IN almost everything I have written for Ekklesia for more than a decade, there has been one underlying theme – austerity. Whether it is poverty, hunger, the housing crisis, the state of the NHS or our prisons, roads and schools, the fundamental cause of all the problems we see has been austerity. Trying to run public services on the cheap, and depriving so many people of the resources they need to live a decent life, has harmed all of us to some degree.

‘Balancing the books’ has become the primary aim and measure of political and economic competence, so one government after another has placed money above the welfare of the population, in a downward spiral of misery and suffering. And the tragedy is, we know austerity will not and cannot succeed. Trying to make the economy strong by reducing the money the state puts into it will only make the economy weaker. And we have enough experience of privatisation, and private capital’s involvement in public services and utilities to know that it rarely, if ever, improves matters.

The truth is, money is not actually real. As the Native Americans understood long ago: “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten, and the last stream poisoned, you will realise that you cannot eat money.”

Intrinsically, money is useless. If you found yourself dying of thirst in the desert with a billion pounds in cash, you would give all that cash for a drink of water. People, land, food, energy, water, bricks and mortar are real. Money isn’t.  And while real resources are finite, money can be created by the government. That is why Maynard Keynes said, “Anything we can actually do we can afford.”

Yes, creating too much money could be negative, but only if it is used in the wrong way. If it goes into the pockets of under-taxed rich people, who use it to buy up numerous houses and flats as investments to rent out, then the price of housing will be inflated. But if the money is spent by the government on building extra council housing, that could reduce the cost of housing, create a public asset, provide employment, reduce the need for housing benefit, and pay for itself in three years.

The government spending money on valuable assets such as schools, hospitals and housing, paying public employees a decent wage and supporting those who need it, investing in renewable energy  – surely that would strenghten the economy, and make us all healthier and happier?

We have had fourteen years of austerity and it is no coincidence that most people are now much worse off than when it started, whilst billionaires have prospered. Either politicians should admit that the welfare of the majority of the population is not actually their priority, or they should abandon austerity and begin investing in the country and its people.

But perhaps most importantly, we should all rethink our understanding of money, and of public money in particular. It is a tool which can and should be used to make our lives better – not an implacable god to which we must sacrifice the joy of our children and the health of our nation.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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IN 2021, Pope Francis addressed a Meeting of Popular Movements – activists from some of the most marginalised communities around the world, united by their struggle for justice and dignity.

Beginning, “Dear Social Poets”, Pope Francis said: “This is what I like to call you: social poets. You are social poets, because you have the ability and the courage to create hope where there appears to be only waste and exclusion.”

In the section of his address headed ‘Time for action’, Pope Francis commended two concrete policy suggestions which he felt would be a first step in the direction of justice, stressing that these ideas were firmly rooted in principles such as the preferential option for the poor, and the universal destination of goods, to be found in Catholic Social Teaching and the Gospels.

The first policy was: “A basic income (the UBI) or salary so that everyone in the world may have access to the most basic necessities of life. It is right to fight for a humane distribution of these resources, and it is up to governments to establish tax and redistribution schemes so that the wealth of one part of society is shared fairly…”

Next, said Pope Francis: “the reduction of the working day is another possibility, and one that needs seriously to be explored. In the 19th century, workers laboured twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. When they achieved the eight-hour day, nothing collapsed, contrary to what some sectors had predicted…”

Both of these policies, a universal basic income and shorter working hours, have been trialled to varying degrees around the world, with positive results – but the political courage required to make them a reality on a large scale has been lacking. And if even these policies are still seen as too radical, then the approach outlined by Pope Francis in his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti,  will seem outrageously revolutionary.

In the section, ‘Re-envisaging the social role of property’, and referencing the long tradition of Catholic Social Teaching, the Pope says: “For my part, I would observe that “the Christian tradition has never recognised the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property”. (95) The principle of the common use of created goods is the “first principle of the whole ethical and social order” (96); it is a natural and inherent right that takes priority over others (97)…The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society.”

Imagine viewing UK politics through this lens? Policies that now seem radical, like a wealth tax, would seem to be the minimum required to uphold the right of everyone to a dignified life.

It has been said that politics is the art of the possible. But who decides what is possible? The party most likely to form the next UK government is already closing down its options through self-imposed, ‘iron-clad fiscal rules’, or what William Blake might have called ‘mind-forged manacles’.

This stultifying brand of ‘grown up’ politics, and the false and damaging assumptions that underpin it, are now de rigeur in mainstream, respectable political discourse. Which is all very well for those who find the status quo quite comfortable. But what about those who are struggling? And what about society as a whole?

If we are to tackle any of the economic, social and ecological crises we face, we desperately need politics founded on first principles of equality and sustainability. And when one starts from a genuine belief that all human beings are equally precious, and have an equal right to a decent life and a fair share, then brave and radical policies flow naturally from that belief.

If we continue to allow the privileged and the comfortable to dictate what is possible, we will be trapped in a downward spiral of inequality and environmental destruction, in which hate and division will find fertile ground. Now is the time for social poets.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020). Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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EVERY CHILD born in the UK, whatever their circumstances, is a member of our society. Society has a choice – we can do our best to support and nurture those children, to help them grow into healthy, happy adults, or we can turn our backs on them, allow them to struggle and then condemn them if their adult lives do not meet with our approval.

This month marks the seventh anniversary of the two child limit on benefits. This, in effect, says to small children who are living in poverty and have two or more siblings: “Sorry, we won’t help you because we think your parents made a bad decision, so we’re going to punish you for it.”

The two child limit, implemented in 2017, means that low-income families who claim benefits and have a third child born after April 2017, miss out on around £3,200 a year in social security support for that child, and any subsequent children.

The two-child limit was sold as a ‘fair’ policy, a political embodiment of the ‘Don’t have kids if you can’t afford to keep them.’ philosophy. Yet a moment’s thought reveals this to be highly prejudiced and very unfair. Prejudiced because like most of the Conservatives’ welfare ‘reforms’, enthusiastically promoted by Iain Duncan Smith, it divides the population into ‘hardworking taxpayers’ who do not claim benefits, and therefore deserve respect, and people who do claim benefits, and therefore have failed in some way and do not deserve to be respected.

This simplistic view is, of course, far removed from the complex and messy circumstances of real life. Many parents will be working very hard in low-paid jobs, and need to claim Universal Credit. Some will have had three or more children when they were financially secure, then disaster struck. A job loss, accident, illness or bereavement can reduce a family’s income drastically, but they then find in their hour of need that as far as the state is concerned, their third child is an unaffordable luxury who deserves no support.

Even if, for the sake of argument we were to accept that, somehow, parents having a third child had been irresponsible – why would any decent society want to punish the children for that? And obviously, it’s not just the third child which is affected by this policy. When a family is tipped into poverty, no parent will mimic the Conservatives and treat the third child differently. All the children will suffer, when there’s not enough food in the house and the electricity meter runs out.

What makes the two child limit such a terribly bad policy is that not only is it morally wrong to consign children to poverty because they have more than one sibling – it is also undoubtedly a false economy. Whether we support children in poverty through the benefits system or not, there will be a cost somewhere along the line. Children growing up in poverty may have poorer health and struggle at school, they may even become vulnerable to criminal exploitation.  This all leads to higher demands on numerous public services: the NHS, children’s services, social care, the police, and in the worst case scenarios, prison. Why would we spend money on all this misery, when we can invest in health and happiness instead?

The crucial role of the two child limit in producing child poverty was revealed when the New Economics Foundation analysed the most recent poverty data. It found that, “local authorities that experienced the biggest increase in child poverty were the places where more families are impacted by the two-child limit.”.

Because of its design, the numbers affected by this policy are growing inexorably over time. In 2018, 70,000 families were affected – by 2023, it was 420,000. When the policy is fully rolled-out and affects all families with three or more children, it will have an impact on around 750,000 families. This means we have a ‘social security ‘ system which has rising child poverty designed into it, a hole in the safety net which will continue to grow. The only way to deal with this deplorable situation is to scrap the two child limit.

Unusually for such a significant policy, we actually have within the UK an example of how things can be done differently, and we are beginning to see the outcome. The Scottish Child Payment, introduced in 2021, is now available for every child under 16 in Scotland, so has helped to mitigate the effects of the two child limit. Amidst the cost of living crisis, while child poverty has risen in the rest of the UK, it has remained stable in Scotland. Indeed, Child Poverty Action Group says that with the full roll out of the Scottish child payment and increases to its value, child poverty should soon be falling in Scotland.

Politicians in Westminster have it in their power to reduce or to increase child poverty. There is really no excuse for choosing the latter.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020). Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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WHY has the election of a single MP in a northern town got the political and media establishment so rattled – and why now?

George Galloway has been elected as an MP several times in the past,  and his election then did not elicit such a reaction. His character and personal dealings have been questioned – but perhaps no more so than many who sit on the green benches, or even around the Cabinet table? So why did his election this time prompt such an extraordinary statement from the Prime Minister?

Perhaps this time, the political and media establishment is afraid that part of a narrative on which they have mutually built their careers is unravelling in front of their eyes. The slaughter in Gaza is causing many more people to pay attention and ask questions, and whereas in the past we would have seen a polished Israeli spokesperson confidently shut down any accusation of wrongdoing, we now have access to our own sources of information. We can see the massacres on our phones, we can hear the agonised voices of Gazan men, women and children. It is no longer easy to explain this away. So, despite them being dubbed ‘hate marches’, good people of all faiths and none have continued to march on streets across the UK to call for a ceasefire. Many who cannot march are with them in spirit.

Meanwhile, we have seen politicians who are supposed to represent our views defending dreadful inhumanity, insisting that an occupying power has the right to bombard and starve a trapped civilian population. But the propaganda is no longer working. The disconnect is too great. Something is breaking, and perhaps the politicians and journalists can see the cracks appearing.

This begs the question – why are western politicians so determined to arm and defend Israel, often against the wishes of their own populations?

Perhaps for some people, the state of Israel represents a wider world order which they desperately want to preserve. As President Biden first said in 1986, and has repeated recently: “Were there not an Israel the USA would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.” In a fascinating article in the London Review of Books, Forrest Hylton writes: “Since the late 1970s, not even Canada has been as important as Israel to maintaining the US empire in the Western Hemisphere.”

Support for this world order, in which the west established outposts to protect its interests, and concealed its crimes with whatever fictions served its purpose, is now threatened. With greater education and greater access to information, the fictions are becoming more and more difficult to maintain. For too many people, it’s no longer credible to see Israel as a beleaguered but plucky little democracy surrounded by evil neighbours. People are looking at the US supplying bombs to be dropped on Gaza and asking – who are the bad guys?

In this context, it felt supremely appropriate that it was South Africa which took Israel to the International Court of Justice. Having cast off an apartheid regime supported by Margaret Thatcher, South Africa is now challenging an apartheid regime which is also supported by many western governments. It feels like the tentative beginnings of a process in which the wrongs of the past could be unravelled and set right.

And this, perhaps, is where Mr Galloway becomes significant. Whatever we may think about his character or however strongly we disagree with his views, he does have a remarkable knack of bursting some of the foreign policy bubbles which have been carefully inflated over decades. He asks questions which should be asked, and states some seriously inconvenient truths. When he appeared before a Senate Committee in the US, for instance, he admitted that yes, he had met Saddam Hussein – but not to sell him weapons, as the US Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld had.

And if we want to see why the established media may be disturbed by Galloway’s election, look at this interview with a Sky journalist in Rochdale soon after Galloway was elected. It’s not pretty – but it makes most other political interviews look pretty vacuous by comparison. For a public heartily sick of politicians who never answer questions, and journalists who seem to be part of the same cosy club, it’s further evidence of how the media usually works not to challenge established narratives, but to echo and promote them. Mr. Galloway’s presence on the political stage may cast a very harsh spotlight on this status quo.

Having said this, it’s very regrettable that individual politicians working in this atmosphere may feel anxious or even fear for their personal safety. Violence or intimidation can never be condoned, and private homes and families should be out of bounds. But we know the rich can easily buy access to ministers and influence government policy – they don’t need to heckle or berate. Meanwhile the ‘ordinary’ citizen can write a letter or an email which all too often receives a formulaic reply dictated by the party leadership. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that some people feel compelled to approach politicians on the street when the opportunity arises, and in that precious minute or two of ,try to get their point across, sometimes too forcefully. Whilst this may feel threatening, it might help if politicians showed themselves more willing to engage, and perhaps ask themselves why people feel so frustrated.

Maybe the UK’s divisions around Israel and Gaza are so keenly felt because they encapsulate a wider struggle. A struggle between an airbrushed past based on the injustice of empire and colonialism, and a possible future where that injustice can be acknowledged and addressed. A struggle between the powerful and the powerless, freedom and domination. Fundamentally, a struggle between humanity and inhumanity. This I believe is why passions run so high, and why it feels that so much is at stake. Palestinians are enduring unimaginable suffering. If the world allows them to be crushed again, it could feel to many people that their hope for a more humane world has also been crushed.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020). Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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The rhetoric from the Conservative party around asylum seekers, immigration, and British Values is becoming increasingly sinister and alarming.

Performative patriotism is being used as a distraction from life-threatening and life-shortening poverty and inequality. People who can no longer afford life’s essentials are expected to use the heat of their anger at ‘small boats’ to keep them warm.

But what exactly are these British Values, so stridently proclaimed by people who seem to have lost all sense of decency and humanity? A belief in the rule of law, perhaps? Not any more. This government does not now feel obliged to comply with any law which hinders their xenophobic and racist policies. A belief in the rights and freedoms of the individual? Hardly – the government is cracking down on protests and preparing to spy upon the bank accounts of millions of people, simply because they receive state benefits. A sense of fair play? One glance at Britain’s history would tell us that fairness has never been a priority for Britain’s ruling elite.

And of course, aggressive colonialism has not been reserved for distant lands. Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have suffered under it, to varying degrees. Even Northern England was not spared from the oppression of what became the ruling elite,  a North-South divide in power and resources which continues to this day.

In reality, perhaps there never has been such a thing as British Values. Perhaps they have been a story which the English ruling class told itself in order to feel better about the exploitation of their compatriots and the peoples of the Empire. It is certainly apparent that much of the United Kingdom does not share the same values – voting patterns illustrate this. There are huge swathes of Britain where the values are not C/conservative, but more progressive, egalitarian, communal and internationalist than our current government would ever countenance or reflect.

Indeed, the whole idea of patriotism can be troubling. The idea that we must love or take pride in our country is all too often associated with military domination, or a sense of superiority which can easily slip into racism or xenophobia. Yes, Britain has achieved some extraordinary things, but there is another side to our history which, looked at honestly, can only inspire regret and shame. The flag-waving Rule Britannia style of patriotism is, thankfully, not attractive to a great many people.

Recently however, I came across the purest and most poignant expression of English patriotism I have ever seen, and which I think is the one kind of patriotism which we actually need today. Just two sentences, it was a quote from a Sheffield factory worker. In 1902 he was donating 2s 6d to a National Trust appeal to acquire Brandlehow, an estate on the west shore of Derwentwater, for the nation. He said: “All my life I have longed to see the Lakes. I shall never see them now, but I should like to help keep them for others.”

Brandlehow is just over 140 miles from Sheffield, a three hour drive today. To think of this man, toiling in a Sheffield factory, longing to see the Lakes all his life, but resigned to the fact that he never would, was intensely moving. And then, the fact that he was not bitter about this, but had the generosity of spirit to donate some of his hard-earned money to preserve that landscape, which he only knew in his imagination, so that others could enjoy it in the future. What altruism.

Imagine if our politicians had one fraction of the unselfish and peaceful love for our country which that Sheffield man expressed so purely, and demonstrated through his sacrifice? Imagine if they thought, not of their own future prosperity, but the future welfare of others? Our country would be a happier, more secure and harmonious place in which to live. Our natural world would be protected and flourishing, not polluted and dying. All children would have secure homes and enough to eat. And those who seek safety would find a compassionate welcome, instead of being used as ammunition in a grotesque and inhumane brand of politics.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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IT IS the Conservative way to frame structural and economic problems as a failure of individuals. This allows the rich and powerful to abdicate responsibility, whilst all the pressure and blame is placed on people who have neither money nor power, and very little control over their circumstances.

In the real world, nobody would choose to exist on benefits which fall far short of covering life’s essentials.  But in Conservative world, destitution can be a lifestyle choice, so the government is proposing to make a benefits system already linked to multiple deaths even harsher.

It is indeed a fact that record numbers of people are now out of work due to illness or disability. But the suggestion that this is because those people don’t want to work, or haven’t tried hard enough to get a job, is cruel and insulting. More realistic explanations are staring us in the face.

First, much as the government would like us to forget the fact, we have been, and still are, in a pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people have been bereaved, or been through trauma which has shattered their mental health. The British Medical Association says: “millions have developed long COVID, suffering long-term effects after infection.” These long-term effects can be extremely serious, and as the NHS says: “Long COVID is a new condition which is still being studied.”  We are in new territory, which requires some humility from people making judgements about other people’s lives.

Second, record NHS waiting lists mean almost 8 million people are waiting for surgery or medical treatment. As no doubt Esther McVey could confirm, it is only common sense to assume that many of those people will be unable to work until they get the treatment they need. A government report, written in 2019 but only released recently after a freedom of information battle, said many jobcentres were reporting a “large number of claimants presenting with mental health conditions, for which there is little immediate provision because of long NHS waiting times”. That situation has deteriorated significantly since 2019.

And third, raising the retirement age means that many people in poor health who would have been receiving a state pension are now on out of work benefits. As Dave Finch of the Health Foundation says: “The government’s State Pension age policy fails to acknowledge the decline in the health and work prospects for people in their 50s and 60s in the UK, leaving thousands at risk of living in poverty for longer. Prolonging poverty for people nearing retirement risks further deterioration in their health and potentially greater government costs in the long run.”

So, as the government yet again stirs up resentment and suspicion towards people on benefits, let’s look at this from a different angle, and start asking some questions which may be more pertinent.

Where are the employers who are eager to employ people with an illness or disability? Where are the businesses who are happy to give a job to someone who is frequently unavailable because they are ill, in hospital or attending medical appointments? Where are the employers seeking to recruit people with a history of severe mental illness?

In 2019, research for Leonard Cheshire  found ‘an unacceptably harsh landscape for disabled workers’. For example:

• 66 per cent of managers said the cost of workplace adjustments are a barrier to employing a disabled person – up from 60 per cent in 2017.
• 24 per cent of UK employers said they would be less likely to hire someone with a disability.
• 17 per cent of those who had applied for a job in the past five years said the employer withdrew the job offer as a result of their disability

And bear in mind that this research came six years after the government had launched its ‘Disability Confident’ scheme. This was supposed to increase job opportunities for disabled people, but allowed employers to gain Disability Confident credentials without employing a single disabled person.

Then of course, there is transport. Even if a workplace is accessible, which can never be assumed, people have to get there. Sustrans conducted a Disabled Citizens’ Inquiry which found:  “A lack of inclusive travel options is one of the factors that create a disability employment gap”.

The government’s answer to this is, of course, working from home. It could be a good option for some people, but again, it could only be seen as a panacea by people who have never been seriously or chronically ill. When otherwise healthy workers get flu or gastroenteritis and stay at home, do they do a normal day’s work? No – they get well, then return to work. Why is it so difficult to accept that chronically ill people are actually ill – they are not on some kind of extended holiday. They may desperately want to be well enough to work, but sadly that may never be the case, even working from home.

And whilst it is so focused on pressuring disabled people to find work, the government itself fails to provide even the most basic adjustments which would help them to do so. This year Sense, a charity for people with complex disabilities, found that not one Jobcentre in the UK has a computer with assistive technology. Jobcentre computers are simply unusable to many people with a complex disability.

So, the government should not put potentially dangerous pressure on sick and disabled people. It should invest in the NHS to help those who can get well, and change the ‘unacceptably harsh’ employment landscape they face. When suitable jobs become available, disabled people who are able to work will be only too delighted to take them. Until then, do not punish people for a lack of opportunity beyond their control – and accept that some people, although they would love to have a career, are working hard simply to manage their disability or illness. They should be respected, not stigmatised.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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AS David Cameron returned to government, political commentators were almost unanimous in the view that the most notable policy or event with which he was associated was Brexit. That seems to me to be a rather privileged view.

Without underestimating the very damaging and divisive nature of Brexit, for people on a low income, or with a chronic illness or disability, the former Prime Minister’s most significant legacy will always, surely, be austerity. It was his government which in 2010 began the process of starving public services and local authorities of funds, and chipping away at the incomes of the very poorest and most disadvantaged people. Eventually, this was linked to a fall in life expectancy for the most deprived people and 330,000 excess deaths.  In human terms, that seems far more significant than Brexit.

To disguise the naked brutality of austerity, it was given a cloak of humanity and respectability through the ‘Big Society’ concept. This was promoted as a means by which the inflexible and impersonal state could withdraw from some of its traditional activities, to be replaced by more agile and caring charities. Sadly, the goodness and non-political nature of many people involved in charities meant that they trusted the warm words, and did not question the motivation.

I got a glimpse of this when, prior to the General Election in 2010, I interviewed an extremely selfless woman whose charity work was humbling – and was dismayed to hear her enthuse about the Big Society. This heroic and trusting woman had no interest in politics, but genuinely believed that if the Conservatives won, the Big Society meant that she would be able to work in partnership with them to improve lives in her community. Thirteen years later, the hardship and suffering in that community has increased dramatically.

Perhaps many charities went down that path – were attracted by the idea of the Big Society, but then found they were being used to provide cover for a brand of politics which is simply savage towards the most disadvantaged people.

So it was a terrible irony that on the day David Cameron walked back into Downing Street, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) published ‘an open letter to the chancellor on vital funding for public services delivered by charities’. They wrote: “we are urging you to address the continued underfunding of contracts and grants. This underfunding is putting many charities at crisis point, and communities at risk of losing essential services. This is not a small-scale problem. Charities deliver £16.8 billion worth of services on behalf of government.”

They continued: “The government has relied on charities to deliver these vital services for many years without giving them the necessary resources to do this. Most charities’ grants and contracts do not cover the true cost of delivery…The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has conducted new research on the scale of this issue, and the results are alarming. Seventy-three per cent of charities say they cannot meet the current demand for the public services they deliver with the funding they receive.”

And this of course, is not to mention the explosion in food banks, hygiene banks, baby banks, and all the other charitable initiatives which have sprung up as a compassionate response to the destitution and poverty caused by welfare reforms and the slashing of social security. Charities are picking up the pieces as a deliberately shrunken state abdicates its responsibilities. As Sabine Goodwin of the Independent Food Aid Network writes,  food banks fear that this winter they will be overwhelmed by the level of need they face. “Food banks cannot sustain this level of poverty for much longer.”

As an unelected David Cameron returned to government, the trademark concept which helped him win his first election victory was being, yet again, exposed as a hollow and cruel con. Whilst in the media discourse David Cameron may be most closely associated with Brexit, it is his impact on the lives of the least privileged which arguably has been most profound and most destructive.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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THE HUMAN ONE: Paintings that explore the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ is an exhibition of the work of Jeremy Thomas, artist in residence at St. Mary’s Priory in Abergavenny.

I was privileged to see this beautiful exhibition at St Anne’s church in Royton, Oldham, where it runs until the end of September, and where the warmth of the welcome added to the enjoyment of the whole experience.

The paintings lead the viewer around the early twentieth century church, starting with ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ This is a cosmic painting full of dark depths and emerging light, which could have been inspired by an image from a space telescope. Then, with Holy of Holies and Let It Be, we are in a world of brilliant light and joyful colour, dominated by vibrant yellows, greens and blues.

As the narrative progresses, the artist uses a technique which compels us to look closely at his work, inviting us in, to become seekers of meaning. There are many symbols and details which can be easily missed on first looking, and this makes a close examination of the pictures very rewarding. In the moving and tender painting Legion, for instance, where Jesus gently and respectfully approaches the suffering man in his cave of isolation and exclusion, a longer look reveals haunting faces emerging from the rocks surrounding him, making the man’s mental torment visible. In Zacchaeus, under the large tree in the foreground, all we see of the tax collector is a bag of coins and a pair of sandals, which Zacchaeus has discarded as he goes to follow Jesus, a tiny figure radiating light, in the middle of a crowd in the far distance.

Another way in which Thomas draws us in to the story is that, rather than the subject of the painting dominating the picture, he often makes it a small, almost hidden detail. In The Last Supper, we see an ancient town in earthy shades of brown and ochre, underneath a midnight blue sky. The town is in darkness, but when we look closely, in one of the windows there is a light, in which we can see the tiny figures of Jesus and his disciples, sharing bread and wine.

St Anne’s vicar, the Rev Liz Devall, who is rightly delighted to have secured the exhibition for her parish, revealed that while adults sometimes don’t see these details on a first viewing, this was not the case with the children from the primary school. In Palm Sunday for example, there is a figure in the foreground treading a palm-strewn street, who looks rather typically Christ-like. Many adults assume this is Jesus, but the children knew that it was the much smaller figure on a donkey, half hidden in the background, who is actually Jesus.

This technique, of locating a profound and significant event on the margins of a painting, or rendering it in a way which means it could be overlooked, brings to mind WH Auden’s poem, Musee des Beaux Arts.

As Auden wrote:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters..…
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy
life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

This to me goes to the heart of the exhibition and is the key to its success – the seamless marriage of the intensely personal, human and vulnerable with the profoundly universal, powerful and momentous.

The artist’s way of sometimes looking at familiar events from a slightly different angle also contributes to this duality. Feeding The Five Thousand, for instance, portrays Jesus not in the midst of a crowd performing a miracle, but afterwards, when the crowds have disappeared and he is a solitary figure by the lakeside, praying alone. To me, this was a rather moving summation of the exhibition’s title: The Human One.

This is not the first time that St Anne’s has secured distinguished art. The church is now home to Dachau, an almost grotesque crucified figure made as a testament to human suffering by Liverpool sculptor Arthur Dooley, a Catholic convert and committed Communist. This powerful and disturbing work is situated close to Thomas’s darkest paintings of events at the end of Jesus’s life, bringing a remarkable and memorable extra dimension to the experience in this venue.

The Human One is quite clearly the product of a deep and prayerful engagement with the Gospels, but that is not to say it can only be enjoyed by Christians or people of faith. Each painting is accompanied by the relevant Gospel verses, but even without this information, the paintings can be enjoyed simply as beautiful works of art.

I was not surprised to learn that Thomas had been a primary school teacher for 15 years. Whilst his pictures are full of symbolism and layers of meaning, they are also extremely engaging and accessible, like the very best illustrations for children’s books. This is not to detract from their artistic worth, but to enhance it. Producing work which can speak to people of all ages about themes of life and death, power and vulnerability is surely a great achievement for any artist.

In his desire to reach as many people as possible, Thomas would like The Human One not to be confined to churches and cathedrals, and invites anyone who has a suitable space, like a pop-up shop or village hall, to contact him. As he says, “the story has no boundaries”.

I would encourage anyone who can to visit this exhibition. It is in Oldham until the end of September, details here,  and Hereford Cathedral in February 2024.

* Explore all of Jeremy Thomas’s work and contact him via his website here.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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Photo credit: dreamtime.com

THERE is growing concern about the potential for Artificial Intelligence to be used to spread misinformation and undermine democracy. But what if some of the most damaging misinformation has become an integral part of our national conversation?

Austerity, a policy adopted by Conservative Chancellor George Osborne in 2010, is an economic approach which has been comprehensively debunked as a theory,  and shown to be extremely damaging  and counterproductive in practice.

In 2015, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote: “It is rare, in the history of economic thought, for debates to get resolved this decisively. The austerian ideology that dominated elite discourse five years ago has collapsed, to the point where hardly anyone still believes it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the coalition that still rules Britain – and most of the British media.”   Yet eight years later, not only have the Conservatives continued to practice austerity, the Labour leadership has begun talking about ‘tough decisions’ and ‘no money left’. Respected economists have condemned this, with one dubbing it, “the economics of the kindergarten”.

Many people may not realise just how lethal austerity has been for the people of the UK. In 2022 researchers concluded that, prior to the pandemic, over 300, 000 deaths in Britain could be attributed to the UK government’s austerity measures.  Researcher Dr David Walsh, stated: “These figures are not only shocking but shameful. And we must remember that these are more than just statistics: they represent hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been cut short, and hundreds of thousands of families who have had to deal with the grief and aftermath of those deaths. The tragic thing is that these deaths did not have to happen. In the words of the United Nations, in a society as wealthy as the UK, ‘poverty is a political choice’. The UK Government needs to understand the damaging impact of austerity and respond with policies that put us back on the path of improving, not worsening, life expectancy for all.”

Prof Ruth Dundas, Professor of Social Epidemiology added: “This study shows that in the UK a great many more deaths are likely to have been caused by UK Government economic policy than by the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to reverse the austerity policies and protect the income, and therefore the health, of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.”

And of course when the pandemic hit, austerity had left our public services ill-equipped to cope, resulting in who knows how many more avoidable deaths?

So we know that austerity is an economic approach which doesn’t work and is extremely harmful. It has caused so many deaths and blighted so many lives, it could be argued that continuing to implement it would be ‘social murder’ as defined by Friedrich Engels.

And yet, in UK politics, austerity just will not die. Why is that? Is it that our media is owned and dominated by non-domiciled billionaires, and for them, austerity works very well? Austerity is effectively a continuing transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Thirteen years of it has seen the wealth of UK billionaires triple, while the bottom fifth of the population now have the lowest share of total income since records began in 1977.

So for the billionaires who own our media, austerity has worked very well. And because they set the news agenda, and supply the information on which most people form their opinions, our politicians seem terrified of challenging this approach, and thus attracting their wrath. Jeremy Corbyn’s fate illustrates what happens to politicians who dare to do so. As Peter Oborne wrote in 2020: “Lie after lie was told about Corbyn, day after day, month after month. For the last four years very few journalists have bothered to do their job to fact-check the claims and report fairly on him.”

With a commercial media so dominated by vast private wealth, one would hope that this is where the BBC would come in, to balance and even challenge the dominant pro-austerity narrative. Sadly, this has rarely been the case.

In 2020, following a complaint from 24 leading economists, the BBC commissioned a review of its coverage of public spending, government borrowing and debt. One of the review’s main findings was: “Some journalists seem to feel instinctively that debt is simply bad, full stop, and don’t appear to realise this can be contested and contestable.”  Also: “Too often, it’s not clear from a report that fiscal policy decisions are also political choices; they’re not inevitable, it’s just that governments like to present them that way. The language of necessity takes subtle forms; if the BBC adopts it, it can sound perilously close to policy endorsement.” The  review identified the problem, but very little seems to have changed in the BBC’s output.

So we have had 13 years of a discredited and deeply damaging economic approach being heavily promoted and going largely unchallenged. The nonsensical concepts of, ‘the nation’s credit card’, or the national finances resembling a household budget, have been internalised by much of the population. Even as super-rich individuals and corporations get ever richer, some people seem resigned to a steadily declining quality of life, because they have been persuaded that anything that would make life better is ‘unaffordable’.

But whenever a politician says we can’t afford something, that is a political choice. Think of the tens of billions that appeared almost overnight for (often extremely dubious) PPE contracts, Test and Trace, furlough schemes etc.

Do we imagine that if Britain was suddenly at war with another country, the government would say we can’t afford to fight? Of course not. So why not declare war on poverty, ill health, crumbling public services and environmental degradation? Why not fight that battle? A well-educated, healthy, secure, and hopeful population is what we should be aiming for, not ‘balancing the books’.

After the Second World War, when the UK’s debt to GDP ratio was so much higher  than it is now, a Labour government spent what was needed to build the foundations of a good society – decent council housing, the NHS, and the welfare state. The result was a more prosperous country. The challenges facing us now – the climate emergency, growing poverty, crumbling public services – also require big and bold investments, which would pay dividends in so many ways.  The alternative is the spiral of decline which we now see all around us.

The choice not to eradicate child poverty or properly pay NHS staff is just that – a choice. The idea that austerity is necessary or inevitable, or even effective, is misinformation. And this misinformation is more dangerous because it’s so pervasive, accepted and promoted by trusted sources. But it is wrong. The alternative, investing in people and public services and green infrastructure is beneficial, economically sound, and morally right.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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DURING THE FIRST lockdown, like so many other people, I became aware of what an enormous privilege it was to have a garden. Knowing that so many people were  confined to homes that not only lacked access to any outside space, but might also be overcrowded and unhealthy made me value our suburban back garden in a way I had never done before.

Not having been a keen or knowledgeable gardener, or indeed any kind of gardener, I decided to try growing something edible. Green bean and courgette seeds were planted in old egg boxes, and I ordered some tiny tomato plants online. Nurturing these plants really made an impact. I became far more attuned to weather conditions, and to appreciate how dependent we are on the natural world for our very survival. I had always known these thing in theory of course, but through the simple act of growing and eating a few vegetables, that knowledge became more visceral. And the results were not only edible, but delicious. I would urge anyone who can to try growing something, even if it’s just one tomato plant in a tub.

This new-found connection to the natural world made me think a lot about a book I had reviewed almost a decade earlier – Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel, by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das. The book is a weighty tome, packed full of rigorous research into the horribly destructive, greedy and exploitative impact of the aluminium industry on the environment and tribal peoples of Odisha, India. The corruption and ruthlessness of multinational corporations, banks and politicians is laid bare, and placed in the context of colonialism both modern and historic. It made me angry – but one element of the book which made a lasting and more positive impression was the relationship of the tribal people, the Adivasis, to the land they had inhabited for thousands of years.

The Adivasis worship the mountains as gods. As Arundhati Roy writes in the foreword, “these bauxite mountains have been home to the Dongria Kond tribe long before there was a country called India…The hills watched over the Kond. The Kond watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain. For the Kond it’s as though God has been sold. They ask how much god would go for if the god were Ram or Allah or Jesus Christ?”

At the time when I reviewed the book, I respected the beliefs of the Adivasi peoples, as just that – an alternative set of sincerely held beliefs. But I must confess that there may have been an element of condescension in that respect, a subconscious feeling that, with our scientific understanding, advanced technology, and greater knowledge of the wider world, we in the West knew more, and perhaps knew better, than the people who worshipped mountains.

And yet, as Padel and Das write: “ Mountains as a religion might be looked on by ‘civilised people’ as the ultimate in superstition. Yet the idea balances the spiritual with the material, and contains an intrinsic intelligence. The land’s fertility comes from the mountains, which store rainwater and release it gradually, mixed with mineral nutrients. Treating mountains as gods is common sense, a prescription for long-term sustainability.”

We may look at people who worship mountains and feel that, compared to them, we have made great progress. But with that ostensible progress we have lost or discarded a sense of the sacred in the natural world. And that sense of the sacred might be exactly what we need now, to save us from our own, deeply damaging culture. As Padel and Das say: “As a religion, ‘money is God’ threatens us all with destruction.”

A year after the first lockdown, a United Nations report confirmed that indigenous people are by far the best defenders of their environments and all the biodiversity they contain. The authors of the report emphasised that “this is an empirical finding, based on data, not a naïve ideological or romantic notion”.  Here too, a spiritual dimension was recognised and affirmed. “For indigenous people it’s a spiritual space. It provides food and medicine. It’s a place where you build relationships, not only among people, but with the river, the water, with different species”.

‘Life is sacred’ is a commonly held belief amongst many religious people.  Sadly, particularly in the West, this belief has tended not to extend to the life of the ecosystems and biodiversity on which we all depend for our existence. But a sense of the sacred in everything, including the natural world, should no longer be seen as primitive, or quaint– it’s actually now, I believe, essential for the survival of our planet.

This sense of the sacred need not be expressed in a conventional, religious way. One definition of sacred is: ‘worthy of or regarded with reverence, awe, or respect.’ Imagine if the natural world and all the interdependent life it contains was viewed with reverence, awe and respect by everybody. How much wiser would our political and economic decisions be?

During the successive lockdowns, I was also extremely impressed by the altruism of the vast majority of young people – sacrificing, with very little protest or complaint, a significant chunk of time in their own lives to protect those who are more vulnerable than themselves.

And it is those same young people who are now most aware of what is happening to our planet, and of what action is needed to save it. They may not use the word sacred, but their passion to protect the environment and biodiversity show a far more respectful and reverent attitude towards the natural world than that of many older generations.

The title of this Ekklesia series is Pandemic, Humility and Hope: reflection and response.  One of the lessons I learned from the pandemic is that older generations need the humility to accept that people who are much younger may have a better grasp of the biggest challenges we face, and we need to be prepared to follow their lead. Also, we need the humility to accept that indigenous people who lack the sophisticated trappings of a ‘developed’ society may actually hold the key to our planet’s survival. In large areas of the world, we need to relinquish land and control back to them. Only with this humility will our hope in a liveable future have a solid foundation.

This article is part of Ekklesia’s ‘Pandemic Humility and Hope’ series, launched to coincide with the third anniversary of the first Covid lockdown on 23 March 2020. See also Everyday Sacrament: Visual Meditations in an Age of Pandemic (review), Scotland After the Virus (review), Beyond the deadening grip of the ‘old normal’ (article) and ‘The pandemic: an issue of life and death’.

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© Bernadette Meaden has written about political, religious and social issues for some years, and is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement. She is an Ekklesia associate and regular contributor. Her latest book is Illness, Disability and Caring: A Bible study for individuals and groups (DLT, 2020).  Her latest articles can be found here. Past columns (up to 2020) are archived here. You can follow Bernadette on Twitter: @BernaMeaden

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