Over The Arch

Keir Starmer would have expelled Desmond Tutu, David Lammy would have apologised for him, and Priti Patel would have banned him from the country, if she had ever heard of him. All of those things would also have been true of Nelson Mandela. And none of them should come as the slightest surprise.

Throughout the existence of apartheid South Africa, its two staunchest allies were Britain and Israel. It was supported by British Governments of both parties. Opposition to it in Britain was confined to the churches, to a few extremely liberal upper-class Tories, to the Liberal Party, to the Labour Left, to the Communist Party, and to the Far Left. The last three had some influence in the trade unions and in the student unions, but beyond that all six were politically marginal.

Tutu came from the very traditional Anglo-Catholic background that was definitive of Anglicanism in Southern, Central and West Africa (although not in Nigeria), as well as in much of Tanzania. Think of Trevor Huddleston. Tutu wore the gear to the end, and his resistance both to the apartheid regime and to the significant failings of what has come after it was incomprehensible except as the practical expression of his incarnational and sacramental faith, while his own considerable errors, notably on assisted suicide, were tragic manifestations of the failure to be fastened to the Rock of the Petrine Office.