Wednesday 8 August 2012

He Hath Founded It Upon The Seas

Biblical and maritime. What could be more British than that?

Therefore, I profoundly regret the latest refusal of the Cayman Islands to disavow the status of a tax haven. The Cayman Islands, to which 60 per cent of nearby Jamaicans look and long for a return to British sovereignty 50 years on, while Britain without any self-consciousness claims one of Her Majesty's Caribbean, specifically Jamaican subjects as one of our own while he himself is visibly as  comfortable with being so claimed as he is with expressing his faith in public.

In return for the stamping out of all provision for the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories to function as tax havens (which not that all of them are – my native Saint Helena, for example, is not), students from those Dependencies and Territories must be recognised as home students. As part of a particular advocacy on behalf of their British people, the airport must be built on Saint Helena, there must be justice for Ascension Island and for the Chagos Islands, and there must be no concession whatever, whether on the sovereignty of Gibraltar, or on either the sovereignty or the oil revenue of the Falkland Islands.

Nothing less than the rights of entry, abode and work enjoyed by EU citizens must be extended to citizens of those states having the same monarch as the United Kingdom, or having the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the final Court of Appeal, or both. Serving and honourably discharged members of the Armed Forces must enjoy at least the same rights of entry, abode and work as are enjoyed by the most privileged category of non-British nationals, and they and their dependants must be classified as home students.

In October 2009, some cross-party body of MPs vetoed the new Constitution of the Cayman Islands because it said that that British Overseas Territory was a "God-fearing country based on traditional Christian values, tolerant of other religions and beliefs", and spoke of "a country in which religion finds its expression in moral living and social justice". Likewise, the new Constitution of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha was forbidden to express that British Overseas Territory's desire "to continue as communities of tolerance, with respect for government and the law, Christian and family values and protection of the environment".

So how, according to that body of MPs, could the Coronation Service continue to contain the words, spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury as he hands the Sword of State to the monarch, "With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss and confirm what is in good order"? Of course, it could not. That is the whole point. If being a British Overseas Territory precludes having a specifically Christian basis for the State, then it could not be more obvious what that says about the United Kingdom herself.

Hence a series of recent judgements, culminating, at least so far, in last year's jaw-dropping ruling that Christianity formed no part of the basis of the law. Much has been made by the militant secularist and homosexualist lobbies of the fact that the couple in that case was of West Indian origin, as those against whom there have been a number of such pronouncements from the Bench have been of either Afro-Caribbean or African background. Christianity in Britain is being defined as a black thing, and thus a product of post-War immigration, in the way that Islam in Britain is being defined (not entirely accurately) as a brown thing, and thus a product of post-War immigration.

This may be utterly absurd, although African and Afro-Caribbean observance is the reason why churchgoing is more prevalent in London than in the country at large. But it is also potentially useful. The ferocious anti-Christianity of the senior judiciary, of David Cameron's attempt to redefine marriage as not necessarily the union of one man and one woman (as the Attlee Government's landmark legislation regulating marriage simply presupposed because it was so obvious), of Jo Johnson's campaign to end prayers in the chamber of the House of Commons, and so on, is an attack on Black British culture as the attackers themselves have defined it. It is, in a word, racist. Let's see them get out of that one.

But they must not be assisted by the apparent inability of certain corners of the Commonwealth Caribbean to choose between serving God and serving Mammon.

10 comments:

  1. Its not David Cameron's 'attempt'. All but a handful of Labour MP's will be supporting equal marriage when it is debated, and some of the strongest supporters have been black MP David Lammy and Muslim MP Anar Sarwar

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  2. If it ever gets that far. And I wouldn't bet on either of them if it did. Perhaps especially not Lammy, a very ambitious man and not about to be either out-blacked or made unpalatable to Daily Mail Land.

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  3. It will, and both have been an active part of the campaign to make it so. I think you will have to accept that there are very few in the PLP who take your view now
    With regard to Lammy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWrN2D-dDI4

    Pretty clear where he stands

    Same with Anas Sarwar

    http://www.equalmarriage.org.uk/pledge#

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  4. I think you'd be very surprised.

    But, as I said, not going to be tested in this Parliament, not going to be a Government Bill on a whipped vote in the next one.

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  5. Oh, it will be discussed before the end of this parliament, Cameron can't afford to alienate the social liberals as well as everyone else!

    I think you are very out of touch with where Labour stands on these issues now. The evidence is plain enough. Civil partnerships were based on the marriage template for the purpose of transforming one to the other without needing major change

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  6. But that is simply not true.

    And I am very in touch indeed with what is going on around the Leader, in the PLP, etc on this. I do not deny flying kites from time to time when requested to do so. By no means only on this issue.

    There is a reason, or there are several reasons, why Labour in office has never attempted to do this and why it has never appeared in a Labour manifesto.

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  7. I too am in touch with many people, indeed, I spoke to an MP today.

    Labour introduced civil partnerships and did so using civil marriage as a template - the facts are there in the almost entirely identical legislation. This was devised with Stonewall who rightly thought this would be the simplest way of achieving the main step towards equality

    In August 2010 Ed Miliband made it clear that he supported marriage equality in a public statement, and he has since gone on to sign the pledge for equal marriage, stating
    " I strongly agree gay and lesbian couples should have an equal right to marry and deserve the same recognition from the state and society as anyone else."

    Pretty conclusive. The handful of Labour MP's who have opposed the change - all the usual suspects - will make very little difference. Perhaps you would like to provide the contrary evidence?

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  8. The vote on the floor of the House, or the far more likely failure of this ever to materialise there, will do that.

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  9. So you have no actual evidence other than what you hope to happen? I think it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Labour MP's will vote for equality, as their public statements indicate. With the support of the Liberal Democrats and half of the Conservatives this will pass easily.

    Perhaps you could tell me of another piece of gay equality legislation not overwhelmingly supported by Labour MP's in recent years? I'm looking for some sort of actual evidence or recent precedent or clear statement which backs up what you predict? I think you are not facing the reality of the contemporary Labour party, which is thoroughly committed to LGB equality

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  10. There is not now going to be a vote in this Parliament, but it would be a free vote on the Labour side if there were, and you really would get a hell of a shock. Not going to happen, though. Cameron has already lost half his party members to this, and there are still three years left to go.

    The same Labour free vote would apply to a Private Member's Bill in the next Parliament, which, like almost all such measures, would get lost up some procedural dead end. With, as sometimes happens, the very active connivance of the Whips' Office.

    At any given time, numerous Labour MPs owe their seats to Catholic or Muslim machines on the ground, which remain highly active no matter how far away from them the wider local electorate may have moved, a move which usually involves a withdrawal from active politics, leaving those machines intact.

    In periods of Labour Government, numerous other Labour MPs owe their seats to certain newspapers' having said "Oh, go on, then" to their newly Labour-inclined, or at least Conservative-disinclined, readers. None of those newspapers is The Guardian.

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