Put the
Quakers back in charge of Barclays, which they founded, as they also founded
Lloyds. In what I wish that I could turn into something witty or profound, all
four of the Cadbury, Rowntree, Terry and Fry families were, and presumably
still are, Quaker. Banks once again run on the principles of Simplicity,
Truthfulness, Equality and Peace are exactly what we need. Likewise,
confectioners, among so very many other concerns. But most pressingly, banks.
All
retail banks should be transformed into mutual building societies, ironclad as
such by the Statute Law that already forbids building societies from engaging
in investment banking, and would therefore automatically forbid all retail
banks from so engaging if they had all been so transformed. I do occasionally
receive communications from people who cannot get their heads around that one.
But it is the law; look it up if you don’t believe me. And those people’s
complete inability to deal with the very concept of mutualism is an even
stronger argument in its favour.
The roots
of the American Republic, of the campaign against the slave trade, of Radical
and Tory action against social evils, of the extension of the franchise, of the
creation of the Labour Movement, and of opposition to the Boer and First World
Wars, are all in Catholic, High Church (and thus first Methodist and then also
Anglo-Catholic, as well as Scottish Episcopalian), Congregationalist, Baptist,
Quaker and other disaffection with the Whig Revolution of 1688, such that
within those communities, long after any hope of a Stuart restoration had died,
there remained a sense that the Hanoverian State, its Empire, and that Empire’s
capitalist ideology were less than fully legitimate, a sense which had
startlingly far-reaching consequences. Radical action for social justice and
for peace derived from testing the State and its policies against theologically
grounded criteria of legitimacy. It still does.
In
reclaiming, reconstructing and redeploying that tradition, each of those
communal bearers of it has a part to play. In the Quaker case, it is the Four
Testimonies, set within the present relocation within the Great Tradition, both
of the Puritan and Anabaptist movements behind the rise of the Friends, and of
the Radical Dissent to which they contributed so significantly and
substantially.
In large
part, that will involve the correction and redirection of Quakerism, especially
as it has usually manifested it since the middle half of the twentieth century.
However, it will also involve other correction and other redirection:
correction by, and redirection towards, the Simplicity, Truthfulness, Equality
and Peace to which Scripture and Tradition bear witness, making them
fundamental to all three of the authentic, indigenous, popular political
traditions of this country.
"Simplicity, Truthfulness, Equality and Peace"
ReplyDeleteSounds good to me. Having worked in financial sector in the United States for quite some time, I can attest that 21st century banking is in sore need of all four. Let the Quakers again be Quakers, and let them resume their rank and salubrious influence in our economy!
The only reason Quakers got into banking is because they were excluded from other professions on account for them not being Anglicans, prior to the Reform Acts. There is no evidence to suggest their businesses were any more or any less ‘moral’ than their non-Quaker competitors. All that we know is that they tended to treat the workers less harshly than many of their contemporaries – yet even the Titus Salts and John Brights of the 19th century still ensured workers did as they were told and received only a tiny fraction of the profits as their wages while the business owner reaped a fat reward. Social division was maintained and it would have been very difficult on the wages these ‘philanthropic’ employers paid, to afford decent further education to get oneself out of the thraldom of the factory system. Many businesses were owned by practicing Christians in the 19th century and many people – particularly the middle-classes – attended church. Yet the truth is, we live in far more socially moral times now than then.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that the appellation ‘Christian’ is supposed to imbibe a business or an individual with a greater morality than its or his or her neighbour? Even a casual glance at the social history of our forebears demonstrates that greater church attendance and religious belief didn’t make for a more wholesome society. Similarly, a look at our more Christian neighbours – esp. the USA – doesn’t provide much evidence that greater Christian belief and church attendance make for a better society in the present.
Hand on heart – how many people who are regular church goers would go to anyone in their congregation with a problem? I suspect the list of potential allies or helpers is very small – if within our own church we can’t find people we trust (or the number of those whom we trust is very small) why should we expect Christians elsewhere or in history to be replete with a greater morality and ability than everyone else?
Hence why would it be the case that if Quakers owned Barcley’s now, it would be a more moral bank? In fact the greatest irony is that as public limited companies, it is highly likely many Christian and charitable organisations own a considerable portion of Barcley’s et el. Yet few of these shareholders – particularly the pension funds that hold so much of the nation’s collective wealth – complain about behaviour, their interest is rather in fact dividends...
Ecclesiastes 7:10 is a Scripture so many of our Christian friends, eager to idolise a past that probably didn’t exist, should read!