Public Life: Values

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, this is one of those debates where you want to lock the doors and start the conversation now, as is often the case, I find, when the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, introduces a debate. His debates are never dull, and he always starts us off with such characteristic thoughtfulness that the conversation feels like it is only really beginning now. In three minutes, I cannot give an opposition response to the range of views expressed or even to his opening statement, so I shall take the opportunity of giving a few thoughts of my own on what we mean by values and on what kind of conversation we can have.

There have been various attempts over the years to produce lists of British values, many of them articulated today and all of which I would subscribe to. I even sat briefly on a committee whose job was to review the book which was given to people to learn what it meant to be British before taking a test to be allowed to become a citizen. But even when really good, commendable lists of values come out, they are rarely lastingly satisfying. Somehow, lists of abstract values do not seem to have traction with people. I think that the reason is that, in the end, their meaning is lodged in the context from which they grew and the purpose they serve. In the end, our values come back to the story that we tell about ourselves as a people.

Any list of concepts in the end offers too thin an account of who we are, what we value and what we are about to be able to serve a useful purpose. If we describe a list of British values to our children, to migrants or to other countries but do not tell them the stories of how those values grew up and of the way in which the culture shaped them, was shaped by them and changes over time, why do we expect them to embrace them and take them to their heart?

So, shared values are not enough. I want to go back even further than Locke. The American ethicist Stanley Hauerwas illustrated that point by comparing the Stoics with disciples of Aristotle. He said that they shared the classical values of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice, but that the Stoics saw them as values that you adopt because you are expected to —essentially, values were contractual. Aristotelians did not see it as being about presentation; rather, virtues were essentially character traits which you acquired over a long period. A virtuous person was one who became habitually virtuous spending years learning and practising those virtues.

If we want our citizens to embrace a set of values, then they—we—need to know why. We should not just set out propositions to assent to; we need a kind of culture, an ethos, a national, living, breathing culture which we all absorb and change over time through repeated practice. We need to raise and educate children and welcome new citizens into a living culture where we all model those values. That includes government and politics. If we want people to treat others with respect, even if—or especially if—they have a different view of what is right and good, then so should we. And politicians, myself included, are not very good at this. If we want people to act in the best interests of their community or their country, we need to find a way in which they do not just look out for themselves but are encouraged by seeing that we take political decisions and organise public life in a way which puts community at the heart both of deliberations and of service delivery.

What Aristotle and the modern virtue ethicists like Hauerwas understood was that if you do something repeatedly over a long period, it forges your character. You might start out consciously modelling something, but in the end you are changed by it. If we want to end up changing other people, maybe the starting point is changing ourselves.