Sub Editor for Political Party website.

Must be able to spot obvious gaff headlines.

Apply: The Labour Party - www.labour.org.uk

…

How else can you account the fact that the official party website currently leads with the following self-deflating headline…

Tories £21 billion unfair spending cuts - Balls

Not too much to say on this, just a damn fine article by A C Grayling on Comment Is Free…

It is time to refuse to tip-toe around people who claim respect, consideration, special treatment, or any other kind of immunity, on the grounds that they have a religious faith, as if having faith were a privilege-endowing virtue, as if it were noble to believe in unsupported claims and ancient superstitions. It is neither. Faith is a commitment to belief contrary to evidence and reason, as between them Kierkegaard and the tale of Doubting Thomas are at pains to show; their example should lay to rest the endeavours of some (from the Pope to the Southern Baptists) who try to argue that faith is other than at least non-rational, given that for Kierkegaard its virtue precisely lies in its irrationality.

On the contrary: to believe something in the face of evidence and against reason - to believe something by faith - is ignoble, irresponsible and ignorant, and merits the opposite of respect. It is time to say so.

Paul Burgin has re-published a few thoughts of his on the subject of faith schools, which originally appeared on Labour Home and which merit a response…

With faith schools once again being the hot potato issue, I felt it was time do do a reflective piece on this!

First of all I ought to declare an interest! I am a committed Christian, fairly devout! Admittedly falling short on a daily basis but that’s what grace is there for! Plus I went to a C of E Junior School. Anyways, it does therefore mean that I am wholly sympathetic to the idea of faith schools! But that doesn’t mean to say that faith schools are right!

What certainly isn’t right is when some parents start attending church or a synagogue or a mosque, in order to curry favour and gain a place for their child, rather than out of genuine faith or curiosity.

Likewise, if there is one thing the Founding Fathers of secularism did respect it was the idea of conscience, and it is only natural for parents to want to bring their child up in their own faith. Whether it is Christianity, Islam, or even a school founded on the tenets of secularism. This opens up therefore, the wider issue of parental control.

One can’t solve this issue here, and it is too emotive to properly discuss, but I personally feel that this is a matter for parents (to a certain extent) and the schools in question.

So long as the schools do not break the law, and so long as the schools welcome all regardless of faith (and I appreciate a no of them don’t), then I don’t see the problem.

Anything less smacks of religious or secular bigotry.

Sorry, Paul, but I have to disagree with you here.

While it may well be entirely natural for parents who profess a particular faith to wish to bring up their children in that faith, that on its own is not a justification for single faith schools and certainly not for providing faith schools with state funding or for any of the trappings of privilege that the present education system affords organised religion, and Christianity in particular, i.e. the statutory requirement that state schools hold ‘broadly Christian’ assemblies and which make religious education a mandatory part of the curriculum, both of which apply to all state schools, faith-based or otherwise.

In part this is a question of context.

It is undoubtedly right that all children should be educated about religion in its broader social context, i.e. children should aware of religion and religious beliefs as a aide to understanding the attitudes and values of people they see around them in their local community and in the world in general, much as they should be aware of history, politics, philosophy and all manner of socially-derived topics that one could reasonable pull together under the broad heading of ’social education’ - and if one is motivated to extend the concept a little further one could consider this to be a basic education in citizenship.

Faith schools and religious assemblies are a rather different matter as their underlying purpose is not simply to education but also to indoctrinate; although as the steady decline in church attendance tends to demonstrate such schools are hardly making a success of this particular function.

This is not about secular bigotry by any means.

People are entitled to their beliefs and parents are, likewise, entitled to at least attempt to bring up their children in line with the personal beliefs and values, howsoever those may be founded, and to seek to transfer those beliefs to their children. But the right context for that to take place is not, in my view, a state-funded school; it a matter both for the family within the family home and, if the parent chooses, for the particular religion and place of worship that the parent(s) in question favour.

In short, if as a parent you wish your children to indoctrinated into a particular faith then that is a matter between you, your children and whoever or whatever the official representative of that faith in your local area might be - the provision of religious instruction, as opposed to a social education that includes an understanding of the nature of religion, is matter for Churches, Mosques, Gurdwaras, etc and it is there than such instruction is best provided.

In principle, I have no particular objection to the provision of some measure of general state support for faith-based after-school clubs in line with local demand for such activities - it would be wrong to remove the option of religious instruction from parents in its entirety and therefore unreasonably limit their choices in such matters - but otherwise I favour a secular state education system that provides a secular education to everyone within that system and which eschews entire any measure of segregation on religious grounds or seeks to favour any one set of religious belief or doctrines over any other.

What I would propose instead is a reasonable amount of state support (i.e. funding) for the provision of religious instruction outside of giving parents the opportunity to make an active choice as to whether they wish their children to receive instruction is specific religious faith/doctrine coupled with the removal of the requirement that schools hold religious assemblies and the removal of religious education from the curriculum as a mandatory subject, to be replace by a new ’subject’ that delivers a broad package of social education - call it citizenship education if you like as that is pretty much what I have in mind - although religious education would remain a GCSE subject for those who choose to take it, of course.

As for why I take this view, there are many reasons but perhaps the best is that firmly believe, like Thomas Jefferson, both that religion and religious belief is personal matter in which the state has no business intervening other than for the preservation of the common good and that the most effective guarantor of religious freedom (and political and intellectual freedom) is a democratic secular state in which a strict spearation of church and state is enforced.

I did wonder when this particular chicken would start coming home to roost…

Cabinet split over new rights for gays

· Blair backs Ruth Kelly in church row
· Faith schools seek equality opt-out

The cabinet is in open warfare over new gay rights legislation after Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, who is a devout Catholic, blocked the plans following protests from religious organisations.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, was so angry with the move that he wrote a letter to Kelly three weeks ago, telling her that the new rights should not be watered down.

The battle between what is being dubbed the government’s ‘Catholic tendency’ and their more liberal colleagues centres on proposals to stop schools, companies and other agencies refusing services to people purely because of their sexuality.

The very first thing to say here is a hearty ‘well done, keep it up, Alan!… and whatever you do, don’t back down on this!’

Anyone who’s the slightest bit surprised at this turn of events really hasn’t been paying too much attention as much the same exercise in last-minute backsliding accompanied the introduction of regulations outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexuality in employment, in which religious organisations, including ‘faith schools’ were handed an exemption at the last minute and after public consultation had concluded, ensuring that as few people as possible would notice the government pandering to religious bigotry.

One can see the same pattern of deception in the passage of the recent Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, where throughout the consultation stages the government let it be known that a repeal of the common law offences of blasphemy and blaspemous libel was on the cards, only to quietly let that slip away unnoticed once - again - public consultations were over.

So am I in the slightest bit surprised at this?

No, of course not. We’ve done it before and it would be naive to expect things to be different on this occasion, although what does need to be appeciated here is that the mere fact that legislation fall under the purview of Ruth Kelly is nowhere near as significant as some appear to think - she was safely cloistered away as Financial Secretary to the Treasury at the time that the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2003 were quietly spiked and her direct involvement in things - and public assumptions about her personal beliefs as a Roman Catholic and member of Opus Dei ((remember, she steadfastly refuses to comment on her actual beliefs) has only served to put this issue under the spotlight it deserves, this time around. If you’re really looking for the character stroking the white Persian cat on this one, you’re better off thinking in terms of the guy who, according to his former press enforcer, ‘doesn’t do god’.

I’ve already covered much of the background to this issue back in June, so to save time this link will take you back to the earlier article and introduce you to a couple of the Christian pressure groups who’re campaining on this issue, the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship and Christian Concern For Our Nation, who as you’ll see from the earlier piece share many things including a policy officer, Andrea Minichiello Williams.

What this does give me the chance to do is pick apart a gloriously specious piece of pseudo-logic that lies at the heart of this particular campaign, and indeed at the heart of many similar religious-inspired campaigns covering everything from abortion to Jerry Springer: The Opera, this being the idea that this is all about protecting ‘religious liberty’.

The CCFN website provides a couple of first class examples of this kind of tendentious thinking…

Philip Johnston’s article on the Sexual Orientation Regulations (2nd Oct) makes a perceptive point. Irrespective of sexual orientation or religious viewpoint, the Government should not have the power to force people to act against their conscience, provided this does not infringe the legitimate rights of others or the laws and customs of the country. The current proposals for the Regulations would infringe the right of Christians and Jews to act in accordance with the doctrinal teaching of their respective faiths which says that the practice of sex outside heterosexual marriage is wrong.

Further, to allow the executive to use secondary legislation, not subject to full Parliamentary scrutiny, to pass such a law is dangerous. Who will be next in finding that their morals, beliefs or lifestyle, are no longer acceptable to the Government?

The Government announced last week that there would be a 6 month delay in implementing the Regulations: we hope that this is recognition that, in their current form, the proposals are unworkable. The Government and the Women and Equality Unit of the DTI (the originators of the law) must ensure that the Regulations protect the basic right to freedom of conscience.We do not think that anyone who reflects carefully on the SORs could oppose a suggested amendment to the Regulations which states ‘Nothing in these Regulations will force anyone to promote, facilitate, encourage or assist the practice of a sexual orientation in a manner which is contrary to the strongly held religious convictions of the person’. We hope the Government will agree and act accordingly.

John Scriven, Chairman, Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship
The Venerable Michael Lawson, Archdeacon of Hampstead
Dr Philip Giddings, Vice Chair of House of Laity of General Synod
Yaqub Masih, Secretary General, UK Asian Christians
Colin Dye, Senior Minister, Kensington Temple
Reverend John Noble, Chairman of the National Charismatic Leaders Conference

(To contact signatories on this letter call Andrea Williams 0771 2591154. Partnership House, 157 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8XN)

(Letter to the Daily Telegraph - 13 October 2006

And…

The conclusion is NOW IS THE TIME FOR CHRISTIANS TO MAKE IT CLEAR TO THE GOVERNMENT THAT THE LAW MUST PROTECT THE RIGHT OF CHURCHES, CHRISTIAN ORGANISATIONS, AND INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIANS TO ADHERE TO THE BIBLE’S TEACHING ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY.

We also believe it is important to remember why many Christians see the SORs as a very significant threat to our freedom to live as Christians: if the SORs are not changed from the wording currently suggested by the Government in the consultation document, Christians will not have the freedom to act in accordance with the Bible’s teaching that the only rightful sexual relationship is between a man and a woman in a monogamous marriage. Without an amendment to the current proposals for the SORs, any Christian, church or Christian organisation who provide goods, services, facilities, education or premises, will be acting illegally if they refuse to provide such things on the grounds that such provision would promote, enable or encourage homosexual sex. IT IS CRUCIAL THAT OUR FREEDOM OF CONSICENCE AND FREEDOM TO ACT ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE IS PROTECTED IN LAW BY AN AMMENDMENT TO THE SORs.

(Their capitals, not mine, by the way)

There are a several points worth picking up here, the first of which lies in the stated contention that "the Government should not have the power to force people to act against their conscience, provided this does not infringe the legitimate rights of others or the laws and customs of the country".

The general scope of the government’s powers is both a separate debate and somewhat immaterial to the matter at hand but inasmuch as governments are constrained in legislating on such matters, those constraints are set out in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights as enacted in UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998 as follows:

ARTICLE 9

FREEDOM OF THOUGHT, CONSCIENCE AND RELIGION

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

2. Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

The right to Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is a qualified right; one in which people are entitled to believe in whatever or whomever they like, whether that happens to be God, Allah, Krishna, Buddha or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

However, when it comes to putting such beliefs into practice and acting upon them, the state reserves the right to legislate and impose restrictions in the interests of the common good. An extreme example of this one could argue is the belief held by some Islamic fundamentalists that blowing themselves and a bunch of other innocent people up on a tube train amounts to a  religious martyrdom that guarantees them a  place in paradise and 72 oh-so-willing virgins - one cannot legislate away such a belief however much one considers it to be abhorrent, however one governments can, and do, put in place legislation that aims to prevent such beliefs being translated in actions.

A more moderate example of the state legislating to restrict certain religious practices is one with which the majority of Christians can have no particular complaint as it lies in Britain’s marriage laws and, specifically, in the offence of bigamy. Britain, in common with US and other European countries does not recognise bigamous/polygamous marriages and imposes legal sanctions if such are entered into in this country, even though such practices are permitted by certain religions and religious sects such as Islam and the Mormon Church. In fact, if one researches the history of the constitutional separation of church and state in the US one finds that the precise point at which the US Supreme Court uneqivocally asserted the authority of the state to legislate, where necessary, in respect of religious practices turns out to be a case brought by the Moirmon Church in the 19th Century in which it attempted to defend its ‘right’ to practice polygamy within the state of Utah.

The core argument put forward in the letter to the Telegraph includes an important proviso - provided this does not infringe the legitimate rights of others - but then fails entirely to acknowledge that this situation does entail a conflict between religious belief and the legitimate rights of others, specifically the rights of the gay community to equal treatment in society in line with provisions for equal treatment accorded to other groups; women, ethnic minorities and people with a disability - were the authors of this letter less blinkered by their own prejudices they would recognise that this proviso has the effect of nullifying their entire argument.

The second article that I’ve quoted here states both that, "the law must protect the right of churches, Christain organisations and individual Christians to adhere to the Bible’s teaching about homosexuality’  and that ‘if the SORs are not changed from the wording currently suggested by the Government in the consultation document, Christians will not have the freedom to act in accordance with the Bible’s teaching that the only rightful sexual relationship is between a man and a woman in a monogamous marriage.’

To begin with, if one researches the subject properly one find that not only are there very few references to homosexual behaviour in the Bible - no more than 10-15 in the entire text - but that all such references are both unclear and open to interpretation.

For example the presumption that the ’sin’ for which the Caananite town of Sodom was destroyed was the practice of homosexuality amongst its population - hence the term ’sodomy’ for anal intercourse - does not appear in Christian theological literature until the 11th Century AD while elsewhere in the Bible the ’sin’ of the Sodomites is cast in very different terms as being, alternately, adultery, excessive pride and gluttony, being inhospitable towards strangers, being ungodly, unprincipled and lawless or just generally being hedonistic and sexually immoral.

Analysis of the original source texts of the Bible - in either Hebrew in the case of the Old Testement or Greek for the New Testement, shows that in every instance in which the modern Bible refers to homosexuality, the precise terms from which such references are derived are unclear and open to different interpretations such that the precise intent of the author cannot be verified with absolute certainty. In most cases a more accurate translation of the original text would place the Biblical injunctions against homosexual behaviour in the context either of temple prostitution and/or paedophilia and not against homosexuality in general and one has to remember that the idea of that individuals have a sexual orientation is a very recent ‘invention’ dating back only to the 19th Century - the authors of these passages would have had no concrete concept of homosexuality as a defined ‘lifestyle’ int he modern sense of the term as such a concept would not exist for at least another 17-1800 years: much more in the case of passages from the Old Testement.

All one can say for certain is that the modern Bible reflects the prejudices and beliefs of later translators, which in turn negates the concept of the text containing a literal and absolute truth.

Equally, but for a single passage in Leviticus that advocates that homosexuals should be put to death, nowhere in the Bible does it state how Christians should conduct themselves in regards to the gay community, other that in regards to the generic injunction to proselytize and spread the Christian faith. Even if one accepts the idea that references to homosexual conduct in the Bible do refer to the generality of homosexuality it would seem that the only thing that the Bible requires of Christians under such an interpretation is that they refrain from such conduct themselves; nowhere does it state that homosexuals should be shunned, subjected to prejudice and bigotry or otherwise treated any differently by Christians than anyone else, even the most devout believer.

(And in the context of the Bed & Breakfast argument being put forward by those seeking a watering down of the new sexual orientation regulations one might note that in Matthew 10:14-15 implies that one of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah was a lack of hospitality…

To act according to the Bible, if as a Christian one accepts that it does contain express injunctions against homosexuality, requires only that one does not practice homosexuality oneself and, as such, the Sexual Orientation Regulations do not require Christians to act contrary to Biblical teachings or impinge on their religious freedom - with or without these regulations they are still entirely free to NOT practice homosexuality and that is all the the Bible appears to require of them.

This idea that simply by renting a gay couple a room for the night or allowing a gay organisations to hold a meeting in a Church Hall is someone promoting, facilitating, encouraging or otherwise assisting homosexual behaviour is hypocritical nonsense and an errant apologia for irrational prejudice. One only has to recall that merely treating a homosexual as an ordinary human being or acknowledging the existance of gay couples and gay relationships without expressing overblown ‘moral’ disapproval is sufficient to be considered to be ‘promoting’ homosexuality to appreciate fully just how narrow-minded a constituency we’re dealing with here.

And that’s the real crux of this issue.

What groups like CCFN (and Christian Voice for that matter) are seeking is both to preserve certain undue and outdated privileges accorded to the Christian faith - in the case the privilege of being able to engage in discriminatory behaviours that are otherwise denied to the wider population by law - and generally to impose their beliefs, values and attitudes on others by seeking to bend the law to those same values and beliefs.

Such attitudes and practices are perhaps less apparent in this this matter but are plainly obvious when one looks at other campaigns conducted by such groups, particulaly those relating to abortion and censorship, as in the case of JS:TO.

The simple fact is that if, as a Christian, you believe homosexuality to be sinful then you have the perfect and inalienable right to not engage in homosexual behaviours, much as you have the right not to have a abortion if you disagree with that and the right, also, not to watch a film, TV programme or play or listen to piece of music if it is likely to offend against your personal beliefs and sensibilities…

And in permitting you a free and unfettered right not to do any or all of those things, society recognises and preserves your basic freedom of the thought, conscience and religion.

Such rights do not, however, extend to restricting other who do not share your beliefs from engaging in such activities providing, of course, that such activities are within the law - which they all are.

In the letter to the Telegraph, the signatories put forward the view that…

We do not think that anyone who reflects carefully on the SORs could oppose a suggested amendment to the Regulations which states ‘Nothing in these Regulations will force anyone to promote, facilitate, encourage or assist the practice of a sexual orientation in a manner which is contrary to the strongly held religious convictions of the person’.

Well having reflected carefully on the SORs I can think of a sound, rational and practical objection to such an amendment and one that Parliament needs to consider most carefully.

How, in legal terms and under extant evidentiary rules, is a court of law dealing with an alleged case of discrimimation on ground of sexuality to adequately determine whether the defendant in such a case was genuinely motivated by strongly held religious convictions as opposed to irrational homophobia?

That, in practical terms, in the crucial question - what is the legal test to which a defence predicated on a claim of exemption to the regulations on religious grounds will be subjected and how will that test be assessed.

A court cannot simply accept such an assertion by a defendant without some corroboration, so what corroborating evidence would such a defendant have to provide?

A record of their attendance at a place of worship…?

But then, does the mere fact that one does not attend a church, mosque or other religious establishment on the regular basis prove that an individual does not have strongly held religious convictions? Of course not.

What about a testemonial from a Vicar, Priest or Imam, etc…?

But how reliable  would such a testemonial be, given that the person giving the testemonial may be motivated by their own beliefs and convictions as much if not more than any particular knowledge of the religious convictions of the defendant? Might a cleric who, themselves, is prejudiced towards homosexuality not provide such a testemonial simply to make a political statement about the nature of these regulations…?

It’s not inconceivable.

Ownership of a religious text perhaps..?

But, what does that prove? Nothing. It could be a recent purchase, a family Bible or just one from the Gideons that the defendant has nicked from a hotel room as a souvenir.

What about a scriptural test, perhaps..?

Again, does the ability to quote chapter and verse from a religious text prove that an individual holds strong religious convictions?

They might just as easily have ‘crammed’ for such a test having not touched a Bible for years without holding any really belief in the contents of the text itself.

How about psychological profiling?

Is that really appropriate and could is really distinguish between a genuine believer and homophobe feigning religious convictions to get themselves out fo trouble?

A defence predicated on religious convictions can only be predicated on evidence that is, at best, hearsay and therefore unreliable in which case these regulations become, by design, completely unworkable…

…a fact that I would suspect the signatories to this letter are well aware.

More on this issue from:

Antonia Bance, Jo Salmon, Comrade Johnny, Harry Perkins, and Labour Humanists who’ve noticed the deafening silience thus from the the Christian Socialist contingent.

Update:

Wongablog has also joined the fray with a fairly scathing (and very readable) piece

Oh dear, it looks very much as if the Church of England has got itself into a bit of snit over the government’s efforts to promote greater integration in Britain’s Muslim communties according to the Sunday Telegraph…

The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society.

In a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make minority "faith" communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society "more separated than ever before". The criticisms are made in a confidential Church document, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph, that challenges the "widespread description" of Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term "multi-faith" to be reconsidered.

It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s "schizophrenic" approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given "privileged attention" to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities.

As opposed, naturally, to giving ‘privileged attention’ to the Church of England, as the Telegraph’s article goes on to explain…

Written by Guy Wilkinson, the interfaith adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the paper says that the Church of England has been sidelined. Instead, "preferential" treatment has been afforded to the Muslim community despite the fact that it makes up only three per cent of the population. Britain remains overwhelmingly a Christian country at heart and moves to label it as a multi-faith society suggest a hidden agenda, it says.

Quite what this ‘hidden agenda’ might be, the article fails to explain, nor does it suggest that the report makes any effort to identify exactly what it might be either, other than a deliberately tendentious remark on the author’s part - unless, of course, he knows something we don’t and the entire cabinet has secretly converted en bloc to Islam without anybody noticing.

The Anglican Church’s main beef, so far as one can tell, appears to be simply that government have chosen not to appoint an Anglican Bishop to a seat on its new Commission on Cohesion and Integration, thereby failing to give due deference to the already privileged position of the Church of England…

It can also be revealed that the archbishop met Miss Kelly, the Communities Secretary, last month to discuss how the Church of England could contribute. Bishops are dismayed that no Christian denomination is represented on the commission.

And..?

One has to sympathise to a very limited extent with the Anglican Church’s unease at efforts to label Britain a ‘multi-faith society’, although not for any of the reasons that they might suggest.The government’s fundamental error here is not that it is giving too little regard for the Church of England (and too much regard to other faiths) thereby undermining the position of Christianity as one of the underpinnings of British society but rather that that it is giving altogether too much regard to religion and religious belief as a whole.

Britain does not need to be or become a ‘multi-faith’ society, simply a pluralist secular society that guarantees religious freedom and promotes the religious tolerance so long as the beliefs and practices of partilcular religious groups/communities stay within the overarching parameters of secular law.

In a letter to Richard Price, dated 9 October 1780, Benjamin Franklin wrote:

When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Franklin poses a brilliant question; if religion is such a ‘good thing’ then why does it seek to impose its views and values on wider society by means of everything from indoctrination (i.e. ‘faith’ schools), to legal coercion (i.e. blasphemy, efforts to restrict/outlaw abortion), to censorship and efforts to restrict freedom of expression and dissent in the name of ‘respect’, right through to downright lies (i.e. so-called ‘intelligent design’)? Surely it must be the case that if religious belief has anything going for it then it should be capable of standing on its own two feet and defending its ideals and values against all-comers by means of reasoned argument and rational debate.

Has ‘god’ really become so senile and decrepit in his cosmic dotage that he/she/it is no longer capable of sticking up for himself/herself/itself against nothing more powerful than the mere idea that human beings, being possessed of reason, logic and intellect, can somehow get along in this world quite nicely without a mythical overlord to watch over them?

One would have to  think so given the extent to which religion has come to rely on a mix of ill-concealed (and conceived) takeover bids for poltical/secular authority and the deliberate and methodical inculcation of wilfull ignorance in its followers merely to ensure its own survival, even as it pretends to its followers to be assuming the ascendancy.

The ‘enemy’ of social integration and cohesion is not ‘multi-culturalism’ or the move towards a ‘multi-faith’ society but simply plain old fashioned ignorance and an unshakeable belief in the innate superiority of whichever ‘power unit’ you happen to belong to compounded by the equally fallacious belief that taken together this confers on the ‘believer’ the right to enforce their views on others, whether they like it or not. Such a distorted worldview is by no means the sole prerogative of the inveterate ‘god botherer’, one finds much the same warped values amongst political ideologues; hence the Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Pol Pot canard that some believers seem to mistake for a defence against the charge that religious bigotry has wrought chaos and destruction across of sizeable chunk of recorded human history as if to suggest that one can excuse one’s own atrocities merely by noting that others have behaved with similar barbarity.

To accept such an argument is to accept, also, that one might satisfactorily defend the reputation of Fred West by noting that he didn’t kill quite as many people as Harold Shipman.

What exactly does the Anglican church have to offer to a Commission on Cohesion and Integration?

Plenty of fine words and platitudes, of course, and naturally they’ll be only to keen to enter into all manner dialogues and ‘reach out’ to other communities… and then..?

Well according to the right-wing think-tank, Civitas, is role should go something along these lines…

Rather than forever seeking to concede ground to secularists and fundamentalist followers of faiths other than Christianity whose adherents would seek its replacement by theirs, the Church of England should reassert its historic function of being the most important civilising and acculturating force in the nation.

Secularists and fundamentalists of other creeds like to claim the empty pews in so many churches throughout the land today shows it has become a post-Christian nation. The self-identification of English in the census suggests otherwise.

One of the most distinctive features of this Anglican nation was its tolerance of those of other creeds and denominations, particularly, those seeking to immigrate to Britain to escape persecution or seek economic advancement, provided they were prepared to be loyal and law-abiding.

And…

Rather than excluding religion from the public square, or else going even further down the multicultural route that requires England’s Christian majority to relinquish ever-more of its Christian roots and heritage, perhaps the best way for the country to increase cohesion and become a more united as a nation than it has of late become would be, as Dr Sentamu suggests, for its Christian majority to regain touch with their historic faith and traditions from which so many of them have of late become estranged, often by a deliberate strategy on the part of those with an animus against it, be they humanists or zealots of some other faith.

Recognition by all those whose own creed does not preclude them from so doing of their shared belief in the same God might be a better way to foster social cohesion and unity in England than ever further multiculturally- motivated attrition of its Christian heritage and culture.

Those young British Muslims who in recent times have seemingly become ever more reluctant to integrate and correspondingly ever more drawn towards extremist forms of their creed might be less inclined towards self-segregation and less drawn as a result towards incendiary versions of their faith were England’s majority to become more appreciative and proud of its Christian heritage and character.

And, finally…

In the wake of the July London suicide bombings, British Muslim community leaders have increasingly voiced concern at the spectacle of growing alienation of their young British-born coreligionists. They might do well to think about introducing into their own liturgy at their places of worship a suitably adapted version of another prayer Jews recite here weekly on the Sabbath. That prayer is one on behalf of the Royal Family. It calls on God to bless the ruling sovereign and their family, and to to deliver them from all intent on harming them, before calling on God ‘to put a spirit of wisdom and understanding into the hearts and minds of all [his or] her counsellors so that they might uphold the peace of the realm and advance the welfare of the nation’.

So the answer, according to Civitas, is more Christianity and weekly prayers for the Royal Family. A prescription for the continuation of the privileged status of the Anglican Church that its actual impact and influence on society no longer merits coupled with a renewed deference to the very exemplar of unearned and unmerited privilege; the Royal Family. Nothing that could be fixed if we all just knew our proper place and got back in to the habit of tugging our forelocks a bit more often.

The Civitas article refers to the Inauguration Sermon given by John Sentamu on the occasion of his taking up office as the 97th Archbishop of York, which includes this delightful piece of clerical conceit…

The Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History tells not only of how the English were converted, but how that corporate-discipleship, the Church, played a major socialising and civilising role by uniting the English and conferring nationhood on them.

The history of the See of York tells a wonderful story of York’s part in the conversion and civilisation of the English. In 627 Paulinus converts the King of Northumbria, Edwin, and baptises him on Easter Day. Paulinus is allowed to build a little wooden church, the first church on the site of this Minster. And it wasn’t easy country. The Venerable Bede tells us that there were villages in these mountains and forests rarely visited by a Christian minister. The first three archbishops were driven out because of war and revolution. But the small band of Christians, like a tiny acorn, courageously stood their ground. Aidan, a monk from the monastery in Iona, came to the rescue, and extended the Christian presence in the north of England, which radically transformed the existing social order as well as in the South.

So England and English nationhood is what? A mere a byproduct of the ‘good works’ of the Church? Is that an unbiased view of English history?

Of course not - the clue is in the title of Bede’s work,  Ecclesiastical History, a history of or pertaining to the church and/or clergy.

Bede died in 735AD having completed the work on his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum some four years earlier. England, as a political entity, and therefore a nation by any meaningful definition of the term, did not come into existence for another 150 years until Alfred the Great proclaimed himself King of England in 886 after expelling the Danes from London.

Bede’s claim to the church having conferred nationhood on the English belongs to much the same strand of historical discourse that Churchill adopted in noting that,

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

And as views of English/British history go, this is one that’s becoming increasing outdated as archaeologists uncover more and more evidence to show that the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ follwing the withdrawal of the Roman Empire from Britain, were not so ‘dark’ as perviously supposed, nor were the ‘barbarians’ of the time, which would have included the various Germanic tribes that conquered/settled in what is now England during that period, anything like so barbaric or culturally disparate as later Christian chroniclers suggest.

Also of note in the Civitas article, and echoed in the Telegraph’s article here…

The 2001 census showed that 72 per cent of Britons describe themselves as Christian. "It could certainly be argued that there is an agenda behind a claim that a five per cent adherence to ‘other faiths’ makes for a multi-faith society," says the document.

…is what is fast becoming the Anglican Church’s favorite canard - that 72% of the British people consider themselves to be ‘Christians’ according to the most recent census, the first (incidentally) to include a question on religious belief.

Well there are Christians and there are Christians, for all the lengths that both the Church (and Civitas) go to try and downplay the significance of the current year on year decline in church attendances and active membership.

Its only natural, I suppose, that when thing are going badly you take whatever crumbs of comfort you can find, which rather nicely explains this press release from Christian Research in relation to the results of its 2005 Church Census…

PULLING OUT OF THE NOSEDIVE

Many churches in England are in a healthier state now than seven years ago.  Some local churches as well as a few denominations are doing very well, more churches are growing, and overall they are not losing nearly as many people as they were.

These are the major findings from the 2005 English Church Census, undertaken by Christian Research and published today. 

The Census showed that in the 1990s 1 million people left church in nine years, but in the seven years from 1998-2005 only ½ million left, a much slower rate of decline, showing that churchgoing in England is beginning to pull out of the ‘nosedive’ decline seen previously.  There are two major reasons for this slowing decline: the number of churches which are growing, and a considerable increase of ethnic minority churchgoers, especially black people.

Over a third of churches, 34%, are growing (compared with 21% in 1998), 16% are now stable (up from 14%), while the proportion which are declining has fallen from two thirds  to only half (65% down to 50%).  A quarter, 25%, of the churches which were declining in the 1990s have not only stemmed their losses, but have turned their church around and are now growing.  This includes churches of all denominations and sizes.  

However, the declining churches are still losing more people than the growing churches are gaining.  The net effect is that overall 6.3% of the population are now in church on an average Sunday (7.5% in 1998), with others attending midweek.  A major factor in this decline is that churchgoers are significantly older on average than the population - 29% of churchgoers are 65 or over compared with 16% of the population.

Black people now account for 10% of all churchgoers in England (increased from 7%), with a further 7% (previously 5%) from other non-white ethnic groups.  This is most obvious in Inner London, where 44% of churchgoers are now black, 14% other non-white, and only 42% white.

“Christian Research has never shirked from telling us unpalatable truths about church decline. At last they have some good news for us!” comments Ven Bob Jackson, the Church of England Archdeacon of Walsall and author of The Road to Growth.  “Decline has slowed and far more individual churches are growing. In fact the data I see for the Church of England confirms this.  Pulling out of the Nosedive is an apt and justified title for a report with some statistical good news for all the churches.”

“Statistics like these give both the church and wider society the helpful opportunity to look at how church attendance has changed over time” says Rev Katei Kirby, CEO of ACEA (African and Caribbean Evangelical Alliance).  “For example, while it is significant to see the increase in the numbers of Black people attending church in England, it is equally important to see where they are attending - in the independent and Pentecostal sectors as well as in the nominal or mainstream denominations.  I think that this will continue to have a major impact on the picture of church attendance trends in the future.”

“This is a helpful, though challenging, analysis of the state of the Church in England” responded Rev John Glass, General Superintendent Elim Pentecostal Churches, one of the denominations which has done better than others.

Dr Peter Brierley, who undertook the Census, says, “It is a great joy to have some good news at last.  Although the overall numbers are still going down there are many signs of hope in the statistics.  It is important that church leaders, both nationally and locally, pick up on these positive things, learn from those who are doing well, and build for the future.  If that happens we could see the church in this country once again having a major impact on our nation.”  

The results of the 2005 English Church Census are published today in Pulling out of the Nosedive and a volume of statistics which is No 6 in the Religious Trends series.

Yes, the good news for Christian Churches is that they’re only losing people at half the rate now than they were eight years ago, although mostly, it seems, because they’ve succeeded in importing rather more Christians from overseas over the last seven years - there’s an interesting little statistic for all you migration watchers out there.

What the published data actually shows is that only the Pentecostal and Independent Church sectors, which draw the majority of their congregations from minority communities, are actually growing at present; mainstream churches, including the evangelical sector, are still consistantly losing members. The data also throws up one rather interesting fact; in terms of regular attendance at church, the Anglican Church is only the second largest in the UK, slightly behind…

…the Roman Catholic church - although the Catholics have lost members at a much faster rate over the last seven years to the point where the gap is now fairly marginal: In 1997 Britain’s Catholic active congregation was around a third larger than that of the Anglican Church.

What would William of Orange have made of that?

The obvious purpose of citing the census data is to create the false impression that Church leaders speak for the majority of the British population. In reality less that 10% of Britains self-professed ‘Christians’ actually attend church and of those, a mere 13% (around 825,000 people) attend an Anglican Church. On those figures, the FA Premiership, whose 20 clubs have a total avergage attendance of 673,000, has as good a claim to a seat on the Commission for Integration and Cohesion as the Church of England.

Why has this all suddenly become an ‘issue’ for the Church of England? Why now?

From the report in the Telegraph, the Anglican Church appears to have several specific complaints in relation to the government’s approach to relations with the Islamic community in Britain in the wake of last year’s terrorist attack in London…

The report lists a number of moves made by the Government since the London bombings in July last year to win favour with Muslim communities. These include "using public funds" to fly Muslim scholars to Britain, shelving legislation on forced marriage and encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements. These efforts have undermined its interfaith agenda and produced no "noticeable positive impact on community cohesion", the Church document says.

"Indeed, one might argue that disaffection and separation is now greater than ever, with Muslim communities withdrawing further into a sense of victimhood, and other faith communities seriously concerned that the Government has given signals that appear to encourage the notion of a privileged relationship with sections of the Muslim community."

Some of this is obviously fair comment; particularly in reference to the government ’shelving’ legislation on forced marriage, a practice that run contrary to every principle of UK secular law.

Some of it, however, appears to be moaning for the sake of it, as in the case of the complaint that the government has been encouraging financial arrangements to comply with Islamic requirements, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for a government to be doing. Governments encourage British businesses to tap into potential new markets and provide information, advice and assistance to businesses to support such venture all the time - it’s one of the primary functions of the Department of Trade and Industry - and the Muslim community is a potential market for financial services. Moreover, by encouraging mainstream financial institutions to provide products and services tailored to Islamic requirements, the government is also seeking to bring financial transaction which would otherwise take place through the Muslim community’s own informal and unregulated ‘banking system’ into the heavily regulated mainstream system, where these transactions will generate the usual paper trail and, thereby, making it much easier to ‘follow the money’ and trace any suspicious movements of cash.

As policy measures go, the latter is a perfectly sensible measure to adopt with a number of clear, obvious and rational benefits to all concerned.

I suspect the real problem here is not simply a matter of it appearing that Muslims are suddenly developing a privileged relationship with the government so much as a fear that the growing perception that a particular religion (Islam) may be developing such a privileged relationship with the state may just cause the wider public to start looking at whether other religions are accorded similar ‘privileges’ and therefore draw attention to those currently enjoyed by the Christian and, particularly the Anglican Church.

That, above all else, is what I suspect the Church of England most wishes to avoid, awkward little questions such as…

1. Why should the Church of England be accorded 26 seats in the UK legislature (in the House of Lords) as a matter of right?

2. Why should the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel remain on the UK statute books, particularly when they have been used a mere four times in the last 100 years in England and Wales and not by the state since 1925. Scotland’s blasphemy laws have lain unused for even longer; the law prosecution for blasphemy under Scottish law took place in 1843.

It’s also worth noting that as long ago as 1949, Lord Denning effectively consigned the offence of blasphemy to the past…

"…it was thought that a denial of Christianity was liable to shake the fabric of society, which was itself founded upon Christian religion. There is no such danger to society now and the offence of blasphemy is a dead letter".

And yet when the opportunity to repeal these laws most recently presented themselves, in legislating to outlaw religious hatred, the government did nothing. Well, no, the government did nothing in the end having trailed the idea that it would remove the offence of blasphemy from the statute books, thereby avoiding an awkward public debate until it was too late to do anything about it.

3. Why should the state dictate that all state schools must provide religious education and ‘broadly-christian’ assemblies whether they wish to do so or not?

4. Why should Members of Parliament who put their names down to attend a morning prayer meeting in the Commons get first pick of the seating arrangements?

Although I’ve not seen any published statistics on the subject and doubt very much they even exist, one suspects that the House of Commons tends to become rather more ‘Christian’ on Wednesdays in anticiption of PMQs and, particularly, on the day the Chancellor’s budget speech.

And, of course, there’s the big one…

5. Why should the state fund, from general taxation, close to 7,000 ‘faith’ schools across the UK, 99% of which are Christian schools including nearly 2000 voluntary-aided Church of England Schools that are allowed to select pupils on the basis of church attendance.

This excellent article from the British Humanist Association provides the statistics on faith schools in the UK (and, it also does a nice job of exploding the myth that faith schools and better educational standards go together)

6292, or 35.6%, primary schools have a religious character, and of these 4468 are C of E and a total of 6258 or 99% are Christian; 593, or 17.5%, secondary schools have a religious character, and of these 201 are C of E, and a total of 582 or 98%, are Christian (DfES figures, 2005). As Church school numbers increase, other religious groups demand their own publicly funded schools on grounds of equity.

As far as non-Christian state-funded ‘faith’ schools go there are currently 36 state Jewish schools, seven Muslim schools and two Sikh schools, and one or may be two Hindu schools have opened in the last year or two as well.

If one can take anything from the juxtaposition of these statistics with current trends in church attendance it that Churches in Britain are doing a fair old job of disproving the old Jesuit maxim;

Give Me the Child Until He Is Seven and I Will Show You the Man

Any debate on integration and social cohesion at the present time will inevitably come to look at the growing demand for single-faith schools amongst religious minority communities and the massive disparity in provision for Christian schools as against those for other religions.

Christian ‘faith’ schools account for nearly 33% of all state-funded schools, with 66% of them being Church of England Schools. This to ’serve’ a church-going population of a little over 3 million people, less than 7% of the UK population of whom less than 900,000 are Anglicans. By contrast there are a mere seven Muslim schools serving 3% of the UK population of whom more than 900,000 regularly attend a mosque at least once a week - little wonder, then, that the Islamic community is increasingly demanding more state funding for Muslim schools on the grounds of equity.

Against this ‘demand’ on has to raise the question as to whether religious segregation in education is not exactly what we should be avoiding at all costs if we are to seriously address the questions of integration and social cohesion - Lord Ouseley, reporting on social conditions in Bradford following the riot in 2001 certainly appears to think so in observing…

"signs that communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines. Segregation in schools is one indicator of this trend…­There is "virtual apartheid" in many secondary schools in the District."

Ousley also notes, in his report, another key facet in this debate…

"What was most inspiring was the great desire among young people for better education, more social and cultural interaction. Some young people have pleaded desperately for this to overcome the negativity that they feel is blighting their lives and leaves them ignorant of other cultures and lifestyles…" 

Much of the demand from single-faith schools comes not from pupils or parents but from ‘community leaders’ many of whom are little more than self-appointed spokespersons for their own personal status and agenda for whom what matters most is not the needs of the community they purport to represent but the ongoing maintenance of an existing social and cultural hierarchy in which they’ve already floated to the top.

Education will inevitably be a key ‘battlefield’ in this debate with demands from the Muslim community for an expansion is state funding for Muslim schools set against public perceptions (liberally fostered by politicians and the press) of Muslim insularity and parochialism to the point of active separatism and the ghettoisation of Muslim communities, perceptions that increasely demand active social-engineering measure to combat such isolationism; one of which, inevitably, will be at least a moratorium on further state funding for Muslim schools, if not the active pursuit of statutory school admission policies that work to prevent segregated single ‘faith’ schools coming into being by default, as has happened in some areas.

The alternative, if one is to use schools to foster integration and social cohesion and do so in a manner equitable to all religious communities is simply to take religion out of the sphere of publicly funded education in it entirety in which case state schools would continue to educate children about religion in the wider context of citizenship and social education but would be taken out of the business of providing religious instruction and actively promoting a particular religious faith in lessons and assemblies - which, of course, would also bring an end to the privileged position occupied by Christianity and, particularly the Church of England.

Leaks to newspapers do not happen by accident. In politics documents are leaked either for the purpose of causing embarrassment and generating negative press or for the purpose of revealing the current thinking of a government or political party on a particular matter and, thereby, gauging public reaction to that thinking without putting any one individual into the public firing line should the reaction not be quite what was hoped for.

And what is true in politics is true for this report.

If the leaking of this report to the Sunday Telegraph serves any real purpose for the Church of England it is not to register a complaint at its omission from membership of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion nor even to complain about Britain’s Muslim community receiving preferential treatment and entering into a privileged relationship with the government.

It’s real purpose is to float the argument for the continuation of its own privileged position and status in the hope of obtaining sufficient public support to stymie any prospect of this Commission too closely its own privileges under the guise of considering questions of equity in relation to the position and status of different religious communities in the UK.

There are only three reasons why the Anglican Church would actively pursue formal membership of the Commission.

First, as a minor ego-boost and confirmation of its own special status and position of ‘influence’ in British society, irrespective of whether it has anything worthwhile to contribute.

Second, to be seen publicly to be ‘doing the right thing’ and playing along with the game as its set out politicians in the hope of gaining a little influence along the way.

And third, to ensure that whatever else the Commission does, it does not do anything that calls into question and of its existing privileges.

Failing that, it has now leaked a report criticising both the composition of the Commision and the relationship between the government and the Islamic community in the UK in terms that both actively seek public support for it own privileged position and status and at the same time lay the groundwork for discrediting the work of the Commission should it make recommendations that appear to favour ther interests of minority communities overs its own interests…

…and it has done so by leaking information to a newspaper that of all the media outlets in the UK is the one most closely associated with promoting traditionalist Anglican views; the Sunday Telegraph, where it would expect the most sympathetic of hearings.

What the Church of England is doing here is merely what all good politicians do in such a situation; playing all the angles of the public debate and covering its own back from every direction.

If the 72% figure for people self-identifying as ‘Christian’ proves anything it seems likely to prove only that;

a) the British people have a marked propensity for not questioning the contents of official documentation (perhaps the next census should include a follow-up study to find how many people ticked Christian for not other reason that thats what it says on their birth certificate),

b) that we’re also well practiced as a nation in hedging our bets on the big cosmic questions - and there has to be a cartoon in that showing St Peter surrounded by ’sinners’ all waving their census forms and demanding entry in to heaven, and

c) that as a basically pragmatic people, Briton’s see some value is maintaining an ‘in’ with the church just in case they even need it for something useful, i.e. weddings and funerals.

What is doesn’t prove is that Britain is a Christian nation - the Church of England is something we tolerate for its familiarity and its genarally unthreatening character; we don’t so much have a state religion as a tame one that knows its place and doesn’t create a ruckus the way that religion does in other countries.

One can tell a lot about a religion (and a particular church, even) by its ‘iconography’; it’s most popular and visible public manifestations of its character and culture.

Roman Catholicism has the Pope, the Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel, etc…

Islam has its incredible architecture and calligraphy…

Hinduism tends to go in for carvings and elaborate, colourful statuary - and firework (at least round here).

American evangelical churches have their satellite TV station and ‘arena churches’ the size of concert halls,

Black churches have their gospel music and the general liveliness and jour de vivre with which they approach the act of worship…

…

… and the Church of England has Derek Nimmo in a dog collar and the Vicar of Dibley…

Does Britain actually need an establish state religion/church?

All the evidence says no, whatever the likes of Melanie Phillps might think…

This is a seismic reversal, in a Church that for decades has been on its inter-faith knees before multiculturalism and abandoned the defence of Britain’s Christian identity. Can it be that Christianity is at last starting to defend western civilisation? Britain will only be saved from disaster if Christianity reasserts itself and defends what it was so instrumental in creating. Much more has to happen before we know whether this is just a flash in the communion cup; the story may be a way of testing reaction, or may represent a struggle within the Church, to be followed by a tactical retreat into the comforting and familiar oblivion of religious surrender. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable development.

(One suspects that here, Melanie is auditioning for the part of fifth horsewoman of the apocalypse… or she could just be as mad as march hare - doesn’t really make that much difference either way?)

Around 22% of British children are educated or at least part of their lives in a Church of England school and yet church attendances continue to fall year on year and are currently only being propped up (a bit) by importing Christians from overseas.

So if faith schools are somehow an investment in inculcating Christian values in the young and bringing them through into the body of the Church then its doesn’t look like much of investment to me - the returns seem pretty lousy.

In any given year, there are around 3-3.5 million children receiving their education in a state-funded Christian school with the greatest concentration of such schools to be found at primary level and yet, according the data from Christian Research, 11-14 year olds account for a mere 6% of Church congregations and 15-19 year old only 5% with the number of children and young people attending church having fallen, since 1979, by around 625,000 in those age groups - in just over 25 years Christian churches have lost more than twice their current congregation in those age groups despite having the advantage of educating a third of the population of the UK.

Where is the evidence to show that any of the privileges (and the state-funding for schools) accorded to the Church of England provides any real benefits to wider society?

Does the presence of the Church’s cohort of Bishop’s in the House of Lord or preferential seating arrangements for Christian MPs in the Commons result in better lawmaking?

Are we any more civilised a nation for having outdated blasphemy laws on the statute books or for having mandatory acts of worship and religious education in state schools?

And in what sense are faith schools any better than plain old community schools, given that the claim that they provide a better standard of education simply doesn’t stack up once you adjust the figures to remove the bias arising from the use of selection?

If we were to choose to follow the same path as the United States; disestablish the Church of England and enforce a strict separation of Church and State including an end to state funding of ‘faith’ schools would we even notice the difference? By any reasonable measure, America is a far more religious nation in its general character than the UK for all that its First Amendment expressly prohibits the establishment of an official state religion…

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And perhaps, in all this, that’s the question that the Anglican Church is most keen to avoid at all costs - what exactly do we get in return for having an established state church and everything that goes with that?

The last word on this I’ll leave to the philosopher, Betrand Russell.

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.”

Anyone ever notice how much time and energy religions put into telling people not think for themselves..?

*Title quote - HL Mencken

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

An infant school teacher is in the playground supervising the kids at break time when she spots one of the kids for her class, a little boy named Johnny who lives on the local council estate, skipping around the playground and singing at the top of his voice:

"The blacks have got all the houses, the black have got all the houses…"

Horrifed at hearing this kind of thing from a five year-old boy, she calls immediately Johnny over and gives him a stern telling-off:

"Really, Johnny. I don’t know where you’ve heard such a thing but that is terribly rude. You really must not be singing things like that in this playground! If I hear you saying anything like that again, then you will be sent to see the head teacher and I will be having a word with your parents."

Half and hour later and back in the classroom, the kids are having an RE lesson. It’s getting on towards Christmas and this same teacher is talking her class through the story of the nativity and starting to think in terms of casting for the school’s annual nativity play.

"And so Jesus was born in a stable… Now class, can any tell me why Jesus was born in a stable?"

Johnny’s hand shoots straight up in the air, ‘Miss… Miss… I know. I know!"

The teacher looks surprised. It’s a bit unusual for Johnny to be showing such enthusiasm in class.

"Yes, Johnny… And remember to speak up so everyone in the class can here you. So tell us, why was Jesus born in a stable…"

"Because… the blacks have got all the houses, the blacks have got all the houses…"

Quite when that joke originated I couldn’t say for certain - its certainly over 30 years old as I recall it doing the round when I was a primary school, myself and was thought an old joke even then.

What makes it interesting today is that it nicely illustrates just how little the rhetoric of racial prejudice has changed over the years, as can easily be seen in the lead story from today’s Daily Express…

No place at School if you’re British

SCHOOLs which are officially full are still taking in even more pupils – if they are migrants.

Yes, it’s yet another tale of migrants allegedly ’swamping’ our hard-pressed public services to ‘breaking point’.

As workers flood in from new EU member-states, the number of their children in schools has doubled in the last year.

The figure is officially around 11,000 but is likely to be much higher because many councils do not have a breakdown of where pupils come from.

11,000 new pupils sounds like a lot, doesn’t it, but lets put that figure into its proper context.

The school-age population of the UK (i.e. the number children from 4 to 16 years old) is somewhere around 10 million in total, which means that an ‘influx’ of 11,000 additional migrant children (mostly from EU accession countries) amounts to an increase in the school population of 0.1%.

By way of contrast, this 2004 report from the BBC indicates that in January 2003 the official figures from the DfES showed that there was a surplus in UK schools of some 700,000 places and while, no doubt, some of the those places have gone in the intervening three years due to school closures and amalgamation, it seems highly unlikely that the education system has managed to reduce overall capacity by anything like the extent necessary to give rise to the kind of ‘nationwide’ problem that Express purports to exist.

The migrants are being taken into schools where local children have already been turned away, and experts predict that the crisis will become worse when Romania and Bulgaria join the EU on January 1.

Up to 140,000 migrants are expected to arrive next year from those two countries alone.

Now we see clearly the motives of the Express; this is all part of their continuing campaign for restrictions on economic migration from the two new EU accession states, Bulgaria and Romania, who will join the EU from 1 January 2007.

The influx so far from Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia is creating a nationwide problem, but schools in East Anglia have been hardest hit because their high eastern European populations outstrip even those of London.

This is, indeed, true, as the most recent figures from the Home Office (pdf) clearly indicate…

14% of the total registered workers were based in London. However, as workers are based all over the UK the proportion applying to London fell from 25% in Q2 2004 to 9% in Q2 2006. As the proportion applying elsewhere has increased, the Anglia region has now overtaken London with 15% of the total registered workers.

As to why this should be the case, one has only to look at kind of job that migrant workers are filling why a considerable concentration of migrant labour has built in East Anglia over the last two years.

Accession workers are continuing to go where the work is, helping to fill the gaps in our labour market, particularly in administration, business and management, hospitality and catering, agriculture, manufacturing and food, fish and meat processing.

Agriculture and food, fish and meat processing are, of course, a major part of the economy of the region. They are, in addition, labour intensive industries in which there is a high demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labour relative to, for example, the service sector, which requires more of a skilled workforce.

In simple terms you have a considerable demand in that region for agricultural labour, one that a number of the last tranche of EU accession countries are well placed to fill; Poland in particular has a sizable agricultural sector and therefore a workforce capable of meeting that demand - which is what’s actually been happening.

What should be obvious from this data is that the Daily Expresses alleged ‘nationwide problem’ is not quite so ‘nationwide’ as they would like us all to believe. The reality is that some areas are experiencing short-term localised pressure on services due to an influx of migrant labour into their particular area brought about by the demand of their local economy.

The problem is essential one of bureacracy; the time-lag that exists between migrant workers arriving in a particular area and placing demands on the system and those workers showing up on the official statistics and, therefore, being factored in the calculations for Council’s revenue support grants.

This whole furore regarding the impact of migrant workers on local services kicked off in August in the wake of a letter from Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, the head of the Local Government Association, to Home Secretary, John Reid, which claimed that in some areas, Council Tax may have to rise by up to 6% in order to accomodate the increase demands on local services generated by migrant workers.

In a letter to Mr Reid, the Local Government Association (LGA) said dozens of councils were being let down by the current system which failed to compile accurate statistics on migration and left local authorities short of the necessary funding to provide services for those migrants. "There are a number of local authorities for whom the current system of measuring the number of migrants in specific council areas is failing to ensure adequate funding to keep council services to local people maintained," the LGA said.

"Working migrants have become an invisible population whose children need school places, who need to be housed appropriately and in some cases need social services," it said. "Official statistics have failed to reflect this."

As many as 25 councils, including Birmingham, Sheffield and Manchester, feel they are being forced to provide services to migrants whose existence has not been recognised in funding allocations.

The Guardian - 8 August 2006

And therein lies the nub of the issue, which is not about Britian being ’swamped’ by migrant Labour but about local councils complaining at the delay in them receiving their share of the economic benefits derived from it.

Anyone who has even a very basic understanding of Local Authority finance and, in particular, the various timings that apply to the setting of local authority budgets will see the LGA’s comments for what they really are; no more than the opening salvo in their negotiations with the Treasury for next year’s budget allocations, in which talk of a 6% increase in Council Tax rates is no more than a bit of blatant politicking that aims to rack up the pressure on the Treasury to increase next year’s grant allocations - all the more so far the reference to migrant workers needing to be ‘housed appropriately‘ when, in reality, Local Authorities are under no legal obligation whatsoever to provide accomodation to migrant workers except in the most extreme cases of hardship…

…and of 477,000 registered migrant workers entering the UK in the last two and half years less than 6,000 have made applications for income support and/or Jobseekers Allowance of which less than 800 were permitted to proceed for further consideration.

East Anglian schools have allowed extra pupils to join since the start of the academic year despite being officially full.

This is, in fact, nothing unusual at all, except in terms of the scale at which is currently taking place in some areas.

Local Authorities have a legal duty to provide a school place to each and every schoolage child in their area, irrespective of whether they have the capacity on paper to accomodate children moving to their area following the start of the new school year. Whether a particular family has moved to Boston, Lincs (the example used by the Express, below) from Kettering or Katowice is immaterial, the Local Authority must still provide any schoolage children in the family with a school place, even if that means a particular school taking them one even though the school is already full.

Head teachers have suspended rules governing how many children they are allowed to take.

Haven High Technology College in Boston, Lincs, is supposed to admit only 135 new pupils into its Year Seven classes – a figure set by the local education authority.

But because of high immigration into the area, last month the school had to suspend its limits.

Headmaster Adrian Reed said: "We were full in every year group yet, within the first few days of term, 30 families arrived at the door.

"All the schools were full, not only us, but it didn’t alter the fact that these children needed to be in a school."

And all these 30 families just happened to have 11 year old children seeking entry in Year Seven? I doubt that very much…

Unless evidence is provided to the contrary, I would suggest here that the Express is using the figures it quotes selectively (again) to create the impression that the ‘problem’ such as it is, is actually greater than it is in actuality.

A Year Seven admission figure of 135 pupils suggests that in total the school population of Haven High Technology College will be around 675-700 pupils, assuming that each ‘year’ has roughly the same number of pupils, although at the time of the school’s last Ofsted inspection (2001) Haven High had a total of 501 pupils - this figure may have increased since then - and the school was described by Ofsted as follows…

The Haven High School is a mixed 11 - 16 secondary school situated in the town of Boston in Lincolnshire, which serves an urban area of multiple socio-economic disadvantage. The percentage of pupils entitled to free school meals is above average and the level of social deprivation is recognised as being one of the highest in the county. Although designated a comprehensive school, higher-attaining pupils at the age of 11 are drawn off by two grammar schools and a few others are attracted to comprehensive schools serving more rural areas outside the town. Because of this the school has one of the county’s lowest attainment profiles on entry. Almost half of pupils have special educational needs. This is well above the national average. With just over 500 pupils the school is smaller than most other secondary schools. There are very few pupils of ethnic minority origin, seven only, and four pupils with English as an additional language.

You get the general picture - five years ago, this was the local ’sink’ school that picked up most of the less able and disadvantaged kids in the area, while the ‘brightest and the best’ were siphoned off into nearby grammar schools, and the difference certainly shows; Boston Grammar School, which is one of the two grammars drawing off the brighter kids from the area, entered 96 kids for GCSE’s this year of whom 97% got 5 GCSEs at grades A*-C (94% including both English and Maths), while the last figures available for High Haven show that 32% of its kids got 5 GCSEs at grades A* to C, but only 20% achieved 5 GCSEs at that level with both Maths and English included.

On the other side of the equation, we’re told that 30 migrant families sought entry for their kids to the school at the start of the school year, but not how many children those families were seeking to place at the school. That could as low as 30 - 1 child per family - it could be more; the report doesn’t say and I would suspect quite deliberately so, so as to, again, magnify the appearance of the problem and create the illusion of the school being ’swamped’ by migrants.

30 families on top of a school intake of 135 kids sounds a hell of lot…

30 kids on top of a school population of anything from 675-700, maybe more, doesn’t sound quite so unreasonable as you’re looking at one, maybe two, extra per class across the whole school - and you’ll notice that no information is given on class sizes at High Haven against which one could make a valid assessment as to whether it was really unreasonable to expect the school to take these extra kids on.

Again, the School’s 2001 Ofsted report, although now five years old, add some interest context to use by the Express to illustrate its contention that local services are being swamped by migrants.

First, the report shows the school to have quite a high turnover of pupils entering and leaving the school other than at the usual time of first admission (i.e at the start of Year Seven or at end of Year Eleven). In 2001, 55 pupils left the school completing a full five years schooling, while 42 pupils came into the school outside of its usual annual intake.

It would seem, therefore, than an influx of new pupils after the start of the school years is not that unusual for this particular school.

Data on class sizes also makes for interesting reading - the average class size for teaching in 2001 was 25.3 pupils for key stage 3, falling to 21.4 pupils at key stage 4 with an overall teacher to pupil ratio of 17.1 pupils for teacher.

Unless the school has expanded its intake considerable in the last five years without a parallel increase in teaching staff then it would seem that and additional 30+ kids from migrant families would not unduly over-burden the school in terms of its class sizes and pupil-teacher ratio.

Things may well have changed considerable in five years, of course, but on the basis of its last Ofsted report, High Haven does not seem incapable of accomodating additional pupils from migrant families provided the financial resources allocated to it are adjusted to take account of the increase in the number of pupils admitted to the school.

Of course, the views of the school are only part of the story, and often the least interesting part, which is why the Express now turn to parents living in the local area for something a little juicier by way of complaining.

Children whose parents had originally appealed in vain against the decision not to let them into Haven High were eventually offered a place. But those who did not appeal were given no second chance.

And that’s the fault of these migrant families? I’m sorry, but if you take a place elsewhere and don’t appeal the decision not to give you child a place at your first choice of school, then tough. It’’s your problem and nothing whatsoever to do with people moving into your area, whereever it is they’ve come from.

Local parents are furious. They say that not only are schools being overstretched but their children were turned down for places in the last academic year for lack of places.

And would still have been turned down for places even without these migrant families moving into the area, so really this is a zero-sum situation as those kids who didn’t get a place at their first choice of school wouldn’t have got a place at that school anyway, as without these additional migrant families coming into the system, the school would not have reopened admissions.

In fact, what this seems to imply is that parents who did appeal the decision not to allocate their child a place at a particular school may have actually benefitted from the influx of migrant families as the Express states that, "Children whose parents had originally appealed in vain against the decision not to let them into Haven High were eventually offered a place" - in other word, having reopened admissions to take children from migrant families, the school and/or LEA also reconsidered a number of appeals that had previously been turned down and gave those kids a place at the school after all - no doubt to appease the locals and keep a lid on tensions within the local community.

In which case it would appear that the parents doing all the complaining are the one’s who couldn’t be bothered to fight their child’s corner. Like I said, tough - I’ve got sympathy for that at all.

One parent said: "It’s so unfair. My son has had to accept a school that was his second choice.

"Now it turns out that the school he wanted to go to is opening its gates to pupils from eastern Europe – even though we were told it was full.

"There’s not much sense of justice. It’s a real worry, because I have a second son who will be choosing his secondary school in a couple of years’ time, and we don’t know whether he will be able to get in or not."

And while one can certainly see that the situation that’s emerged this year would cause some concerns as to the potential future impact on school admissions, any such fears can only be based on the assumption that nothing will be done address the additional demands placed on local schools. This is a ‘problem’ that could, and should, disappear as government statistics catch up with actual patterns of migration and the financial
resources allocated to schools are adjusted accordingly.

In short, by the time this parent’s second son is due to go to secondary school, there may well not be a problem at all.

In the same area, St Peter and St Paul Catholic High School has taken on an extra 65 children and is overflowing in each of its year groups, but has been given no extra money.

…Yet.

Which is a point that the Express have consistantly failed to address or even acknowledge this whole article, that the undeylying cause of current pressures on public services stems from the bureaucratic time-lag in population shifts in local areas filtering through into the official statistics upon which government grants to local authorieties are based - the simple fact is that a sudden influx of people into a local area for any reason and from anywhere will give rise to exactly the same short-term pressures on local services, if adequate provision for the sudden growth in local population is not made in advance.

The same issues would crop up if a major company were to suddenly relocate its business into the area and bring a large proportion of its existing workforce with it, as sometimes used to happen back in the days when Britain ahd a significant manufacturing sector. This is not an issue that is in any way unique to migration arising out of the accession of several new countries to the EU, its one that would arise from any sudden shift in population in a particular local area.

When eight eastern Euro-pean countries joined the EU on January 1, 2004, the Government underestimated how many workers would sign up to work in Britain.

As many as 600,000 are believed to have come here to find work.

Not all have stayed but, while at first the majority were young and single, an increasing number of families are now settling up and down the country, leading to pressures on local education resources.

Again, the actual Home Office data places these statement into their proper context, with the most recent accession migration report indicating that:

There were some 447,000 applicants for the Home Office’s Worker Registration Scheme between April 2004 and June 2006.

97% of migrant workers were working full-time and 98% of all applications for a National Insurance number were for employment purpose.

83% of registered migrant workers are aged between 18 and 34 years.

93% of registered migrant workers had no dependents living with them in the UK on registration and only 3% had registered dependents under the age of 17.

And as far as the overall economic impact of migrant labour is concerned, current estimates suggest that migrant labour makes up around 8% of the total workforce and yet contributes 10% of the UK’s GDP, while taking very little, themselves, out the system:

The numbers applying for tax-funded income-related benefits and housing support remain low. For example, only 5,943 applications for Income Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance were processed between May 2004 and June 2006, and of these applications only 768 were allowed to proceed for further consideration.

Home Office Accession Monitoring Report, April 2004 - June 2006

It’s also worth pointing out that one of the more interesting (and ironic) statistics to emerge from this latest raft of Home Office data is summarised here…

In many cases, Accession nationals are supporting the provision of public services in communities across the UK. Between July 2004 and June 2006, almost 6,500 Accession nationals registered as bus, lorry and coach drivers and 12,700 as care workers. There were 1,500 teachers, researchers and classroom assistants; 600 dental practitioners (including hygienists and dental nurses); and over 2,000 GPs, hospital doctors, nurses and medical specialists.

It seems that as much as migrant workers are giving rise to localised pressures on certain public services, in some cases they’re also the one propping up those services and enabling them to function in the first place.

How many kids, for example, would not be getting their first choice of school were it not for the 1,500 teachers, researchers and classroom assistants who’ve come to the UK from EU Accession countries - the Express doesn’t say, but then that’s because such information does not find in with their xenophobic agenda.

Recently the headmaster of a junior school in Wrexham complained that not enough money was available for the school to deal with its ever-increasing number of Polish children.

Similar complaints from school chiefs are being heard up and down the country.

And, of course, that’s fair comment - one cannot reasonable expect schools to take in additional pupils, and particular those requiring additional tuition to bring their language skills up to speed, without providing additional resources to those schools that are taking on kids from migrant families…

…but that’s not an argument against economic migration in itself.

What current economic data shows is that financial benefits of EU Accession to the UK Economy are considerable greater than its economic costs - there are, of course, social costs in terms of impact on local labour markets and wage levels, etc. but, for the purposes of this piece that’s a separate debate.

The real problem here is that bureaucracy, as ever, is creating a financial bottleneck that, at least temporarily, serves to prevent public services from benefiting from the overall economic impact of migrant labour - i.e. the taxes that migrant workers pay into the Exchequer.

Heavily centralised bureaucracies are simply insensitive to rapid changes in local conditions, this being a systemic problem in the manner in which local government and other public services are planned for and financed across the whole of UK.

To illustrate the point, some years ago while working for the NHS in community development, I happened to be meeting with a colleague who headed up the local Drug Action Team, and on that particular day, by complete coincidence, the Home Office announced that statistics for the previous year, obtained from from the Police, showed a significant rise in the street availability and use of heroin - and, of course, this was to lead to the obligatory consideration of measure to address this issue including the promise of additional resources for policing and for HM Customs and Excise.

Why this sticks in my mind is that both my own reaction, as well as that of my then colleague - and what he didn’t know about how the local drugs ’scene’ was playing out wasn’t worth knowing - was that to us this was old news that was at least a year to eighteen months out of date.

What we both knew very well was that the drugs ‘trade’ is pretty much as pure and unadulterated a form of capitalism as one will anywhere on the planet. In the abence of taxation and statutory regulation to ‘distort’ the market one can tell instantly both how extensive the current supply of particular drug is, and therefore both its availabilty and the extent to which its being used, simply from its current street price and how that moves over time.

About eighteen months before the Home Office announced that heroin use was on the increase, the street price of a bag of brown heroin (the kind that people smoke) dropped suddenly from around £30 a bag to £10 a bag - some dealers were even selling £5 baggies. That immediately tells you two things; first there’s a glut  of heroin on the local ‘market’ that has driven the street price down and, second, that the number of heroin users in the area is going to increase significantly over the coming months are more and more people can afford it.

The time for intervention to get on top of the problem was there are then, and not eighteen months later when the Home Office finally around to spotting what we’d known for over a year in its official statistics.

The same basic issues apply to the issue of migrant workers and public services - local councils will know pretty quickly when the demand on local services from migrant workers begins to increase, because they’re at the sharp end of trying to provide those services. The problem they face is that they lack the financial resources and, as importantly, the financial independence from central government necessary to respond adequately to those needs.

Only when the demand on services that local authorities are facing now finally filters through the official statistics, which could take a year or more, are they a position to evidence their need for additional resources to central government - its the system itself that renders local government incapable of responding to rapdi changes in local demographics and population.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, warned that poor levels of English among immigrant children could hinder the progress of existing pupils.

"The Government should be making sure local authorities have sufficient extra funds to cope with this," he said.

"Our schools should not have to cater for more children than they can reasonably cope with.

"They should receive extra funding to employ extra teachers in order to make sure their English is up to speed with their contemporaries."

Again, that’s a perfectly reasonable stance in the circumstances, although if I were Nick I’d be a touch more careful about throwing out the old canard about migrant kids hindering the progress of local children. Going back to the Ofsted report on High Haven Technology College, one of the more interesting statistics for that school was that more than half its pupils in 2001 were considered by the school to have ’special educational needs’ - although only 18 were formally ’statemented’ by the LEA.

Sure, you would expect that many migrant children will need additional assistance to bring their command of the English Language up to speed, but then you also have to consider that one of the upshots of ‘parental choice’ in school admissions is that where there is spare capacity in schools, much of it is to be found in the worst performing schools in areas with the highest levels of poverty and social deprivation, highest rates of children on free school meals and the highest levels of children requiring additional educational support; and these are areas with the kind of low-cost housing that migrants will typically move into on arrival in the UK.

Consequently, the assertion that migrant children might hinder the progress of existing pupils is, to say the least, a bit questionable - who’s to say that once their command of English improves it won’t transpire that its not ‘own’ kids, members of the great British social underclass, who don;t end up being the one’s doing most of the hindering.

Mark Simmonds, Tory MP for Boston and Skegness, accused the Government of "losing control" of immigration with "no idea who is here or where they are".

He warned that funding for local services did not "reflect the number of people who are living in the area".

 And as a Tory MP, he would say that, wouldn’t he…?

Although, interestingly, Simmonds’ entry of the parliamentary register of member’s interests includes a reference to a  donation to his ‘fighting fund’ from the Boston Potato Company and, indeed, the Electoral Commission’s register of donations to political parties shows that this company did make a donation of £1,500 to Boston & Skegness Conservative & Unionist Party on  2 June 2005 - one would guess that this covered local campaign costs incurred by Mr Simmonds during the preceeding general election campaign.

What makes this rather more interesting is that it would appear that this same Boston Potato Company is a significant employer of migrant labour - at least that’s the impression one gets from an article which appeared in the Guardian’s corrections and clarifications column in January this year and which looks at the seemingly growing Portugese community in the town, which now has an estimated population of 5,000 individuals:

Most Bostonians, of course, are decent people. Their town is not an aberration; it is just old-fashioned and poor, with virtually no experience of immigration. At the last census, in 2001, there were 55,750 people living in Boston, among whom the largest non-white community was the Chinese, totalling 161 people. The town, in other words, is a reminder of what most of Britain used to be like. As it was for the Jamaicans in London 50 years ago, so it is for the Portuguese in Boston today, but with better policing…

There is, of course, a good reason that thousands of Portuguese people have come to Boston: work, specifically gang labour, which is always plentiful. Mostly, this involves picking, grading, packing and preparing the nation’s supermarket food, the kind of honest but uninteresting work that only attracts those who really need it…

Marco Moreira, 24, is from Porto. He began working for the Boston Potato Company three years ago, along with his parents, as part of De Mello’s gang. Like many Portuguese, he has now moved on to a permanent contract, driving a forklift truck for £5.50 an hour. He works from 6am to 2pm each day, shifting endless piles of Vivaldi potatoes - "the potato for all seasons", but better known as a Sainsbury’s premium white…

So it would seem that if, as Mr Simmonds suggests, the government has ‘no idea who is here or where they are’, at least one of his campaign funders is a position to help out a bit, as it seems to know very well where a fair few of the local Portugese migrants can be found.

To be entirely fair to the Boston Potato Company I will make a point of noting that the Guardisn does describe the company as being an ‘enlightened employer’ and own that ‘provides free English lessons at Boston college for all employees’ - and frankly you can’t say fairer than that…

All of which bring us to the final sentence in the article…

A spokesman for the Department of Education said: "Any child regardless of background is entitled to an education."

And that’s all the DfES had to say for itself?

I guess it might well be, especially if the tack taken by the Express was to try and draw the DfES into commenting on specific cases or situations, which it certainly wouldn’t do.

Whether this is a fair reflection of the DfES’s thinking on this issue may be another matter entirely, the use of the term ’spokesman for the Department of Education’ appears to imply that the Express may have spoken to someone in its press office who, as a civil servant, would certainly not comment on the record on the political aspects of this story.

As closing statements go, therefore, this one seems rather redundant, unless the Express are trying to create the impression that the DfES are simply unconcerned by this whole business, when the reality is that our unidentified ’spokesman’ is simply not in a position to comment due to longstanding rules of civil service neutrality.

This is one of those situations where, if you genuinely want an ‘opinion’, you actually have to ask a politician - not that that would improve matters that much, these days as when it comes to politicians, and particularly ministers, opinions are treated rather like Kryptonite and are avoided at all costs.

And that, as a Labour Party member, I find extremely frustrating.

When one look at the real impact of migrant labour one finds that things are very different to the picture being painted by the xenophobic rhetoric of the right-wing tabloid press and yet, even when confronted directly by that rhetoric, as Hazel Blears was on last week’s Question Time, the response of government ministers amounts to little more than craven populism - Blears made a point of butting in to reassure a couple of obvious pig ignorant bigots that the government would, of course, be taking their concerns and those of people like them into account, even though all they were actually doing was parroting the kind of crap that the Express, the Mail and others have peddling for months in lieu of factual journalism.

Have we really become, as a political party so desperate to cling to power at any and all costs, that our own parliamentary representatives are now entirely incapable of taking a principled stand against racism and xenophobia when all the facts, the evidence and the statistical data are actually on ‘our’ side - assuming that our side is still the one that opposes racism, bigotry and prejudice in all its many and varied forms?

Sadly, too often these days one comes across statements from ministers in our own government which cause one to question whether the commitment to that principle really is what it used to be - and it’s really not much fun having to question something as fundamental as that on top of all the other principles and values that the party leadership seem to ‘left behind’ in their dogged pursuit of political power.

Why. for example, is the effort to expose Tory hypocrisy on this issue?

Mark Simmonds, the Tory MP quoted by the Express as castigating the government for losign control of immigration appears entirely happy to complain about the impact of migrant workers on his constituency while pocketing donations to his campaign funds from one of the main local employers of migrant labour.

How many other Tories are currently doing exactly the same thing - taking money, indirectly, from the very people who they claim should not be here in the first place?

Do we know? Do we even care?

And if we do, is it really too much to ask that Labour MPs and particularly Labour Ministers should have the courage to stand up to the right wing press, for once, and simple tell them the truth…

…that they are completely and utterly wrong.

I see that Blunkett’s memoirs are starting to appear in serialisation and already it seems that some interesting information is emerging…

Recalling his role in the war cabinet, he says: "I did two things, one that was good, and one that was not so clever. I asked rigorous questions to the point when Peter Mandelson said ‘Are you onside with Tony?’ and secondly I did not take enough notice because I was home secretary, and I did not argue enough about what we were doing presentationally about the dossiers. I just did not. There is no point pretending I did and I was right. I just did not." - The Guardian.

Is it just me or does the comment that ‘I asked rigorous questions to the point when Peter Mandelson said ‘Are you onside with Tony?’ appear to imply that Peter Mandelson, at that time a mere backbench MP after being sacked for a second time when the whole Hinduja passorts thing blew up in face, had a deeply intimate knowledge of the goings-on in the ‘War Cabinet’, as much as to suggest that he was either being extensively briefed, given access to minutes or even attending those meetings?

Funny, nothing like that was ever mentioned during the Hutton Inquiry?

Apropos of my previous post regarding the appearance in court, yesterday, of ‘ex-BNP member’ Robert Cottage on explosives charges relating to the discovery of bomb-making chemicals, rocket launchers and an NBC suit, it now appears that he may not be a ‘former member of the BNP’ as described in news reports but still an actual member of the party.

Cottage stood as a BNP candidate in the lcoal elections in Colne in May 2006, and must therefore have been a member of the BNP at that time. According to the BNP’s own website.

Membership is for the 12 months of the calendar year - January to December but those signing up from Oct 1st through to Dec 31st qualify for the following year’s card.

…in which case his membership of the BNP does not ‘lapse’ until 31 December 2006.

The suggestion that his membership had ‘lapsed’ before his arrest appears to have originated from comment given to the Burnley Citizen by Nelson BNP councillor Brian Parkinson, who said:

"I am very shocked and surprised to hear this. I am glad to hear that he is no longer a member of our party because the BNP wouldn’t want to be associated with this incident. It certainly wouldn’t condone the sort of thing he is allegedly being connected with."

Of course, under the BNP’s constitution, Mr Cottage could have been summarily expelled from the party by edict of Nick Griffin following his arrest, but otherwise there would appear to be no other means by which he could have stood as a candidate for the BNP in May of this year and yet have had his membership ‘lapse’ before being arrested last week, which makes Brian Parkinson look like a dickhead who doesn’t understand his own party’s rulebook.

The Police raid two houses. In one they discover "a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs", in the other the find "rocket launchers, chemicals, and a nuclear or biological suit".

It’s a terrorist plot, right? It’ll be all over the national news in a shot?

Wrong on both counts, apparently… because the two men caught with this nifty little haul of equipment aren’t Muslims, they’re BNP supporters, one of whom stood for election in Colne only last May.

Ex-BNP man held in ‘bomb’ swoop

A FORMER British National Party member has been arrested after police found bomb-making equipment at his house.

Police sealed off the home of Robert Cottage in Talbot Street, Colne, after storming the address and discovering chemical components that could be used to make explosives.

The 49-year-old has been arrested under the Explosives Act on suspicion of possessing chemicals that may be capable of making an explosion.

However Superintendent Neil Smith moved to reassure residents and stressed: "It is not a bomb making factory" and added that it was not related to terrorism.

Officers have been at the address since last Thursday and have been conducting door to door inquiries. Forensic officers have seized his car for examination.

Supt Smith added: "We are making inquiries in relation to what we have found at his address and to establish what offences he may have committed.

"He’s not a terrorist and it’s not a bomb factory but we are interested in what we have seized from his house. It will take expert advice to establish exactly what he has got.

"He was arrested under the Explosives Act on suspicion of possessing chemical substances that aren’t in themselves an offence to possess but if combined may be capable of making an explosion."

Cottage stood for the BNP in the May elections in the Vivary Bride ward of Colne.

However it is understood his membership had lapsed. - The Citizen, Burnley. October 2nd 2006

Yes, that’s right. That report is a four days old and it took the Police less than 24 hours to reach the conclusion that "He’s [Cottage] not a terrorist and it’s not a bomb factory" - and then the plot thickens…

Rocket launcher ‘found at dentist’s house’

A RETIRED Grange dentist is accused of being part of a bomb plot after a record number of explosives were seized in a Lancashire town.

David Bolais Jackson, 62, of Trent Road, Nelson, was arrested on Friday in the Lancaster area after leaving his Grange practice for the last time.

Jackson was charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose.

However, it is unclear who or what the intended target might have been.

Police found rocket launchers, chemicals, British National Party literature and a nuclear or biological suit at his home.

The find came shortly after they had recovered 22 chemical components from the house of his alleged accomplice, Robert Cottage, a former BNP election candidate, who lives in Colne.

The haul is thought to be the largest ever found at a house in this country. - North West Evening Mail, October 6th 2006

So now we’ve got explosives, chemicals, literature from and extremist political organisation and an NBC suit.

And then we have…

Chemicals Find: Two In Court

TWO Pendle men have appeared before Pennine magistrates accused of having "a master plan" after what is believed to be a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs was found in Colne.

Robert Cottage (49), of Talbot Street, Colne, and David Bolus Jackson (62), of Trent Road, Nelson, made separate appearances before the court charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose. The offences are under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

Both men were remanded in custody to appear at Burnley Crown Court on October 23rd. Cottage was arrested at his home on Thursday, while retired dentist Jackson was arrested in the Lancaster area on Friday, the same day as he left a dental practice in Grange-over-Sands.

The 22 chemical components recovered by police are believed to be the largest haul ever found at a house in this country.

Cottage is an ex-BNP member who stood as a candidate in the Pendle Council elections in May.

Mrs Christiana Buchanan, who appeared for the prosecution in Jackson’s case, alleged the pair had "some kind of masterplan".

She said a search of Jackson’s home had uncovered rocket launchers, chemicals, BNP literature and a nuclear biological suit.

Police raided Cottage’s Talbot Street home on Thursday of last week. The house was taped off while forensics officers searched the premises. Neighbours were told to stay in their homes for their own safety. Mr Cottage’s car was also taken away for examination.

Officers also made a thorough examination of Jackson’s Trent Road home and, again, officers were on duty outside the house. Forensics officers examined the property. - Pendle Today, 6th October 2006

So now the prosecutor claims that not only did Cottage and Jackson have the chemicals to make explosives, extremist literature, rocket launchers and an NBC suit but they also had a ‘masterplan’…

…To do what exactly?

Okay, don’t try to answer that, it’ll be sub-judice at the moment.

However, its worth noting that, thus far, the two of them have only been charged under the Explosive Substances Act of 1883, and not under any of the much more recent anti-terror legislation, despite the claim that they had a masterplan, which implies a definite conspiracy.

It’s also worth noting that the CPS’s own guidance on explosives offences refers to use of the Terrorism Act 2000 as follows…

Where possession of an explosive substance is linked to a reasonable suspicion that it is for a purpose connected with an act of terrorism, an overlap occurs between Section 57 and other offences.

Note that the requirement within the 1883 Act that an offender must knowingly have an explosive substance in his possession is absent from the 2000 Act.

There is no limit to the type of article to which Section 57 can apply. Where an offender is found in possession of not only an explosive substance but also other items which fall outside the definition of an explosive substance, and the circumstances give rise to the statutory suspicion under Section 57 a charge under this section is likely to be the appropriate charge with regard to all the articles.

Would you not think that, maybe, possession of rocket launchers and an NBC suit might just fall into this definition of ‘other items’?

And would I be wrong to suggest that had the names of the two men in this case have been Iqbal Ahmed and Rafiq Hussein and not Robert Cottage and David Jackson, then the response of both the police and the media to this case would have been very different….

…or am I wrong in thinking that it it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…?

Move coverage…

Blood & Treasure - large bomb apparently found, not many informed
Picked Politics - Ex-BNP member caught with “record haul” of explosive chemicals
Lenin’s Tomb - the bomb factory you won’t hear about

Unpeak has the answer - via Jarndyce at The Sharpener…