at “the centre of the celebrations”.

This of course is true – monarchy has always been closely tied to militarism. However, Welby claims that the armed forces had such a major role because:

“… they, like many, many others in the country, embodied the theme of the coronation: service”.

Membership of the armed forces is often spoken of in terms of “military service”. The question that Welby did not address was who or what the armed forces are serving.

In a tweet yesterday, Welby went so far as to apparently equate military service with the sacrificial life of Jesus. He wrote:

“Going to @RAFBrizeNorton to film my New Year Message, I met servicemen and women there who embody the spirit of service, following the example of Jesus, who came ‘not to be served, but to serve’ (Matthew 20,28).”

This equation of two very different lifestyles is both outrageous and dangerous. Jesus embodied nonviolent resistance – even in the face of the brutal Roman Empire, which he mocked, challenged and resisted but did not take up arms against.

Whatever view you take of the ethics of violence, it is surely obvious that not everyone who is dedicated to “service” is serving the same person or the same thing. But early in his New Year message, Welby said:

“They [armed forces personnel] promised to be faithful, and to observe and obey all orders.. .Forces personnel are living out that oath every day.”

This is surely different to Jesus’ example of serving God and his neighbours. Members of the armed forces are obliged to obey orders given in the monarch’s name by their officers and NCOs.

However well-intentioned individual armed forces personnel may be (and I don’t doubt that many of them are), they are required to serve the state, not God or humanity. They must obey orders without reference to their own conscience or faith. Recent years have seen a string of British armed forces personnel imprisoned for refusing orders that go against their conscience. Examples include Michael Lyons, Joe Glenton and Malcolm Kendall-Smith.

I don’t for a moment claim to be a better Christian than those Christians who join the armed forces. I frequently fail to follow Jesus’ teachings, to love my neighbour as myself and to seek God’s guidance. I cannot begin to understand how seeking to follow Jesus is any way compatible with joining an organisation – any organisation – whose members are required to obey orders without question, for no authority should trump our loyalty to the Kingdom of God.

The rest of Welby’s four-and-a-half-minute message is little more than a puff piece for the UK armed forces. The archbishop rightly champions their work providing humanitarian relief, but fails to point out that this is not their central purpose or to ask why this cannot be done by a civilian force. In an outrageously misleading moment, Welby claimed that British troops are:

“…supporting civilians in the midst of conflict, in places like the Middle East”.

Welby must surely know that UK armed forces provide military training and support to the forces of countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, which are engaged in the systematic killing of civilians (in Palestine and in Yemen respectively).

Far from supporting civilians in the Middle East, the UK government’s troops are complicit in the killing of civilians in the Middle East.

Thankfully, Welby spoke about “the human cost of war”. He added:

“Jesus Christ tells us to stand with those suffering because of war, and to seek to make peace. And we trust in God, who promises peace with justice.”

I agree with Welby on that one. That’s precisely why I cannot share his enthusiasm for an organisation that does not make peace but perpetuates and justifies war.

The archbishop seems to be conflating service of God with service of the state and the monarch.

Welby’s words are likely to cause further dismay for Palestinian Christians, who have been highly critical of the failure of the leaders of many western churches – including the Church of England – to call for an immediate ceasefire and to condemn genocide in Gaza. Many church leaders have rightly condemned Hamas’ vile attack on Israeli civilians on 7 October, but have waffled or made excuses instead of condemning Israeli forces’ equally vile killing of Palestinian civilians.

Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, challenged church leaders internationally in his Christmas sermon, accusing them of providing “theological cover” for genocide and thus “compromising the credibility of our gospel message”. He insists that “Jesus is under the rubble in Gaza”.

Three days before Welby’s New Year message was broadcast, two British Christians were arrested in Downing Street. Virginia Moffatt and Chris Cole poured fake blood over the gates in protest against the UK government’s military and political support for Israeli forces. They were arrested.

I have been honoured to campaign alongside Virginia and Chris in the past. As it happens, they are both Catholics. They frequently act alongside other Christian pacifists from different traditions, as well as with many other war resisters of various faiths and none. If Jesus is under the rubble in Gaza, then Virginia and Chris were acting in solidarity with him.

The archbishop’s New Year message and the nonviolent action at the gates of Downing Street provide two very different examples of British Christian responses to war. I know which one of them reminds me more of Jesus and the prophets.

We need a referendum on the monarchy

Posted on by symonhill

Early in December, I wrote an article for the ‘i’ paper calling for a referendum on the monarchy. This followed weeks of arguments and revelations about Omid Scobie’s new book on the royal family. More importantly, it followed a poll showing declining support for the monarchy as an institution.

Although you can read the article on the ‘i’ paper’s website, I forgot to post a copy of it on here (I need to get bettter at remembering to do this!). The article is below.

One of the most frequently heard arguments for royalty is that they unite the country. Supporters of monarchy say the British public will rally behind a king or queen in a way they never will for a politician or political movement.

This is a bizarre claim for a family that cannot even keep themselves united, producing brothers so disunited that they feel the need to live in separate continents.

We have had another week of scandals about the personal feuds and jealousies of Britain’s favourite dysfunctional family. Amid all the gossip about the private lives of the super-privileged, the views of voters have rarely been mentioned.

So you might not have heard that opposition to the monarchy has reached a record high.

A Savanta poll has put support for retaining a monarchy at 52 per cent of the British population.This compares to 62 per cent in a YouGov poll only three months ago. The number backing an elected head of state now exceeds a third of the population, at 34 per cent (the remainder are “don’t knows”). Among adults under 35, supporters of monarchy are outnumbered by those wanting to elect a head of state, by 43 per cent to 38 per cent.

Royalists can of course point out that 52 per cent is still more than half. What they cannot reasonably claim is that the monarchy unites Britain.

It is impossible to hear the figure of 52 per cent without thinking of the Brexit referendum. In the wake of the vote, Leave voters emphasised that 52 per cent is a majority. Yet not even the world’s greatest optimist would claim that Brexit is an issue on which the British population is united.

This is why we need a referendum on the future of the monarchy.

On the surface, royalists have good grounds to welcome a referendum. Looking at the polls, they may well expect to win. They would have the backing of most of the media – including the sort of newspapers that could be relied on to launch vicious personal attacks on their opponents.

The problem for royalists in a referendum would be that both sides would be expected to be open to challenges and questions. But barring Harry and Meghan’s celebrity-style interviews, the Windsors almost never answer questions, let alone difficult ones. The Dutch translation of Omid Scobie’s book Endgame identified Charles Windsor and Kate Middleton as the two royals alleged to have made prejudiced comments about the appearance of Harry and Meghan’s son Archie. But they are not expected even to respond to this accusation. Whether or not the allegation is true, any other public figure would be expected to comment if accused of racism. Yet they can seemingly ignore it.

Such arrogance would be painfully on display in a referendum campaign. Andrew’s infamous Newsnight interview gives a clue as to how well royals might cope if they were subjected to serious questioning. Alternatively, they would hold themselves aloof from the debate and be seen to treat the rights of voters with contempt.

A referendum would expose the reality that monarchy and democracy don’t mix.

As pro-royal commentators rush to condemn Scobie and Endgame, the focus on family feuds risks missing the main point. Scobie’s premise is that this could be the “endgame” not just for Charles or William but for the British monarchy itself.

Scobie describes the royal family as “debilitatingly out-of-touch, even expendable, with an increasing percentage of the public”. That’s just in Britain. Countries such as Belize and Jamaica – where William and Kate travelled through the crowds standing up in a Land Rover like colonial conquerors – are likely to ditch the monarchy before Charles has got the throne warm.

In light of the latest revelations and polling figures, it’s time people in the UK were allowed to make a decision: do we want a system in which we bow down to our supposed superiors because of an accident of birth, or do we trust ourselves to run society together as equals?

How the Sunday Express accidentally celebrated an anti-war protester

Posted on by symonhill

Today’s Sunday Express has denounced “extremists from left and right” who protested in London yesterday, contrasting them with the “dignity” of people observing two minutes’ silence at the Cenotaph. But the photo they chose for their front page shows how mistaken they are in their assumptions about what protesters look like.

The paper illustrated the “dignity” of Remembrance with a picture of a medal-wearing vicar bowing his head at the Cenotaph. What they almost certainly did not realise was that the medal-wearing vicar in question attended the anti-war march calling for a ceasefire in Gaza after he left the Remembrance ceremony.

The man was Tim Daplyn, a Church of England priest in Bristol. Had they realised that he was an anti-war protester – with a history of climate activism – the Express would surely have attacked him, or at least ignored him, rather than used him to illustrate the “dignity” in which they claim to believe.

Along with the Daily Mail, the Daily Express spent last week warning that there could be “violence” at the Cenotaph, with anti-war protesters “dishonouring” Remembrance Day. When it came to it, it was the far-right counter-protesters who violently attacked police near the Cenotaph, thus dishonouring Remembrance Day.

It must have been difficult for certain editors to know how to respond to the violence that their newspapers had fuelled.

The Sunday Express went with the headline “Dignity and Dishonour”, adding, “As the nation remembers our war dead, extremists from the left and right march for hate”.

They thus equated a peaceful march of hundreds of thousands of people calling for a ceasefire with a group of far-right thugs attacking police officers. The anti-war protest was not a march of left-wing extremists. The small minority who voiced support for Hamas or anti-semitism were indeed disgusting; it is misleading to suggest they were representative. Nor as it happens are they “extremists from the left”: Hamas is a right-wing group.

One one side of the Sunday Express front page is a masked protester, on the other is a man in a clerical collar with medals pinned to his chest, bowing his head. He looks exactly like the sort of person of whom the right-wing press would normally approve.

But as soon as I looked at the front pages this morning, I noticed that the man in question was wearing a white poppy as well as a red one. The Express may have overlooked this: they are usually very negative about white poppies (and the Mail attacked people wearing white poppies at Saturday’s march).

When I posted about this on Twitter, I received a response from Ed Bridges, who I know through the Peace Pledge Union. He directed me to a BBC News clip interviewing the man in question – who explained why he was going from the Cenotaph to the anti-war march.

With a bit more digging – and some much-appreciated help from a few people on social media – I discovered that the gentleman’s name is Tim Daplyn and he is a Church of England priest in Bristol. He is a British army veteran who was stationed in Northern Ireland.

He is also a member of Christian Climate Action and has protested alongside Greta Thunberg.

He told the BBC, “It’s been termed a pro-Palestinian demonstration, I think it’s a pro-peace demonstration.”

He added, “That is what it’s all about – old soldiers on Armstice Day calling for armstice. And there can’t be anything wrong with that… So much was got wrong in the past, in past conflicts and past warfare. So much is going wrong today. It’s up to us, and we owe it to those who went before, that we do better.”

You can watch Tim Daplyn’s BBC interview here.

Given how much effort the Express puts into smearing anti-war protesters, climate protesters and left-wingers generally, it might well be that their own prejudices led them to assume that protesters are scruffy people in hoods or masks. Their prejudices seem to have backfired on them. Sometimes protesters are medal-wearing vicars.

Armistice Day is the perfect time to call for a ceasefire in Gaza

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote this article for the ‘i’ newspaper, who published it on Monday 6 November 2023. The following is a slightly longer version of the article.

In Dr Strangelove, a satirical film about the Cold War, the US President objects when a brawl breaks out in a government conference room. “You can’t fight in here!” he shouts. “This is the war room!”.

I was reminded of this scene when Rishi Sunak criticised plans to hold a march on 11 November calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel. The Prime Minister could perhaps have tweeted, “You can’t campaign for an armistice! It’s Armistice Day!”

What’s most remarkable about this controversy over Remembrance Day is how little remembering is involved. We are in the middle of a festival of forgetting. Sunak has perhaps forgotten that the original message of Armistice Day ceremonies after the First World War was “Never Again”.

The PM accused organisers of the pro-Palestinian protest of being disrespectful and provocative, but marching for a ceasefire is not just compatible with Remembrance Day. It is exactly the right day on which to campaign for peace. We can honour the victims of war by working to prevent war in the present and future.

If Sunak and his allies were to study history a bit more, they might remember what happened after Armistice Day in 1918. The Treaty of Versailles impoverished millions of people in Germany. British and French rulers drew lines on maps of the Middle East with little regard for the views of inhabitants. In 1922, British veterans protested against poverty by marching past the Cenotaph on Armistice Day with pawn tickets pinned to their jackets instead of medals.

The failure to learn from war in 1918 prepared the way for further conflict, violence and poverty. Now ministers talk of “respecting” Remembrance Day while selling weapons around the world – including to Israeli forces killing thousands of children in Gaza, committing atrocities as vile as Hamas’s murder of Israeli civilians.

It would be generous to say that Sunak and his allies have forgotten the purpose of the march planned for Saturday. A less charitable view would suggest they are deliberately misrepresenting it. Security Minister Tom Tugendhat told BBC Breakfast, “I do not think that a protest on Remembrance weekend next to the Cenotaph is appropriate.”

The march will not be near the Cenotaph war memorial – the focus of national remembrance events. That was never the plan and organisers have said the route will avoid the Whitehall area completely. The march will also start long after the two-minute silence at 11am. Sunak conveniently forgot this when he warned of a “clear and present risk” that the Cenotaph could be desecrated.

Sunak’s dog-whistle was heard. The commentator Douglas Murray was soon claiming that protesters “plan to defame our war-dead and desecrate the Cenotaph”. There have been calls for the march to be banned, raising the prospect of police arresting thousands of people for a peaceful demonstration. Far-right activists on social media are urging each other to “defend the Cenotaph”.

In reality, a lot of people who march on Saturday will also take part in Remembrance events. The day after demonstrating for a ceasefire, the Peace Pledge Union will hold the national Alternative Remembrance Sunday Ceremony, laying wreaths of white poppies to commemorate all victims of war – British, Palestinian, Israeli and every other nationality.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman stirred up tensions and misinformation by describing peace protests as “hate marches” last week. But go along to one of these marches and you will see Muslim, Jewish, Christian and secular peace groups. They oppose Israeli bombing for the same reason they oppose Hamas: because they object to the killing of innocent people.

These groups have condemned the small percentage of protesters who show support for Hamas or antisemitism. Such people have no place at an anti-war march and organisers and speakers must continue to denounce them.

Braverman has also encouraged the idea that police have been soft on protesters, with help from the right-wing press. We saw the consequences last week, with a sharp rise in arrests at anti-war protests. In one of the most shocking incidents, police disrupted a prayer service held by Jewish peace campaigners taking part in a demonstration calling for a ceasefire.

With far-right types turning up at the Cenotaph spoiling for a fight, police under pressure to arrest peace protesters and government ministers misrepresenting a peace march, Sunak and Braverman will have blood on their hands if violence breaks out on Remembrance Day.

Thankfully, many other people will be honouring the war-dead by campaigning for peace.

Why Christians should back calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and Israel

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote this article for Premier Christianity, who published it on their website on Monday 6 November 2023.

Where is God?”. It is a question asked by many people watching the horrifying events in Israel and Palestine.

Munther Isaac, Pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, offers an insightful answer: “God is under the rubble in Gaza”.

God is with those who are suffering, siding with the victims, the dying, the traumatised – whatever their nationality.

Jesus told his most famous parable in response to the question, “Who is my neighbour?”. The Samaritan was a neighbour to the Israelite attacked on the road (Luke 10:25-37). I have been asked whose “side” I am on. I think we should all be on the side of innocent children who have been killed, and their traumatised families. This means opposing their killers – whether Hamas or the Israeli military. It means siding with the many Palestinians and Israelis who are working for peace.

“Both Hamas and Israel are treating civilians as insignificant,” writes Richard Sewell, Dean of St George’s Anglican College in Jerusalem. The Orthodox Church in Jerusalem pointed out last week that “the Israeli military has targeted 19 places of worship, including mosques and churches, in Gaza during the past three weeks.”

Nearly all Christian leaders in Palestine and Israel are demanding a ceasefire. “The call for a ceasefire comes from the simple fact that we are pro-life,” writes Palestinian Christian journalist Daoud Kuttab.

Some argue that a ceasefire would allow Hamas to prepare further violence. This overlooks the reality that the Israeli military are committing atrocities. The more they do this, the more Hamas can gain support by presenting themselves as defenders against aggression. 

As Christians who value all life, let us call for a ceasefire as a vital step in a longer journey of peace, justice and reconciliation. This should go along with a demand for the release of hostages by Hamas and political prisoners in Israel (including conscientious objectors). And we must be very active in resisting anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on our own streets.

Evangelical organisations from various parts of Asia and Africa have published a joint statement calling for a ceasefire. Twenty Christian leaders in the UK recently signed a Christian Aid statement backing an immediate ceasefire. They include the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, the President of the Methodist Church, the General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Wales and the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, along with Quaker, Pentecostal and United Reformed Church leaders.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are absent from the list of signatories, as are British Roman Catholic leaders.

Justin Welby has issued heartfelt pleas for humanitarian aid but has not condemned Israeli attacks. The Church of England has now produced a staggeringly one-sided statement on the war. They rightly condemn Hamas and their indiscriminate killings. They then add, “We must also reflect on the actions that Israel has taken in response”. Condemnation for the atrocities of one group, “reflection” for the atrocities of another. This is an outrageous case of double standards.

Like many Palestinian Christians, Munther Isaac expressed his dismay with the Church of England statement for “only shyly mentioning” Israeli war crimes. Last week, a group of Palestinian Christian theologians urged Western church leaders to “repent” of their failure to challenge Israeli military aggression in Palestine. Church leaders who have rightly condemned Russian atrocities in Ukraine are failing to oppose similar atrocities in Gaza.

Condemnation of indiscriminate killing is meaningless if it does not apply to all indiscriminate killing. Love of neighbour is undermined if we love only neighbours on one side. Calls for aid are feeble if they rely on a “humanitarian pause” followed by a continuation of the killing.

Hundreds of thousands of people are marching in British cities calling for a ceasefire. Despite Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s ludicrous description of such demonstrations as “hate marches”, the vast majority of participants strongly oppose Hamas and anti-Semitism. There have been several Jewish-led protests calling for a ceasefire. To assume that all Jews support the Israeli government is to view Jews as an homogenous unthinking mass. It is assumptions such as this that are truly anti-Semitic.

These protests have thankfully included Christian peace groups such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Cymdeithas y Cymod. But imagine if they included speeches by Christian leaders proclaiming that all human lives are valued in the Kingdom of God and that God is “in the rubble” with people who are suffering. It would be an act of practical service, as well as a powerful witness to Christ.

If there is a peace vigil or ceasefire demonstration in your area, why not contact the organisers and ask how your church can play a part? Perhaps you could join a march with a church banner, or offer practical assistance by making tea and coffee for the participants. If national church leaders fail to take the lead, Christians at the grassroots can show the way.