I must question the suggestion being made in some places that Rowan Williams is selling out Tories in his pews. Admittedly, I am a Catholic, and most of us are so tribally Labour as to be more likely to stop voting at all (as many did in the Blair years) than ever to vote for anyone else this side of electoral reform.
But leaving aside how Tory the C of E's regular congregations have really been ever since the Thatcher era, Tories in the country at large are socially conservative, fiercely patriotic Keynes-Beveridge types, often municipal socialists in all but name, and very often beneficiaries of the entirely correct, immensely generous subsidies to agriculture because it serves greater social and cultural goods.
They are certainly not economically neoliberal, socially liberal believers in an Israel First, America Second foreign policy and therefore in what has always been the American-sponsored project of European federalism. In practical terms, they are no willing slashers of public libraries or of bus services.
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I am also a Catholic (and don't live too far from you) and by family history should also be part of the Labour 'tribe'. However, I have never voted Labour since the Wilson government brought in the abortion act in 1967, and the majority of whose members still troop through the lobbies to support abortion, embryo experimentation, and put Catholic adoption charities out of business where the needs of vulnerable babies and young children are sacrificed to appease the lifestyle of a small number of adults who are perfectly able to take care of themselves. Add to this the ruination of the education system, the crass financial mismanagement of the past 13 years, the horrendous PFI millstone for decades to come, etc, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn saying this, I am not enamoured by any of the other parties but I look upon Labour as being the worst of the lot and simply cannot support them. If the party were to return to its Methodist/Catholic social justice roots then I would gladly return.
Wouldn't we all?
ReplyDeleteBut is Labour really worse for having done these things, compared to the party that opposed them but then, given the opportunity, failed or is failing to reverse them?
The same also applies in the opposite direction on numerous points, of course.
Didn't about half the Tories in Parliament vote for the abortion reform? It is understandable to not vote Labour for this issue, but not to switch to the Tories. Do you really think Teddy Heath would not have at least let abortion pass?
ReplyDeleteOh, it was far higher than half. There were only 29 votes against the 1967 Abortion Act, plus the two tellers, and they were by no means all Tories. It was Margaret Thatcher who legalised abortion up to birth "under certain circumstances". Not the only reason why her name is abominated within the serious activist base of the pro-life, pro-family movements
ReplyDeleteThe same party also made divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract, abolished the legal censure against adultery and desertion that was their recognition as grounds for divorce, and abolished the fiscal recognition of marriage as a public good uniquely and in itself. Among other such offences almost too numerous to list.