Time Flies: the generations since slavery

This photo is one of many showing four generations of the Royal Family taken at the beginning of the twentieth Century. Queen Victoria was born in 1819 and the little boy at her side became Edward VIII and lived until 1972. 150 years in four generations. My own grandmother has six great-grand children of her own and their cumulative life span will doubtless be even greater.

On Sunday William Wilberforce’s great-great-great granddaughter (six generations), now in her 60s gave an interview on Songs of Praise talking about her ancestor’s work in abolishing the UK slave trade two hundred years ago. Andrew Hawkins, a descendent (fifteen or sixteen generations?) of the ‘pioneering’ slave trader from the sixteenth century Sir John Hawkins also appeared on the programme.

When we argue over whether we should apologise for the UK’s role in the slave trade two hundred years plus can seem like an eternity ago and an apology anathema. Place four generations of people in the same photo and two hundred years passes in the flash of a camera bulb. We all know what an impact our early years have on our development and attitudes in later life. Our grandparents are often important influences and figures in our lives and they are passing down lessons and teachings that they absorbed as children themselves.

Widen the picture to society in general – the institutions, the attitudes, the vested interests and the power structures and it becomes far clearer that we live daily in worlds shaped by the actions of our ancestors, both good and ill. Walk around Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool and the grand merchant housing and buildings staring out into the Atlantic give a poignant reminder about the foundations of our wealth; the bricks and mortar symbol of intangible injustice.

Maybe we don’t need to apologise for the UK’s role in the slave trade – at least not at first. We need to understand our own history and more importantly acknowledge that we, as individuals cannot separate ourselves from it. The Israelites of the Old Testament understood this. The biblical book of Exodus says that “I the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments”. Sins and injustices perpetrated by others affect us down the generations unless we choose to break out from them.

The Greek word ‘repent’ in the Bible doesn’t just mean ‘apologise’ – it means turn around and start walking the other way. Maybe the reason we as a nation struggle to acknowledge our history is that by facing up to it we would be called to act today – to break down and speak out against unjust economic, social and political power structures where we see them, knowing that we might discover that down the generations we have benefited from those same structures more than we would like to think.

What went wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Bernard Lewis

It’s easy to forget that the countries of Europe haven’t always been the dominant military, economic and political world powers. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was the Islamic world that defined ‘modern’ and was at the cutting edge of science and culture. Those travelling from the Maghreb, Turkey or the Levant saw little reason to travel to the backward lands of the Gauls, the Franks, or the Angle-Saxons. In ‘What went wrong?’ the eminent Professor Bernard Lewis takes the Long View. Why did the Ottoman Empire face long term relative decline vis a vis ‘the west’? Why did they fail to successfully respond to the challenge following the Western Renaissance and subsequent military and scientific progress? Why over four hundred years later do we still not see scientific discoveries emerge from the Middle East when the countries of South East Asia have come so far so fast?

Professor Lewis asks some interesting and pertinent questions, but fails to come up with any clear answers. The book is an amalgamation of three lectures and it shows. It meanders through war, music, science and art, repeatedly covering the same ground without coming up with any coherent arguments or exploring his assumptions about the benefits of modernisation. The text is as a watery soup, spiced with a lazy Orientalism, which leaves an uneasy taste in the mouth. Every page I kept expecting looking for the meat of the subject, but it was desperately lacking. There are a small number of exceptions – his discussion of the use of time and clocks and it’s take up in the Islamic world is fascinating and some of his anecdotes from Muslim diplomats residing in the west raise an interested smile.

We need incisive, self-aware scholarship in the debate about modernisation and Westernisation, preferably from Middle Eastern Scholars themselves. Bernard Lewis fails to add much beyond unhelpful generalisations and stereotypes, yet the book is still displayed prominently in major bookstores. My copy of ‘What Went Wrong?’ is waiting to go back to the charity shop from whence it came, although I hestitate, fearing that I would be subjecting someone else to the risk of picking it up to read. Cultural history and its impact on politics is a difficult, but potentially intriguing and revealing genre to investigate. Unfortunately on this evidence and despite his reputation Professor Lewis is not the man for this particular exploration.

What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response by Professor Bernard Lewis was first published in 2002.

The magnificent man still in his flying machine: Tony Blair vows to fly on.

Tony Blair has announced that he has no plans to stop using long haul flights, although under pressure he has announced that all his flights, both ministerial and personal will be ‘carbon neutral’.

Offsetting Carbon emissions by planting trees is fine as a short term mechanism and certainly better than nothing, but what happens in 40 years when the trees rot and decay? The carbon in them is released again. These articles and diagrams from the New Internationalist show clearly why offsetting will salve some consciences, but is not a long term solution.

It is true that not flying is the biggest single action that an individual can take to reduce their carbon emissions. One short haul flight can wipe out hundreds of saved car journeys and thousands of energy saving lightbulbs. Flying already contributes 3% of the UK’s CO2 emissions and is expected to grow significantly. Blair argued that not flying would damage the economy, but the Stern Report showed that not dealing with climate change would have a far bigger and possibly devastating impact on the world economy.

If we’re going to change our lifestyles in any way reducing our flights is the best option.

In addition to not flying we ought to choose not to fly we ought to write to an airline explaining our decision: Carbon free flying is estimated to be 35-50 years away at the moment – if airlines became worried about their profits that timescale could be dramatically reduced. (Incidentally this is also why I support airlines being bought into the Carbon emissions trading scheme with tough year on year reductions in credits to incentivise green innovation.)

However, I’ve argued before that we must seek largescale scientific and political solutions to climate change that involve China and India whose emissions of C02 are rising exponentially – we don’t have time to be messing around recycling.

The unsightly media scrum descending on Tony Blair’s personal choices is therefore not only slightly distasteful and puerile, but more importantly misses the point. Unlike most of the rest of us, there are dozens of political decisions that Blair could prioritise that would have a massive impact on the environment. I would happily swap Tony Blair commuting from Sydney every morning by private Concorde if he prioritised:

a) pushing a tough EU wide carbons emissions trading scheme,

b) investing the same amount of money into clean energy technology as into Trident

c) facilitating fast, effective and cheap technology transfer to China and India

d) a tidal barrage on the Severn (5% UK electricity), a new generation of Nuclear power stations and a solar panel and wind turbine on every new home.

If he did all this he could even take John Prescott, his long-lost great-aunt-Doris and the entire England Cricket team with him if he wanted.

Israel fights Hezbollah: An attempt to understand

I have found the last month's news very depressing. I simply can’t understand what Israel think that they are going to achieve by attacking Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon. Every day I get more and more angry about the destruction wrought in a recovering and increasingly vibrant Lebanon. The Middle East is an entangled spiral of complex problems which defy clear analysis, but in an attempt to understand Israel’s reasonaing and mentality in this conflict I have identified three possible underlying causes, one geopolitical, one psychological and one religious cause for the Israeli Government’s actions. Hopefully I will end at least being able to empathise with the Israeli position.

1. Geopolitical. To fight Hezbollah is to fight Iran. The links between the two since Hezbollah’s formation in 1982 are irrefutable. These are not purely funding links (although these are substantial), but also command and strategy links, which mean that all important decisions are made in conjunction with the highest members of the Iranian government. In addition the two share similar interpretations of Sh’ia ideology. Iran are the other major power alongside Israel in the Middle East. Iran is a rich, well educated country, with a much greater sense of national identity than any Arab nation. Since the 1920s Iran and Iraq have always acted as counter-balances to each other in the region, but the power vacuum in Iraq means that Iran are firmly in control of that see-saw at the moment. From Iran’s point of view the time is right to extend their economy, political and military hegemony. Until now Israel have always had two trump cards to counter the hegemony – American support and the bomb. They must be scared stiff that they’re about to lose the second. For Israel, any chance to show pre-bomb Iran that they are not to be cowed looks attractive.

2. Psychological. It is a natural instinct to want to obtain security by doing whatever is necessary to remove an enemy. The attraction of an offensive into Southern Lebanon must be considerable to the Israeli electorate. The idea of a buffer zone from Katusha rockets looks great on paper and no-one else was going to go and create it for the Israelis. One British journalist asked an Israeli in Haifa how many Hezbollah rockets had ever landed in his town in the 13 years he’d lived there before the current conflict. Answer: zero. But that’s not the point. No one wants to live in the constant fear of the front line – much better if you can to move the no man’s land into someone else’s back yard and let them deal with the consequences.

3. Religious. Long standing underlying attitudes reduce Israel's options.The Tanakh (laws, prophets and other writings that make up what Christians know as the Old Testament) is ambivalent at best about the right of other nations to exist in ‘the promised land’. Judaism has an honourable and living tradition embodied in the Tanakh of caring for the alien in the land. However, although the vast majority of Jews are not Zionists most have some belief that God grants Israel an inalienable right to eventually possess territory in the region at least partly at the expense of other people groups. For instance, the traditional orthodox stance is that Israel will not gain political control of the region until the Messiah comes. So although this view does not explicitly rule out a Palestinian land it colours the mindset and attitude which makes negotiation on land issues with neighbours interminably difficult. Therefore arguments continue not just with the Palestians, but with Syria and Lebanon over the Golan Heights and the Sheeba Farms, which have an underlying influence on the current crisis.

None of the three explanations above excuse what the Israeli government are doing, which is not only morally reprehensible, but politically pointless. Indeed its political futility makes it more morally outrageous for the deaths are utterly futile. Like other guerrilla forces Hezbollah will not be beaten by a conventional army. As all parties know without political progress we will be in the same situation in a few years. Both sides are fighting for a better negotiating position - to invert the aphorism politics will be the war continued by other means. But in all probability in a few years Israel will fight a renewed Hezbollah, guided and funded by an Iran with nuclear capability. Longer range missiles and suicide bombers will still penetrate into the day to day lives of Israelis. They will be no more secure. There is a growing movement among younger Israelis especially (witness the Israeli soldier protest petition 2002 and the grass roots movement that led to the founding of Kadima) which may challenge the underlying religious attitudes around right to land. (The Kadima's 2006 election statement is an interesting read in this regard). However, until this enters the mainstream Israelis will not live in a land of peace and justice, milk and honey.

It is obvious that Israel has been much wronged in its 60 year history. However as one of the few fully formed democratic nation state backed by the most powerful country in the world it has the responsibility to make moves towards peace and begin to unravel the knots in the Middle East. It must start by addressing the focal point of the Middle East web by recognising the majority of the pre-1967 borders and declaring its intention not to retaliate to suicide bombers and missile attacks. This is an extremely difficult, complex and risky thing to do and I did not write this entry to delve into possible solutions. It will not stop attacks on Israel immediately or even for years, but it will start to drain the poison at the centre of the boil and allow the region to address some of its other myriad problems. It is Israel’s only chance of the long term peace and security that it desires.

Nostalgia IS what it used to be.

“If you weren’t born when and where you were, where would you have liked to have been?” In the late night discussions that followed I imagined myself taking part in the student protests in 1968 Paris, when the majority believed that it was worth trying to change things and were prepared to risk their degrees and futures to do it. You can picture my pleasure when such idle dreaming found its way to the top of the charts last week through Sandi Thom’s first single ‘I want to be a Punk Rocker’.

The song taps into the richest seams of nostalgia – yearning for a lost innocence and a rose tinted affection for previous fads and trends. However Thom’s nostalgia goes a step deeper. She yearns for a time when an individual’s actions counted and there was the freedom to imagine that a completely different and better society was possible. The implication of the song now is that we’re stuck with what we’ve got and that fighting against the capitalist and mass media dominated system is futile. We were born too late and our generation can’t be change makers.

Thom may well be speaking for a generation unhappily caught up in the corporate machine of work to live and live to work, but her defeatist attitude is wrong and self perpetuating. Firstly all those punkrockers and hippies of the 1960s and 1970s are now in their 40s and 50s and running the country. You only have to look at the background of current Labour ministers to see that the leftie protest generation made it into power – Jack Straw, Harriet Harman and Charles Clark to name but a few. This generation did make huge strides campaigning for gender and race equality and against apartheid. They also campaigned against the imperialism of Vietnam and the proliferation of Nuclear weapons. It’s great to look back on the 1960s and 1970s with a touch of nostalgia, but it’s important to remember that the idealism of the 1960s contributed to and then got swallowed up by the consumer society and family breakdowns of the 1980s and 90s.

Our generation does care – it cares about making poverty history and the Iraq war and is the first generation to grow up with the environmental movement. It cares about stable families and long lasting friendships. However it doesn’t have the confidence that it’s possible to do anything about it. Adrift in a world of individualism it doesn’t know the power of and doesn’t think it has the time for sustained grass roots organised mass action. As a result people only offer shallow commitment to ‘Make Poverty History’ hoping it will do something, but not really believing that it can. This can change. We too will become the generation that runs the country, but in the mean time we desperately need to find, grow and equip leaders and change makers so that we can show that we weren’t born too late and that radical change for the better is always possible.

Know Thyself

Tony Blair set off for Washington today to try and convince George Bush to sign up to his anti-poverty agenda for Africa. They’ll argue and probably disagree on how much aid and debt relief is needed, but also on what strings should be attached to those receiving aid. Conditionality is as old as aid and debt relief itself. It’s partly a consequence of country’s desire to exert economic and political power and control over other countries – raw realpolitik. However, it is also the product of the West’s view of its own development.

Both George Bush and Tony Blair are confident that the way to create development in Africa to develop is to let the invisible hand do its work and let trade and economic markets do their work with minimal interference. This is the way, they argue that the West developed to be the prosperous and civilised society that it is today. If Africa could just establish the rule of law and an open system of trade then their problems would disappear. From this perspective, attaching conditions to debt relief and aid is benevolent paternalism – a nasty dose of medicine that will be good in the long run. However, all this is based on the absolute conviction that the West has developed in the best way possible.

But what if the West’s way isn’t the best way? What if economic interactions aren’t the overriding way that human relationships should be viewed? What if human happiness isn’t dependent on a nation’s GDP as figures from the UN suggest? If we take a closer look at our own development then how we view the progress of the African continent is turned on its head.

The western model of development since the early 19th century has lifted huge numbers out of poverty, made people feel safer and created half a century of peace, but has also dramatically increased economic inequality, relational poverty and environmental degradation. We should look at our own development not just through an economic lense, but also from social, political, religious and cultural perspectives.

Bearing this in mind should inspire humility in our approach to international development. Bush and Blair should not be forcing people to follow our own, flawed development path, but offer to help find a different way forward. If they do so they may find that their own perspective worldviews develop and the strings they end up attaching to aid and debt relief will be very different.



If you want more info on alternative pespectives to development I recommend dipping into 'walking with the poor' by Bryant Myers. It's quite hard going, but an inspiring read.

Tea in Westminster

Last Monday the prayer and campaign network SPEAK launched its creative petition the ‘Big Dress’. For four years SPEAK have been collected 15cm2 squares of fabric with people’s pictures, prayers and words calling for trade justice. These have been sown together to make a huge, tent like patchwork dress which was erected in Berkley Square, London. The Bishop of Barking led a fantastic, moving and visual service of repentance for the UK’s and our own individual failure to pursue justice in world trade. This was followed by a mass lobby of MPs at Westminster calling for accountability of UK based multi-national companies.

I was amazed by how easy it is to lobby your MP. We queued up for ten minutes at St.Stephen's entrance, before bypassing the streams of tourists and making our way to the central lobby. There you fill in a short green card explaining why you want to speak to your MP who is then legally obliged to speak to you if the House is in session, he or she is there and not speaking in a debate. You don’t have to make an appointment (although this helps) – you can just turn up. Although my MP wasn’t able to speak to me his researcher came down almost immediately and spoke with us and agreed that we should set up a meeting with the MP in our constituency. Others spent between five minutes and an hour with their MP, one group getting a cup of tea in the House of Lords!

So next time you’re in London pencil in a discussion with your MP on an issue of your choice over a cup of tea in the palace of Westminster!

To find out who your MP is visit www.theyworkforyou.com

Tsunami thoughts

Like everyone else I’ve been encouraged by the response in the UK to the horrific tsunami in South East Asia. Peer pressure is usually used with negative connotations, but the past few weeks illustrate its positive aspects. It’s become expected that businesses and websites should collect funds and publish the contact details of the DEC. Between Christmas and New Year that callers were contacting Radio 5 Live to ask how much supermarkets were donating in the crisis. A spokesman from Tesco was hauled onto the programme and held to account. The ‘moral economy’ has been re-emerging for a few years now, but this is another boost as it continues to gather pace.

In the same way, politicians have been assessing the political importance of the public sympathy for the tsunami. For the first time, commentators are arguing there are votes ‘in’ international aid. In fact, there’s been some votes in international aid since the Jubilee 2000 campaign. Local MPs are always willing to meet church groups that are campaigning on aid, because they know that they are likely to vote. However, the government won’t see the tsunami’s political import purely in terms of votes. During the Jubilee 2000 campaign Gordon Brown urged campaigners to keep the pressure on him to act. Public pressure is one way to create political capital for politicians with the right ideas, but who need to clear ‘blockages’ of vested interest in the system. Hence the chancellor’s and the UN’s recent attempts to divert some of the political capital from public sympathy over the tsunami to assist in the Aids, debt and trade problems of Africa.

I’m not convinced this will work, because I think one of the reasons (although not the main one) that the British public were so generous in response to the tsunami is because no one was to blame. Debt, unfair trade and poverty in Africa are man-made problems. Their root causes lie with exploitation by the west of these nations and our consciences are touched with guilt at the thought. Even disasters caused by droughts or floods leave a niggling feeling of doubt in our minds as the spectre of man-made pollution and global warming springs to mind. If it’s our fault something is happening responding requires a change of behaviour on our part to restore justice. The politics is messy and repentance is costly. The tsunami gave the opportunity for grief, generosity and empathy unbridled by guilt.

Such emotions are God-given. Responding in this way makes us, as a nation, more like God wants us to be. The church needs to find ways of fostering and encouraging this into gifts that we practice regularly in the UK. In a couple of weeks the tsunami and it’s devestating aftermath with disappear from our screens. What ways can the church find of keeping interest alive, of providing a valid outlet and opportunity for people’s interest and feelings? I don’t yet have answers to that question, although the possibility of churches initiating links with churches or other faith groups in affected areas springs to mind. If churches across a UK town had the courage and vision to make links with a town in say, Sri Lanka over time it should be possible to draw in schools, businesses and local Councils into a connection that could be fruitful for all involved.