Social Cohesion and Community during Periods of Change

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow a fellow Orielensis, although I am afraid I have a few years on the right reverend Prelate—several, actually.

I would like to speak directly to the leaders of the Church. As a member of the Church, about which I care deeply and that is why I am speaking, I speak in some despair and in sorrow rather than anger—but with a little bit of anger as well. I join my noble friend Lord Bellingham in regretting the manner in which the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury was, frankly, driven out of his post in a sort of witch hunt. Who, even 40 years ago, seeing John Smyth taking young adults to a shed at the bottom of his garden and flogging them, did not know that that was, at the very least, weird and creepy? It was not the most reverend Primate who was to blame; it was a huge number of other people who did not take action.

I saw that the most reverend Primate’s speech was criticised for some levity. I read the speech—I was not here, unfortunately—and I thought he spoke very well. People must move on; he has taken responsibility for the whole Church, and the Church—and we—should be grateful for that.

I turn to the role of the Church in social cohesion, which I would have thought was pretty central and fundamental to the role of the established Church of England. I am speaking here of the Bishops’ Bench, which I note is no longer the Tory party at prayer. I fear that the hierarchy has lost touch with the Church as a whole. It has lost touch with a lot of parish priests, and it has lost touch with people in the pews. I am one of those people in the pews. I can speak only for myself, but I know that a lot of people agree with me.

As I sit in church on a Sunday, I see a Church that is dying on its feet. It is becoming more and more irrelevant. Congregations are dwindling, as we all know, yet, frankly, the Church is to a certain extent fiddling while it burns. Let me quote, if I may, from the most reverend Primate in last year’s debate, when he said:

“You could get rid of the House of Bishops tomorrow and it would be years before anyone noticed the difference, but if you get rid of parish priests, the whole thing would collapse overnight”.—[Official Report, 8/12/23; col. 1704.]


Let me illustrate this with the diocese of Leicester, where I live. A hundred years ago, there was no see of Leicester; every parish had a priest. Now, we have two bishops in Leicester—I am not criticising either of them, by the way; I get on well with Martyn Snow—but we have no priests in the vicarages. Indeed, I live in a benefice of 11 parishes which has not had a resident priest for over five years. There is no local guidance or leadership except by volunteers, and that is not quite the same.

Let us talk about guidance at the highest level. In his speech, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York said that institutions play a “vital part” in cohesion. The parish church, which I believe he referred to as well, is an institution throughout this country of England. He also talked about Christian values. He referred to

“values that need to be taught and cherished”.

I could not agree more.

In the Covid pandemic, when society desperately needed leadership, the churches were closed. What was all that about? What about the education of children under the coronavirus restrictions? Perhaps many people did speak out, but I did not hear bishops saying, “This is outrageous. We are damaging the future of our children’s education for, frankly, nothing very much”.

In my diocese, parishes cannot get churchwardens, and one of the reasons is because of things such as faculties. Have noble Lords ever tried to get a faculty through a diocese? It is absurdly bureaucratic, and it seems that sometimes the Church is more interested in bureaucracy than in the mission it should be pursuing.

I rejoined the PCC after several years, and at the PCC meeting last week, the churchwarden—who is a woman who I would guess is in her late 30s, and who has two children—said, “Oh God, the resignation of the Archbishop will lead to yet more safeguarding training”. We all want to be safe but does safeguarding training work? Has anybody done a study as to whether it works? Of course it does not. We knew John Smyth was a wrong ‘un at the very beginning; we did not need safeguarding training for that.

The churchwarden also said, “The only children in the church are my two—why do I need to do safeguarding training?”, which is exactly what my wife said when she was churchwarden some 20 years ago. She had to do safeguarding training, yet our children were the only children in church. So please, do not weigh down volunteers, when there are no priests, with bureaucracy. Let us rely on good values, good judgment and good human nature until we are proved wrong.

Institutions and tradition, of which the most reverend Primate spoke, are part of the cohesion of society. At the 60th D-day anniversary in the cathedral, which was very good, those marvellous words of Spring Rice, “I Vow to Thee, My Country”, to the beautiful music of Holst, were replaced. We had—I am paraphrasing; I apologise—“Let’s all hold hands and dance around and be nice to each other”. I am sorry, but it was “I Vow to Thee, My Country”. I sung the old words, your Lordships will be surprised to hear. If I might say so to the most reverend Primate, we do not need more strategies. We need to return to the Christian mission of a Church based on Christian values. Let us look at the membership of the Church and stand up for it.

I will try to encapsulate what I want to say: let the Church of England look after its own, with parish priests, and not criticise all those, such as myself, who hold conservative views. I sat through the debates on Rwanda and so on, where I was told that, basically, I was being unchristian because I wanted to do what I think most of other countries in Europe are trying to do in offshoring illegal migrants. Let us realise that conservative values, funnily enough, are based in Christian tradition—I am not knocking socialists or left-wing values—so let the Church of England look after the people of England and its congregations and look for a spiritual renewal in society.

Before I close, I will give another illustration. While parishes are desperately trying to raise money through church fêtes—or whatever it might be—the Church is giving £100 million to right the wrongs of slavery. You cannot do that; it was over 200 years ago. To cite something that I wrote previously: I feel no guilt for the actions of past generations, nearly 200 years ago. As an historian, I know the history of slavery: the Arab and tribal raiding parties that delivered slaves to the coast of west Africa; the abolition of the slave trade in 1807; the work and sacrifice of the West Africa Squadron in the 19th century; the total abolition of slavery throughout the Empire in 1833; and the expeditions to prevent slavery in Ghana, Benin and elsewhere, which were costly in British lives as well as African ones. I recommend the book Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild; he is not a Brit but an American, so he is not particularly pro-British.

Certainly, our ancestors did many wicked things that are totally unacceptable by today’s standards, both before and after 1807. But revisionist history used to be despised as the work of dictatorial regimes in the 1930s, not something associated with a democratic nation that favours free speech, debate and scholarship. I use this as an example of the confused priorities of the Church, of which I remain an active member, while it struggles to exist.

In fact, there is modern slavery. I went to Sudan 20 years ago, where apparently there has been slavery between raiding parties, although that may have ended. Certainly, there is forced labour—aka slavery—in Xinjiang province. I would like to hear more about that, rather than the past wrongs of 200 years ago. I say to the Church: please stand up for the people of England and the people of the Church of England.