Ed West travels to Brighton to meet the people at the sharp end of Britain’s homelessness crisis
‘I know homeless people who’ve taken a beating. Sometimes it’s from other homeless people and sometimes it’s from people just on their way home. It’s scandalous that poverty is seen as something only in developing nations; it’s true, Africa does have problems, but there’s a lot of poverty here in Britain.”
Brighton has never been my favourite place, I admit – pretty, maybe, but also seedy and sinister, a town with terrible alcohol and drug problems. But I’m down here, feeling a bit odd in my work suit, the only person in town who doesn’t dress like a bicycle courier and sport a tattoo and long, scraggly hair and bits of metal in their head, because we were fascinated to read about Laurence England, a 31-year-old Catholic who for the past four weeks has been living out of his car, while writing his blog, That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill (you can find it at http://alturl.com/wj36).
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Tags:Brighton·Homelessness
Ed West discusses faith, feminism and Dawkins with the author of this summer’s most talked-about religious novel
7 August 2009
The Catholic Herald
For the first time in about seven years the most talked-about religious novel of the summer is not one of the Da Vinci Code’s step-children about conspiracies and lost arks, but a story set in the more historically accurate, but equally fantastic, world of a 16th-century Italian convent.
Sarah Dunant’s Sacred Hearts, which takes place in the aftermath of the Council of Trent, has received rave reviews in the Times, Telegraph, Financial Times and Washington Post, and has already been serialised on Radio 4.
The story opens with the arrival of 16-year-old Serafina, a spirited young romantic who has been sent against her will and that of her rather flaky-sounding lover on the outside.
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Tags:Catholic·Da Vinci Code·Sarah Dunant
Two thousand years after St Paul’s birth Syria is still home to a thriving Christian centre where Christ’s language is spoken, finds Ed West
From The Catholic Herald
10 July 2009
Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision: “Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” - Acts 9:10-12
It was one of the defining moments in history, transforming Christianity from a Jewish cult into the world’s foremost religion. Today Straight Street, a mile-long thoroughfare running east to west, laid out by the Greeks, is a thriving commercial hub as it was in Paul’s day, although after years of shop and house owners progressively taking liberties it is only a quarter as wide.
The House of St Ananias still lies to the north of the Roman-built Bab Sharqi, one of seven ancient gates to the city. The next gate along, Bab Kisan, is where Paul was lowered down into a basket to escape an angry Jewish community a couple of years after his conversion.
Nearby is the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, St Mary’s (Mariamie), which for the celebrations played host on the Friday night to the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra. It was a beautiful ceremony, a mixture of east and west, like the Syrian Christians as a whole. Ignatius IV, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, afterwards told the assembled faithful to come back washed in the Holy Spirit (it was translated to us as “we hope you come back washed”, but I’m assuming it was not a criticism of our body odour). Outside in the street the Orthodox had put up a banner welcoming all visitors to Damascus for the Year of St Paul.
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Catholic Herald
May 29, 2009
Archbishop Vincent Nichols’s installation took place in a world considerably changed from nine years ago when his predecessor Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor was “enthroned”, as they once called it.
Different not just because the world economy has gone south, or that we have far tenser relations between the Christian and Muslim worlds, or even that the earth’s health is now slightly worse than a 60-a-day smoker’s.
The major difference is the growth in infantilising social networking websites, so that this installation was the first in the era of Twitter, the social networking site utterly baffling to the non-initiated (“You write something, anything, about what you’re doing or thinking, but you only have 140 characters in which to write it, and people follow you, and you follow them” – all of which leads to the obvious question: “Why?”)
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From The Catholic Herald, May 8
The Rotten State of Britain
Eamonn Butler
Gibson Square, £11.99
When the Conservatives come to power next spring it is thought they may hold a national audit to assess the state of the country’s economy and assets, and to find out where all the money has gone. They could start by reading this jaw-dropping book by the Adam Smith Institute’s Eamonn Butler.
New Labour came to power 12 years ago with a booming economy, overflowing coffers and enormous good will from most of the population. They’ve left Britain almost £2 trillion in debt, a broken society and a semi-police state where record number of children are left in care, the public is fearful both of thugs and police, school can’t stop teachers quitting despite record spending in education, and where public servants of all stripes are viewed as enemies.
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown wasted phenomenal amounts of money on social engineering, most of which either had no effect or made things worse. They spent an extra £1bn on education for children in care, which failed to raise their pass rates above the 12 per cent barrier. In fact, they have spent enormous amounts tackling poverty, and yet more people fall below the poverty line with each initiative – hardly surprising as we have a system where three quarters of the poorest households would be financially better off splitting up.
Labour’s expensive education policies have been a failure. The gap between state and comprehensive schools increased, and that is despite 27 per cent of state school pupils receiving private tuition. In 2007 – a boom year – a staggering 1.2m young people aged 16-24 were not in education, employment or training, costing us £3.65bn a year.
By 2007, 21m people were claiming state benefits, up from 17m in 1997, including 5m people of working age doing absolutely nothing – by that year 39 per cent of people received benefits of some kind, which are supposed to be for the poorest. But who can blame then when tax for the low and middle earners is so high?
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From the Catholic Herald
Britain’s brilliant ambassador to the Holy See talks to Ed West about seminary, Blair and when the Pope will come to Britain
24 April 2009
I have to confess I was apprehensive about interviewing Francis Campbell, Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See. Interviewers like controversialists, and diplomats are trained to speak without saying anything.
But the fact is, and I don’t want to nominate myself for the Order of the Brown Nose here, that Campbell is a lovely man, decent and friendly and honest, and confirms all my best prejudices that when Ireland left the union the United Kingdom lost a natural race of ambassadors.
Born and raised in Newry, on the Down-Armagh border in Northern Ireland, he is our man in Rome in every sense, the first Catholic to represent this land since relations were broken in 1534.
Was it controversial, I ask, for an Ulster Catholic to work for the Crown?
“I have received nothing but support and encouragement,” he says. “Traditionally this was a post that was restricted to non-Catholics. The Government decided in 2005, after consultation with the cardinals, to change that. We were not alone in having that rule - the Germans had it until 1948. We maintained it until 2005 when it was decided the best person for the job should do it irrespective of their religion.”
We meet at the Foreign Office building in Whitehall, which takes me through the splendid Victorian corridors built in an age when the British emissary was second only to God himself in certain parts of the world, and down into the dingy and cavernous bunker downstairs (where Churchill ran the war effort) and finally to a bland modern office.
Campbell is in London for a regional get-together of ambassadors, which he describes as “back-to-back meetings with experts and ambassadors talking, on migration, Middle East peace process”. Not the sort of thing many of us would enjoy, but he gives the impression that’s it all quite gruelling, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Does he enjoy the social life out in Rome? He laughs, and shakes his head: “I would gladly forsake a lot of the social stuff. Your life as ambassador is like having two jobs. There is an office life, meetings and interviews. Then there is the other side, where you are the representative of Her Majesty’s Government, which is important but it’s often seven days a week, because a lot of religious events are held at weekends. You can go three or four weeks without a day off.
“I usually take church in Latin, because no one recognises me. There’s an expectation that comes with job, and it’s your day off. Otherwise I tend to go to Italian-speaking church but I tend to miss out on some of the sermon.”
Sunday could have been his working day if things had turned out differently. Before entering diplomacy Campbell spent four years in seminary in Belfast, where he took the first order.
I’m sure everyone asks but I have to: why did he leave? “I went into seminary straight after school,” he says: “I wanted to see more, do a bit more, I took time out, I became restless. I love the study of politics. I studied it even in seminary. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the priests I have come across in my life, in parishes and schools. I wouldn’t have benefited so much without them, it’s an inspiring way of life. Seminary was the most formative period of my life.”
Campbell was active in politics from 16, inspired by John Hume, later a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to join the Social Democratic and Labour Party. “He believed that the European Union held out a model for reconciliation along Franco-German lines,” he explains. “This was a model that could work in Northern Ireland.”
Having attended Queen’s University Belfast, the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium and the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1997, and then, from 1999 to 2003, spent four years as policy adviser to the Prime Minister. He still has warm words for his old boss.
“His superhuman ability to absorb pressure is one of the best I’ve ever seen,” he says. “The rest of us would go under; it’s a real skill to have so many balls in the air simultaneously.”
He also applauds Blair’s “sheer commitment to the peace process in Northern Ireland which was daily, hourly. John Major too started that. Tony Blair followed on what John Major started.” He says of the recent murders that “the overwhelmingly majority of the population are not supportive of these people. Actions designed to cause division have not worked, they have brought people together.
“It does cause fear. But is it a return? No, it’s an attempt by a small minority of people to drag us back. When you go home now it’s a radically different place.” He laughs, then shows the characteristically black humour of the Northern Irish: “It’s so radically different in many respects it ceases to be home.”
Tony Blair recently said he always played his religion down for fear of being labelled a “nutter” but Campbell says it’s not something he ever experienced himself. “I certainly haven’t felt in my life that religion is something I have to put behind me,” he says.
Campbell went with Blair to see the Pope in 2003 and they attended Mass together. Did he see signs of Tony Blair’s move towards Catholicism?
He replies: “I’ve read so much about this subject and am always fascinated by the degree to which Tony Blair and the Holy Spirit were both left out of the equation. There were other people claiming influence left, right and centre. The only indication I had is we would have gone to the same church as parishioners of Westminster Cathedral. Sometimes I would go to evening Mass and I’d come in and see four or five familiar faces, the security people in plain clothes. And church is supposed to be time away from work! That’s the only indication I knew.”
Many of us over here tend to think of Labour-ruled Britain as an excessively secular country run by people who see the Catholic Church as a slightly camper version of the Taliban. But, as Campbell explains, collaboration between Britain and the Holy See is strong.
“The Vatican’s critique [on world affairs] would be different, but primarily the structure of the Catholic Church, the fact that the Holy See touches 17 per cent of the world’s population, means that it has access to the grass roots that perhaps we don’t have, and knowledge that feeds into our policy making.
“From the Vatican’s point of view, this is quite a strong period in their relationship with Britain. In the past six years we have had four prime ministerial visits. In the previous 30 years we had one. We’re not keeping an embassy open for sentimental reasons: it has to be relevant to our international objectives. And there is a rich exchange.”
Before Campbell arrived there was a reduction in the British presence in the Vatican, which was taken as a snub. He tells me they are beefing up the mission once again - a deputy ambassador will be appointed in September.
And, I ask, will the Pope be visiting Britain any time?
He laughs an I-knew-you’d-ask-that laugh. “It’s now a question for the Holy See, who are clearly aware of the interest of the British Government. The Prime Minister extended the invitation on February 19 when he was in Rome. The Vatican is giving it serious consideration. There are conversations going on between the Nuncio, the Holy See and the cardinals of Edinburgh and Westminster. If it were to happen we would probably have nine or 10 months’ notice. And then I would kick in again.”
He’s met Pope Benedict several times personally. What does he make of the man?
“He gets unfair treatment from sections of the media. There were certain depictions given of him in the British press at the time of his appointment - the word ‘Rottweiler’ was used - rarely have I come across a situation where the actual person is so different from this profile. He’s a very kind, gentle, intelligent individual. He always asks very pertinent questions, he’s always on top of the details of the United Kingdom, interfaith relations, the religious make-up of the country.
“There are separate discussions that Fr Lombardi, the Vatican’s press secretary, has mentioned, about whether or not the communications infrastructure needs to be restructured, and that will be very much an internal Vatican issue. But they have shown the self-knowledge that they will have to look again at the communications structure. I would separate that point from any critique of the Pope.
“Between the UK and the Holy See there will never be a direct line of alignment of interest. A diplomat’s job is to work on those areas we cooperate on and keep talking about those areas where there is disagreement. Some cannot be bridged in a short period of time. There’s a constant flow of information. On international development there is disagreement. It is our task as diplomats on both sides to actually find a way through and ensure a strong relationship exists.”
As I leave he is off to attend a parliamentary meeting on global poverty. These are the things he cares about and this is what, he believes, Britain and the Vatican can help together: climate change and the environment, inter-religious dialogue and disarmament, ecumenical relations and migration.
“Sitting at St Peter’s at the Easter and Christmas celebrations my immediate neighbour is the Moroccan who is a Muslim,” he says. “Behind me I have the Turkish and Japanese ambassador. You really have inter-religious dialogue all around you.”
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Daily Telegraph blogs
As my colleague Damian Thompson has reported, the taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission has spent your money putting together a Muslim Women Power List 2009.
If the exercise was to show how much enterprise and initiative Muslim women have brought to new Britain, how come the list is full of public-sector quangocrats and academics? Look at this lot. As someone posted on Damian’s blog: “Not one of those women has a job. Just checked again - no, not one.”
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Daily Telegraph blogs
I never saw the point of lap-dancing clubs. Why not just go to a brothel? I wouldn’t go to a pub where I could only look at the beer, nor a restaurant where I sat there salivating over food before being kicked out by some Russian bouncers. I hate to compare women with meat but that is, after all, the point of these places.
It looks like a lap dancing club is opening around the corner from me, much to the fury of residents. Crouch End is Guardian-reading country. A middle-class Lib Dem-voting ward inside Labour Haringey, its cafes have pictures of Joe Strummer and Che Guevara on the wall and bland leftish slogans about rebellion, while the people buy organic, ethically sourced food. Even the cocaine is Fairtrade.
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March 23rd, 2009 · Telegraph
Daily Telegraph blogs
Even though I’ve given up smoking, and it makes me feel as smug as a Liberal Democrat on Comic Relief night, I still feel a part of England died on July 1 2007, when they brought in the ban.
In the part of London where I work, 19 pubs have gone under since England went smoke free. This tallies with a Telegraph report that we now have 6,000 fewer pubs than a decade ago.
The pub is a cornerstone of British life, perhaps the only one that is still recognisable. Our churches are empty, our post offices are closing down, and our schools are alien places governed by strange rules.
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Daily Telegraph blogs
One of my favourite expressions of all time is “the silly led by the sinister”, coined by Julie Burchill to describe the February 15, 2003 London marchagainst the Iraq War. Alongside the usual loopy commie throwbacks, Islamist grievance-mongers and Quakers were the much larger “not in my name” crowd, consisting of hundreds of thousands of moronic, spoilt middle-class trustafarians defending one of the world’s worst mass murderers. It was political protest as a day out, risk free agitation that gave the participants a warm glow inside.
It was a fun day out, for sure. Back on planet earth Saddam ran his regime with such brutality and terror that he had a secret police force within his secret police force. Britain and America had tried everything in the previous 12 years to get rid of him - we forget that Blair had been trying to get rid of him since 1997 - but the inescapable conclusion was that the only way the Iraqi people would ever be free would be for the Hussain dynasty to be removed by force.
The protest attracted a cross-section of British society. Out came the Christians, who never made a squeak of protest when Saddam gassed theAssyrian Christians in northern Iraq. Along came the trade unionists, who stayed silent while Saddam murdered their fellow workers and rounded up thousands of leftists. Here were the feminists, who were strangely coy while Uday Hussein was driving around the streets of Baghdad raping and torturing women at will.
That protest inspired probably the best political book of the decade - not Ian McEwan’s Saturday, but Nick Cohen’s What’s Left.
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