Read God and Mrs Thatcher Online
Authors: Eliza Filby
God and Mrs Thatcher (39 page)
The minimal nature of the Anglican establishment, its relative openness to other denominations and faiths seeking public space and the fact that its very existence is an ongoing acknowledgement of the public character of religion are all reasons why it may seem far less intimidating to minority faiths than a triumphal secularism.
71
For this reason, Muslims leaders had not called for the abolition but for the extension of the Blasphemy Act, as the UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs put it: ‘Abolition would mean negative equalisation.’
72
Muslims did not seek to undermine all religions by the removal of the Blasphemy Act, but equal recognition of all faiths through the extension of it; sentiments with which Anglicans broadly agreed. Somewhat paradoxically, it was now non-Anglicans who were the most eloquent articulators of establishment religion. None more so than Jonathan Sacks, then Chief Rabbi-elect, who in his 1990 Reith Lectures,
The
Persistence of Faith,
advocated that in an age of pluralism and division, the Established Church expressed a desire and fulfilled a need for shared values that was supported by all faiths.
Nevertheless, familiar voices of disquiet could be heard within the Church of England from those who saw inter-faith dialogue as further evidence of the secularisation of Anglicanism. Some conservative Christians saw the Rushdie controversy in slightly different terms, contrasting the Muslim reaction to Rushdie’s book with the muted response from British Christians to the Martin Scorsese biopic
The Last Temptation
of Christ,
which had been released the same month as Rushdie’s novel. Traditionalist Anglican Rev. Peter Mullen wondered whether the whole Rushdie affair revealed not the intolerance within Islam but the paucity of sacredness within English Christianity:
Up until fairly recently in England, Christian classic texts were known by heart in large chunks. In the Muslim faith, children still learn the Holy Koran in its original language: these words are written not just in
the refined intellect, but in the heart … the words are truly made flesh, incarnated.
73
Contrasting expressions of faith in the 1980s: the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Church of England’s ‘unbelieving bishop’, the Bishop of Durham
Soon alliances were formed between conservative Anglicans, Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Catholic campaigner Victoria Gillick, for example, was surprised to find that her crusade against contraception had more support from non-Christian faiths than the mainstream Christian denominations. Just as liberal Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Anglicans were engaging in fruitful dialogue, likewise conservative factions within different faiths began to realise that they too had more in common with each other than with liberals within their own faith.
• • •
THE
1980
S WITNESSED
three great challenges to England’s Christian culture; a fight for the preservation of the Sabbath, an opportunity to abolish or extend the Blasphemy Act and the debate over the Christian content in classrooms. In the cases of blasphemy and Michael Cummings/Express Newspapers/N&S Syndication
Sunday trading the law remained unchanged and in the case of education it was actually reinforced. Yet this strengthening of the various aspects of Christian culture and law concealed the fact that Britain was a nation in transition. It was a defence born not out of confidence in the nation’s Christian identity, but out of a concern for it. A Christian-centric RE curriculum had been fought for in the name of heritage rather than evangelism; the cause against Sunday trading had been fought to protect the ‘traditional English Sunday’ rather than to preserve worship; and despite calls for reform, the Blasphemy Act was retained not because it was actually believed to be necessary, but out of an unwillingness to extend it to other faiths. What might be called the ‘heritage’ argument amounted to a post-modern, post-secular preservation of Christianity, one which tacitly recognised its decline as a belief system, but reflected a desire to sustain this tradition rather than fully adapt to the alternative. It might be added that in all three cases, neither Margaret Thatcher nor her ministers were the ones standing up for the preservation of Christian culture; and on Sunday trading, were the ones actually seeking to undermine it.
For a large part of the 1980s, the debate between Margaret Thatcher’s government and the Established Church had hinged on the rights and wrongs of capitalism. Any future divide between sacred and temporal power in Britain would largely concern the accommodation of faith in Britain’s secular plural society.
1
Margaret Thatcher to Woodrow Wyatt, 25 September 1988, quoted in Campbell,
The Iron
Lady
, p. 248
2
Simon Lee & Peter Stanford,
Believing Bishops
(London: Faber & Faber, 1990), p. 105
3
Parl. Proc.
, HL Debs., 25 April 1985, Vol. 77, Col. 988
4
Keep Sunday Special
Campaign literature, October 1988, Issue 5
5
Parl. Proc.
, HL Debs., 25 February 1986, Vol. 471 Col. 954
6
Ibid., HL Debs., 14 April 1986, Vol. 96, Col. 643
7
Ibid., HL Debs., 2 December 1985, Vol. 468, Col. 1071
8
Ibid., HL Debs., 16 December 1985, Vol. 469, Col. 539
9
Ibid., HL Debs., 14 April 1986, Vol. 95, Col. 626
10
Ibid., HL Debs., 21 January 1986, Vol. 470, Col. 158
11
The Guardian
, 18 May 1982
12
Winter,
Winter’s Tale
, p. 154
13
Dennis Kavanagh, ‘Thatcher’s Third Term’,
Parliamentary Affairs
, Vol. 41, No. 1, (1988)p. 6
14
Paul Whiteley,
Pressure for the Poor: the Poverty Lobby and Policy Making
(London: Methuen, 1987), pp. 146, 148
15
LPL, BSRP, SPC 1988, M/7, Michael Bayley, ‘A Christian Perspective on the welfare state’, 17–18 June 1988
16
Private interview with author
17
‘A Closet Capitalist Confesses’ printed in E. Younkins (ed.)
Three in One: Essays on
Democratic Capitalism 1976–2000
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 4
18
LPL, BSRP, Industrial Committee, ‘Lord Harris, Can a Christian legitimately support a social market economy?’ IC/15/86
19
Weekly Standard
, 22 April 2013
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/victorian-lady_716278.html
20
Private interview with author
21
Thatcher and the Scots
(BBC2, 2009)
22
Speech to General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 21 May 1988
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107246
23
Raban,
God, Man and Mrs Thatcher
, p. 68
24
The Times
, 1 June 1988; LPL, BSRP, SP, 27 May 1988
25
Michael Alison & David L. Edwards,
Christianity and Conservatism: Are Christianity and
Conservatism Compatible?
(Kent: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990)
26
Jenkins,
Calling of the Cuckoo
; Private interview with Michael Baughen;
The Purple, the
Blue and the Red, Episode 2: Marching As to War
(BBC, Radio 4, 1996)
27
David Jenkins, Hibbert Lecture 1985, reprinted in David Jenkins,
God, Politics and the
Future
(London: SCM Press, 1988), p. 114
28
Ronald Butt, ‘The Tension of the 1980s’ in Alison & Edwards (eds.),
Are Christianity and
Conservatism Compatible?
, pp. 30, 32
29
Conservative Party conference, 13 October 1989
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107789
30
Geoffrey Finlayson,
Citizen, State and Social Welfare in Britain 1830–1990
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), p. 381
31
Church Times
, 19 September 1988
32
LCA, SP, Additional Deposit Box I, Part II, Addresses, lectures and other papers 1989, Church Action on Poverty Lecture 1989, p. 14
33
Finlayson,
Citizen, State and Social Welfare
, p. 404
34
Stephen Green,
Serving God? Serving Mammon? Christians and the Financial Markets
(London: Marshall Pickering, 1996), p. 34
35
Martin J. Wiener,
English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850–1980
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), p. 116
36
Reprinted in Stanley Booth-Clibborn,
Taxes: Burden or Blessing?
(London: Arthur James Limited, 1991), p. 58
37
Brian Griffiths,
The Creation of Wealth: A Christian’s Case for Capitalism
(London: Hodder & Stoughton), p. 11
38
Green,
Serving God? Serving Mammon?
, p. 106
39
Parl. Proc.
, HC Debs, 13 February 1989, Vol. 147, Col. 64
40
Proc. of the Gen. Synod 1986
, 5 February 1986, Vol. 17, No. 1, p. 138
41
Malcolm Grundy, ‘Can we say “Thanks to Industry”?’,
Crucible
, (Jan–March 1986), p. 2
42
LPL, BSRP, IC, ‘Can a Christian Legitimately Support a Social Market Economy?, IC/15/86, p. 3
43
Raymond Plant, ‘The Anglican Church and the Secular State’ in George Moyser (ed.),
Church and Politics Today: The Role of the Church of England in Contemporary Politics
(Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1985), p. 329
44
LPL, BSRP, SPC, 1988, M/7, Minutes of the Social Policy Committee, 17–18 June 1988, pp. 2–3
45
Proc. of the Gen. Synod 1990
, 7 July 1990, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 490
46
John Rylands Library, Methodist Church papers, Division of Social Responsibility, Box 37,
Correspondence and associated papers, minutes and working papers of ethics of Wealth creation working party, 1989–1991, 31 January 1991
47
Leo Abse,
Margaret Thatcher, Daughter of Beatrice: A Politician’s Psycho-biography of Margaret
Thatcher
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1989), p. 198
48
Ibid., p. 207
49
Geoffrey Alderman,
London Jewry and London Politics, 1889–1986
(London: Routledge, 1989), p. 119
50
Private interview with Jonathan Sacks
51
Speech to Board of Deputies of British Jews, 15 December 1981
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104762
52
Speech to Finchley Anglo-Israel Friendship League, 24 June 1965
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/101293
53
Speech to Finchley Anglo-Israel Friendship League, 10 January 1972
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102175
54
British embassy in Jordan to FCO (MT connections to Israel) 28 February 1975
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110906
55
Margaret Thatcher,
Downing Street Years
(London: HarperCollins, 1993), pp. 509–10
56
L. Abse,
Margaret, Daughter of Beatrice
, p. 198
57
Immanuel Jakobovits,
From Doom to Hope: a Jewish View on Faith in the City
(London: Office of the Chief Rabbi, 1986)
58
Speech at dinner to Lord Jakobivits, 21 February 1991
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108261
59
Speech at St Lawrence Jewry, 4 March 1981
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104587
60
Whitehouse,
Whatever Happened to Sex
, p. 25
61
The Crisis in Religious Education
(London: Education Research Trust, 1988), p. 4
62
The Times
, 24 November 1987
63
Guildhall Library, Graham Leonard Papers, Box 5/2, Education Reform Bill, John Lyttle, Background information and suggested amendments. No date
64
GL, GLP, Box 5/2, Education Reform Bill: Individual correspondence, 24 June 1988 (name withheld)
65
The Guardian
, 3 September 1987
66
Tariq Modood,
Racial Equality: Colour, Culture and Justice
(London: IPPR, 1994);
Not Easy
Being British: Colour, Culture and Citizenship
(Stoke-on-Trent: Runnymede Trust and Trentham, 1992)
67
Paul Weller,
Mirror For Our Times: ‘The Rushdie Affair’ and the Future of Multiculturalism
(London: Continuum, 2009) pp. 73–79
68
The Independent
, 21 February 1989
69
The Independent
, 3 August 1989, quoted in Weller,
Mirror For Our Times
, p. 86
70
The Independent
, 3 June 1989
71
Tariq Modood, ‘Minorities, Faith and Citizenship’, in
Discernment: A Christian Journal for
Inter-Religious Encounter
, Vol. 6, No. 2, (1992), p. 59
72
UK Action Committee on Islamic Affairs,
The Need for Reform: Muslims and the Law in
Multi-Faith Britain
(London, 1993), p. 39
73
Peter Mullen, ‘Satanic Asides’, in Dan Cohn-Sherbok (ed.),
The Salman Rushdie
Controversy in Interreligious Perspective
(Lampeter: Mellen, 1990), p. 33
