A period of opposition provides Labour members and supporters the time and the space to think through how it can set about renewing its structures, its systems and above all its ideas and policies. One area that will continue to be debated and discussed at local, regional and national levels is the need for electoral reform.
So far we have heard a good deal about PR, AV and House of Lords reform but little about any reforms to the voting process itself. One possibility is to investigate the introduction of compulsory voting. The term 'compulsory voting' is a bit of a misnomer, it really is about compulsory casting of ballots (pedantic I know but important nonetheless).
Personally I am quite attracted by the idea of making ballot casting compulsory, mainly because:
1. It can help improve turnout
2. It leaves parties free to campaign on policies, rather than focusing huge efforts on 'getting out the vote'. It can also reduce the impact of better finance campaigns and reduce the incidents of negative campaigning.
3. It can help create/enhance a sense of community, as everyone is in it together. It is also a means of reducing social exclusion where those that don't vote end up without any policies geared towards them.
I know that there are many reasons why we shouldn't make voting compulsory but I do think we need to have the debate nationally, indeed can we afford not to?
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Faith and politics can mix, indeed they must
A couple of years ago Michael Sandel delivered his excellent second Reith Lecture and looked at the relationship between morality and politics, more specifically the interaction between religiously inspired morality and politics. He argued, correctly in my view, that you cannot remove morality from political discourse and so it is far better to have it out in public.
As the recent protests outside St Paul's have demonstrated, in the UK we tend to discourage our clergymen from talking about politics and our politicians from talking about faith, we famously ‘don’t do God.’ Why?I believe that it has long been the case that too many people – particularly those who take a left of centre approach to politics – make the mistake of failing to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives.
With debate raging about the rise of the far-right and the failure of the body politic I wonder if it isn’t time for those who espouse the “progressive” agenda to debate just how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. Too often politicians try and avoid any discussion about religious values altogether – fearful of offending anyone and claiming that politics and religion should never mix.
In 2007, when addressing the 50th anniversary convention of his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, the then Senator Barack Obama, argued that the religious right had “hijacked” faith and divided his country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer. More interestingly he then went onto praise the people of faith who were using their influence to try to unite Americans against problems like poverty, AIDS, the lack of universal health care, Darfur and the effects of climate change.
Yet surely the reality of all political engagement is that we have to meet people where they are – even if we do not agree with or even approve of where they are. If so called ‘progressive’ politicians are to communicate their hopes and values in a way that is relevant to the lives of others, then they cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.In my view secularists are wrong when they ask – more often insist – that believers leave their religion at the door before entering into the arena of public debate.
The majority of great reformers in British history – from Wilberforce to Keir Hardie – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. I recognise that democratic engagement will and should make demands of religious believers. It will demand that those who are religiously motivated act to turn their concerns into universal, rather than faith-specific, values. Democratic engagement will also demand that the values espoused by people of faith be subject to argument and debate.
What is needed is a sense of proportion and a willingness – on the part of both believers and non-believers – to engage in public debate openly and fair-mindedly. Many people in Britain today are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion and politics.
This then is the challenge for those who describe themselves as progressive politicians. They too must become more “fair minded” more willing to engage with people of faith so that they might recognise some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of modern Britain.
As the recent protests outside St Paul's have demonstrated, in the UK we tend to discourage our clergymen from talking about politics and our politicians from talking about faith, we famously ‘don’t do God.’ Why?I believe that it has long been the case that too many people – particularly those who take a left of centre approach to politics – make the mistake of failing to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives.
With debate raging about the rise of the far-right and the failure of the body politic I wonder if it isn’t time for those who espouse the “progressive” agenda to debate just how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy. Too often politicians try and avoid any discussion about religious values altogether – fearful of offending anyone and claiming that politics and religion should never mix.
In 2007, when addressing the 50th anniversary convention of his own denomination, the United Church of Christ, the then Senator Barack Obama, argued that the religious right had “hijacked” faith and divided his country by exploiting issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer. More interestingly he then went onto praise the people of faith who were using their influence to try to unite Americans against problems like poverty, AIDS, the lack of universal health care, Darfur and the effects of climate change.
Yet surely the reality of all political engagement is that we have to meet people where they are – even if we do not agree with or even approve of where they are. If so called ‘progressive’ politicians are to communicate their hopes and values in a way that is relevant to the lives of others, then they cannot abandon the field of religious discourse.In my view secularists are wrong when they ask – more often insist – that believers leave their religion at the door before entering into the arena of public debate.
The majority of great reformers in British history – from Wilberforce to Keir Hardie – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. I recognise that democratic engagement will and should make demands of religious believers. It will demand that those who are religiously motivated act to turn their concerns into universal, rather than faith-specific, values. Democratic engagement will also demand that the values espoused by people of faith be subject to argument and debate.
What is needed is a sense of proportion and a willingness – on the part of both believers and non-believers – to engage in public debate openly and fair-mindedly. Many people in Britain today are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion and politics.
This then is the challenge for those who describe themselves as progressive politicians. They too must become more “fair minded” more willing to engage with people of faith so that they might recognise some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of modern Britain.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Time for a new liberation theology
Watching events unfold around the protests near to St Paul's Cathedral in London one could be forgiven for believing that faith is mainly about escapism and that it can rarely be a force for good in society. I am not so sure. The strap line to my blog reads as follows: "Aspire not to have more but to be more." These were the words of Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 by the pro-US military junta who then ran El Salvador.
Romero was an advocate of what became known as liberation theology, a movement which took root throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on helping the poor and oppressed, even if that meant confronting political powers. It was a theology that was later to be severely criticised as a "fundamental threat" to the church by one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now better known as Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past few years I have become something of an "armchair" Catholic. Why? Mainly because when I do attend mass I hear a good deal about the evils of gay adoption or about why I should no longer support Amnesty International but rarely do I hear any talk about the need for "preferential option for the poor." Our present Pope is, in my view, all to keen on encouraging his flock to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". So too with some of the clergy associated with St Paul's who appear to openly advocate the view that politics and faith are separate arenas and that the two cannot, indeed should not, mix. This results in the Christian faith becoming increasingly irrelevant to the life of the modern man.
By modern man I, of course, mean the "poor man". It is easy to forget that the vast majority of people who inhabit the planet with us live below the poverty line, in poor housing with no access to proper health care and a life expectancy that is decades shorter than that of the minority who live in the affluent west. In today's economic climate there is an even greater need for the voices of liberation to be heard. The present global distribution of goods and services allows a relatively small minority of wealthy groups and ruling classes to use their power and influence to perpetuate macro-economic and political structures which exploit the labour and lives of the vast majority of the planet's population.
Or take the deep and widespread oppression of women, along with the elderly, and children dependent upon women, in all patriarchal societies around the globe where women and their dependants are dehumanised and depersonalised. Are the Christian churches working to further liberate women in these settings, or do they silently support the structures that keep things as they are?
So we either need a new liberation theology or we need the church to be liberated. We need a church that offers hope – not a jam-tomorrow kind of hope, rather the hope that the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described as the "passion for the possible". We need a church that can show that it understands that what people need is to believe that things will, and can, be better. In other words, we need the church to renew itself and we need a theology that will actively seek and proclaim the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution – all people, regardless of their faith or their background.
The true message of liberation will always result in some people feeling uneasy. To side, as many liberation theologians in the 1960s and 1970s did, against injustice, to commit one's life to the poor is not a political stance but a moral one.
The true message of hope, of a promise that the world can be fairer, more just and less divided often results in giving comfort to the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. If that was what I could hear and reflect on each week I would have no problem getting up out from my armchair!
Romero was an advocate of what became known as liberation theology, a movement which took root throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s and focused on helping the poor and oppressed, even if that meant confronting political powers. It was a theology that was later to be severely criticised as a "fundamental threat" to the church by one Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now better known as Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past few years I have become something of an "armchair" Catholic. Why? Mainly because when I do attend mass I hear a good deal about the evils of gay adoption or about why I should no longer support Amnesty International but rarely do I hear any talk about the need for "preferential option for the poor." Our present Pope is, in my view, all to keen on encouraging his flock to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". So too with some of the clergy associated with St Paul's who appear to openly advocate the view that politics and faith are separate arenas and that the two cannot, indeed should not, mix. This results in the Christian faith becoming increasingly irrelevant to the life of the modern man.
By modern man I, of course, mean the "poor man". It is easy to forget that the vast majority of people who inhabit the planet with us live below the poverty line, in poor housing with no access to proper health care and a life expectancy that is decades shorter than that of the minority who live in the affluent west. In today's economic climate there is an even greater need for the voices of liberation to be heard. The present global distribution of goods and services allows a relatively small minority of wealthy groups and ruling classes to use their power and influence to perpetuate macro-economic and political structures which exploit the labour and lives of the vast majority of the planet's population.
Or take the deep and widespread oppression of women, along with the elderly, and children dependent upon women, in all patriarchal societies around the globe where women and their dependants are dehumanised and depersonalised. Are the Christian churches working to further liberate women in these settings, or do they silently support the structures that keep things as they are?
So we either need a new liberation theology or we need the church to be liberated. We need a church that offers hope – not a jam-tomorrow kind of hope, rather the hope that the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described as the "passion for the possible". We need a church that can show that it understands that what people need is to believe that things will, and can, be better. In other words, we need the church to renew itself and we need a theology that will actively seek and proclaim the liberation of people from poverty, injustice and persecution – all people, regardless of their faith or their background.
The true message of liberation will always result in some people feeling uneasy. To side, as many liberation theologians in the 1960s and 1970s did, against injustice, to commit one's life to the poor is not a political stance but a moral one.
The true message of hope, of a promise that the world can be fairer, more just and less divided often results in giving comfort to the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. If that was what I could hear and reflect on each week I would have no problem getting up out from my armchair!
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