(ACNS) The European Parliamentary and local elections on June 4th will take place at a time of extraordinary turbulence in our democratic system. It is a time for great vigilance over how to exercise our democratic right to vote.
“The temptation to stay away or register a protest vote in order to send a negative signal to the parties represented at Westminster will be strong. In our view, however, it would be tragic if the understandable sense of anger and disillusionment with some MPs over recent revelations led voters to shun the ballot box.
“Those whom we elect to local councils and the European Parliament will represent us and our collective interests for many years to come. It is crucial to elect those who wish to uphold the democratic values and who wish to work for the common good in a spirit of public service which urgently needs to be reaffirmed in these difficult days.
“There are those who would exploit the present situation to advance views that are the very opposite of the values of justice, compassion and human dignity are rooted in our Christian heritage.
“Christians have been deeply disturbed by the conscious adoption by the BNP of the language of our faith when the effect of those policies is not to promote those values but to foster fear and division within communities, especially between people of different faiths or racial background.
“This is not a moment for voting in favour of any political party whose core ideology is about sowing division in our communities and hostility on grounds of race, creed or colour; it is an opportunity for renewing the vision of a community united by mutual respect, high ethical standards and the pursuit of justice and peace.
“We hope that electors will use their vote on June 4th to renew the vision of a community united by the common good, public service and the pursuit of justice.”
This is so very, very tricky. To disagree with the above is to risk looking like a supporter of the BNP (for readers in the US: British National Party, an extreme right-wing party). Let me be clear: I abhor the BNP and its policies. I will never vote for them or support them in any way. And yet, the archbishops’ statement strikes me as wrong. Why? Because they are in flight from the reality of Britain today. I write from London and from personal experience I can say that two things are true even although they may seem contradictory.
One, most people here (including myself) are happy that we are a community of different ethnic backgrounds. We are enriched by our varied histories and traditions.
Second, there is a broad, though understated unease in the country, that we are losing our sense of identity. It is difficult to have a debate about this because too often and too quickly anybody who raises the question of our national identity is accused of racism. Let me give one example of the practical consequences of this: we are not able to give priority to immigrants who would assimilate more easily. That will seem incredible to people in the US but this is the truth – that to give priority to those who can integrate more easily is seen as a kind of racism.
The erosion of Christianity is one of the ways that people sense national identity slipping away. And here is another great truth that cannot be spoken: that the erosion of faith is, and has been for some time, greatest among the working class native British people, the very people to whom the BNP is appealing. There is a sad irony here, that some of those who most bewail our fading Christian identity are those who are least likely to be seen in church. I would be more impressed if the archbishops addressed thorny questions like these.
Absolutely right, TT. The archbishops are speaking about a fictional Britain in which nothing really serious is amiss and a bit of well meaning liberal sentiment will put things right. In fact, British society is simply falling apart at every level.
There is willful denial among the “guardian class” in the UK of how severely they have failed in their duty and how alienated the general public is from them.
Simple, common sense reasoning — such as “too many foreigners coming here in a short time will cause problems” has been condemned as racist for decades, and when the problems arose they were swept under the carpet. And there is no doubt that the secular civil service has been cutting away at the Christian underpinnings of UK society pretty much since the War.
Working class people will vote for the BNP or extremist parties because they have been jettisoned by Labour and feel their voice is no longer heard — but it is their communities that have been hollowed out by free trade, over-run by immigrants who then turned into enemies, their national pride that has been mocked. They are no more exclusionary or extremist than any other community, they are just looking for representatives that care about them. And who can really blame them?
The BNP has become a far less overtly hard right party in recent years, and it is making inroads into the middle classes too. My own kinsmen are considering voting for them, having given up on the Conservatives as just another version of the soft socialist consensus.
Labour used to stand up for nonconformists and Catholics, the Conservatives for the CoE. Now Labour is aggressively secular and the Tories mildly agnostic. A party that carries the standard for Christianity will attract voters even if other parts of its agenda are unappealing.
Bishops would have a great deal more credibility if they spoke about the real world rather than the universe of spin that has captured public life in the UK.
It’s beyond me why anyone anywhere would vote for a party that would acquiesce to the dissolution of sovereignty that is the EU. There are good arguments to join in treaties that narrowly and revocably reduce sovereignty, but nothing on the scope and scale of the EU. On that, the BNP is dead right, though I suspect for the wrong reason….it’s just good sense to keep as much government as close to the citizenry as possible, and the EU is the utter and complete enemy of that idea.
Andrew Stuttaford had a short take on this [url=http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTM1ODFiZWU2YjZlNTQ3MmY5MGFkZWI5MDg1NzVkYjg=]a couple of days ago[/url].
#3 Jeffersonian:
The decision to join the EU is not entirely unlike the decision faced by the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution, which certainly involved a degree of “dissolution of sovereignity.” There have been plusses and minuses to that decision, but on the whole I think it’s worked out better than not.