Blair’s Britain — A Christian Critique, by Mark D
Chapman
Darton Longman and Todd, London 2005, pp 117.
ISBN 0-232-52603-6.
Rrp A$34.95
Reviewed by Maggie Helass
In this slim volume Mark Chapman questions the
basis of sovereignty and the role of government in
Britain under New Labour. His thesis is relevant to
neo-liberal and Third Way politics in any western
country.
Inspiration for this book came from scholarmonk
John Neville Figgis (1866-1919) who
commuted between Mirfi eld (monastic) fasts and
Cambridge feasts in a bid to reconcile the demands
of individuality and group life. In Figgis’ historical
research he uncovered an unlikely political
counter-current, a possible panacea to the current
economic order. This was the medieval view of the
state as a community of communities — a view
which was destroyed in the Reformation and post-
Reformation struggles in favour of the twin despots
of the sovereign state and the sovereign church.
When the Labour party at last returned to power
in 1997 Chapman, a socialist in the Anglo-Catholic
tradition, feared “a profound tragedy at the heart
of modern politics: the martyrs’ vision, the cost
of radical discipleship, did not seem to figure in
mainstream politics at all.”
New Labour went on to realise Chapman’s fears
by replacing old socialist values with hazy ideals
and effi cient economic management — excising
the Christian Socialist hope of ongoing social
transformation from the political equation.
Manipulation of public discourse in the service
of ‘modernisation’ morphed old Labour values of
collectivism and common ownership into vaguer
talk of ‘community’ and ‘tolerance’. Equality gave
way to ‘choice’ or ‘freedom’ as the dominant value
of welfare socialism which had been popularised
since 1942 by Archbishop of Canterbury William
Temple in his book Christianity and the Social
Order.
Chapman is concerned that devolution of
economic management to ‘experts’ and the politics of audit, have shrunk participation in the political
process. The state becomes the manager and
provider. Participatory groups — friendly societies,
trade unions, churches — are given less and less to
do as the state controls all decisions.
Chapman questions whether such government is
legitimate — a question which under new sedition
laws could land him in gaol.
‘Community’ under New Labour is an attempt
to remedy the nineteenth and twentieth century
move from community to society — which created
sociological problems of nurturing community
values where people no longer had face-to-face
networks.
Tony Blair’s distinctive contribution in western
politics is his effort to locate the values of community
in a specific Christian tradition, influenced by his
public school and Oxford education.
For Blair, Chapman says, values are a matter of
faith and not reason — reason’s job lies solely in
the application of the values of faith. This of course
begs the question of whether people who have no
faith also have no values.
Blair used the language of covenant —
responsibility and duty — to distance himself from
the traditional language of rights and equality in a
speech at Hans Kung’s Global Ethics Foundation
in 2000. However Blair did not say what would
happen to those who refused their duties or
responsibilities. There is no room in his rhetoric
for love of those who contribute nothing.
Blair sees religion as an ally in the international
search for harmony and co-operation.
Commonalities rather than differences between
religions become the source for the new global
ethic. Churches replace trades unions to foster
values of community and solidarity.
However, in Britain, church membership and
practice have halved in forty years. Christianity
has become a lifestyle choice. Where Christianity
continues to exist it is part of the private discourse
rather than public culture. If the maintenance of
values requires faith then the future of European
morality is a risky business, Chapman concludes.
Blair’s Third Way involves the re-casting of
the relationship between citizen and state and
the remoralisation of politics through ‘the power
of community’. But it overlooks the fact that
communities are morally ambiguous, and can be
destructive as well as constructive.
Analysis of the meaning of community — who
is to arbitrate between communities when they
disagree, on what do they base their criteria, and
what constitutes the ‘common good’ — involves
discussion of political authority and sovereignty.
Chapman points out that in real life the
common good is usually worked out through
conflict. Communities are frequently made up of
people who do not particularly like one another
but who need ways of making decisions and living
together. And sometimes when they do unite
around a common good it might be bought at the
expense of somebody else’s good.
‘Common good’ language can serve to suppress
pluralism and dialogue, as has been apparent since
the outbreak of the so-called war on terror. The
‘common good’ can be used to control public
discourse and can become a euphemism for the
particular values of powerful political or social
elites.
Efficient management, according to New Labour, lies beyond the scope of the politician and has to be left to the experts. This has led to the ‘quangoisation’ of the state which now has more than one thousand public bodies made up of some thirty thousand members, mostly appointed by the government and not answerable to voter, worker or consumer. “All that is left in terms of democratic accountability is the blunt instrument of voting out the ruling party in the occasional general election.”
Chapman describes a cult of management where
values are excised from all government activity.
Thus, efficient management, he argues, appears
to be at odds with building community. “The
contemporary cult of the expert and target-setter
does not bode well for the long-term survival of
public institutions and public morality.”
Managerial audit increasingly controls public
life, even in universities and hospitals which have
traditionally been upheld by quite different and
unquantifiable sets of moral ideas and goals. In a radical critique on sovereignty Chapman
proposes that the Tudor theory of kingship
provides the foundation for the British constitution
— which means that any alternative source of
power (such as trades unions) is perceived either as
a threat or a concession.
He includes a discussion of theologians’
application of the doctrine of the Trinity to theories
of community, from Conrad Noel (1869-1942)
to Leonardo Boff — who elevates community
as the perfect balance between individual and
society. However, distortions of the doctrine of
God have led to a whole host of ills, not least
the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous
individual.
Chapman asks whether the normal condition of
society (including the churches) is one of dispute
and confl ict — or to put it in more neutral terms,
one of a plurality of views and opinions?
The observation that harmony and order are
not central to Jesus’ proclamation is as close as
Chapman himself gets to a theology of confl ict. As
God did in Christ, all we can achieve in doctrine
(giving voice to God) are compromises, temporary
solutions and provisional statements, but never
consensus or harmony.
But a provocative quote from David Nicolls, “…
mercy and justice are in principle opposed to each
other and in conflict,” provides an alluring starting
point for reinvigorating political debate amongst
Christians — Chapman’s aim for this small book.
The institutions of civil society — the voluntary,
intermediate or ‘third’ sector which, with the
churches, includes the primary agencies for the
formation of ‘community’ — are so emasculated
compared with the state they have been eff ectively
de-politicised. Voluntary communities have little
chance of infl uencing government policy. Instead
they can easily become little more than secondary
agencies in dispensing government initiatives and
largesse.
Chapman suggests a redirection of sovereignty,
making the intermediate voluntary communities
of civil society the starting point for all politics.
His central argument is that disagreement is at
the heart of a functioning democracy. A plurality
of views worked out in the on-going, rough and ready world of participatory politics must reverse
the disastrous trend to a political monoculture.
For people who have a conviction that something
is terribly wrong with western politics but feel
powerless to do anything about it, this book is a
must-read.
I did not appreciate
a snide note in
some of Chapman’s
observations on Blair
(e.g. “His only claim
to street credibility
was having played
electric guitar as
a student”) which
undermines the
moral clarity of this
important book.
Mark D Chapman is the Vice-Principal of Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford.