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Editorial
Alwyn Thomson
Comment:
Politics: serving God and doing good!
Ethel White
From
the Director: Cultivating the common ground
David W Porter
ECONI
Statement: Confidence in God
October 2002
Postbag: Letters to the Editor
Why
vote?
Alison Laird
Communities
of hope
Lord Alderdice
Transformation 2003: Killing for God?
View
from the south
Patrick Mitchel
Church
& state
Esmond
Birnie MLA
Taking
the plunge
John Kyle
Faith
in politics
Interview: Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP
Your
kingdom come
Heather Morrow
ECONI
Statement: Forum for Peace & Reconciliation
January 2003
Bible
study series: Faith in the future
David
W Porter
Through
a glass, darkly
Changing Women, Changing Worlds Conference
Review:
A night in November by Marie Jones
Noel
McCune
Book
Reviews
Alwyn Thomson
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 3: Reconciliation
For
God and His Glory Alone:
Study 4: Peace
FAITH IN POLITICS
Paul
Murphy MP was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 24th
October 2002. Brought up in a mining community in South Wales, he became
involved in politics, aged 15, when he joined the Labour Party. He describes
how the socialist legacy of the valley and the Christian faith of his
family have shaped his own faith and politics and reflects on his hopes
for politics in Northern Ireland.
You were elected
as local councillor in 1973 aged 25. What motivated you to get involved
in politics in the first place?
I came from a relatively political family, from a small village called
Abersychan in South Wales which was a highly political place. It was just
a small village, but it produced 6 Members of Parliament, including Roy
Jenkins, his father who would be my predecessor and myself. On the very
same day in 1964 that I joined the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Undersecretary
in the Wales office Don Touhig joined with me in the Co-operative Hall,
on the High Street in Abersychan. Then I got involved in the Young Socialist
Movement and got to university, came back, taught history and politics
and at the same time got elected to my local authority, Torfaen Council
in 1973. So for my working life from 1973-87, until I became an MP, half
of my time was spent teaching and half of my time was spent being Chair
of the Finance Committee of the local authority.
Part of it comes from the fact that I lived, as you do in South Wales, in highly politicised communities within the Labour Party. We don’t think in the South Wales valleys of being in anything other than in the Labour Party. Labour was part of your life because it was a mining community. My dad was a coal miner. But it was also a link to Christianity in the sense that my socialism was also involved in Christian socialism. The Christian Socialist Movement is quite a wide one and lots of people came to the Labour Party in Wales through the churches. I think it was Morgan Phillips, the General Secretary of the Labour Party, who said that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than it did to Marx. So there is a big Christian Socialist tradition in the valleys of South Wales - although I am a Catholic - in the church in Wales and in the non-conformist churches as well.
Was becoming an
MP the obvious next step?
I think that most people who are interested in politics and want to go
on in political life will aim for membership of the House of Commons.
After I had fought a seat in the West Country, knowing I would lose it
because it was a safe Conservative seat, I tried for one or two other
seats. I got on the shortlist but never actually got selected until I
was selected for my own area, which is the best thing you can do because
you are actually representing your own community.
My family has lived in Monmouthshire since 1860. My mother’s side, which was a protestant family, came from England, from Somerset. My father’s side was a catholic family, they came from Ballincollig in Co Cork and they’d lived in that mining and steel work community for over a hundred years. It’s a great thing to be able to represent your own people.
Did you feel that
your own family background helped you understand some of the issues of
identity that were part of the problem here?
Well I hope it did. I read History at Oxford and I taught it for 17 years
in a college. It was modern British history, which included the history
of Ireland as it affected the history of the United Kingdom. The background
in history was handy but the family background was handy too. The history
of Ireland was something which I was caught up in.
It’s also interesting from my point of view that I come from a mixed marriage. When my parents got married, in 1947 I think it was, even in Wales in those days there were complications if a catholic family and a protestant family got together to marry. Those days, happily, have gone now. But in those early days it was difficult, so I was able to experience a little bit of the differences between the protestant and the catholic denominations, from a Welsh perspective.
Also, I am not English and I come from a place that is now devolved as well, with an Assembly in Cardiff. Wales is different but is still within the UK - you can be Welsh and British at the same time and that gives you a different sort of insight. I suppose I could understand the business of identity more than lots of people. Coming in 1997 to be Political Development Minister I was able to talk to people from a rather different angle, to be able to understand the business of devolution.
What was your
reaction in 1997 when Tony Blair offered you the chance to come here as
Political Development Minister?
I half expected it. I had been Opposition Spokesman on Northern Ireland
from 1994 –1995. I was deputy to Mo Mowlam and first came to Northern
Ireland in 1994, to look at the political process. I think that she particularly
wanted me to come back with her even though I was holding a different
portfolio in the run up to the General Election of 1997. I was the Shadow
Defence Spokesman, but I knew that she was interested in my being given
the possibility of doing this job. I came to Northern Ireland about a
month or two before the General Election to talk to the parties, so clearly
there was some idea that there may be a chance of coming back. So when
the Prime Minister said, “Do you want to be Minister of State for
Northern Ireland dealing with the talks?” I said, “Yes. Thank
you very much.” And it was a great delight and pleasure to do it.
So it wasn’t completely out of the blue.
When you came
here first, what did you think you might be able to achieve with the parties?
I knew it was a very challenging job because things, when we took over
in the summer of 1997, weren’t going very well. That was the first
thing, it was stuck. I knew that was going to be a huge challenge in the
months ahead. But at the same time, I had met some of the main players
and I hope I understood the issues. The most important thing to do was
first of all to listen to the different parties. I really did an awful
lot of listening in those first few years to try and work out what it
was that motivated people - why it was that they were where they were.
Then eventually I chaired the talks, or part of them. George Mitchell
chaired the main Strand Two and the main plenaries, I chaired the Strand
One talks that was the basis of setting up of the Assembly and Strand
Three, jointly with Liz O’Donnell from the Irish Government. So I
knew it was a challenge but at the same time I believed then, as I believe
now, that there was a deep commitment on the part of the political parties
involved to want to produce a settlement.
As it turned out we had some success in the summer/ autumn of 1997. Sinn Féin came in, but the DUP went out. The Ulster Unionist Party, the PUP and the UDP came in. Then we had a very difficult Christmas, there were a lot of murders and then we had the deadline put in by George Mitchell of Good Friday, which actually did the trick.
Some Christians
have opposed the Agreement because they feel it is not a just agreement.
Does your own understanding of Christian faith enable you to see what
they are getting at?
I can understand it, but I don’t agree with it.
How would you
say to those people that the Agreement is more than a practical political
solution but is itself an expression of justice?
The Agreement is about hope. And one of the things that we are given is
to rest much of our life on hope. Of course it was difficult and I can
understand people being deeply concerned about some of the things that
had to be done in order to achieve peace and political stability. The
release of political prisoners was a difficult one for people to cope
with. We had to look elsewhere in the world where these peace processes
had worked - particularly in South Africa - to see that we had to make
difficult decisions to reconcile people to the business of going forward
rather than going backwards or remaining where you were.
I believe, partly because I was involved in making it, that the Agreement is the best way forward, flawed as it might be to some. How else do you go forward unless you do it by agreement? At the end of the day people voted for it. They had a choice and 90 per cent of the people in the Republic voted in favour and 74 per cent in Northern Ireland voted in favour too. So it had popular acclaim as well.
When you left
after that initial period here, did you go away with a sense of hope at
that stage or did you still have concerns or frustrations?
Well, we’ve had frustrations over the years since the signing of
the Good Friday Agreement, but we always knew it would be a bumpy ride.
George Mitchell told us on the day, “This is the beginning not the
end of the process,” and that there were going to be days of negotiations,
weeks of disagreement and issues which were deadlocked, because that is
the nature of the game. You don’t bring people, after 30 years of
effective civil warfare in Northern Ireland, overnight into a new dawn.
There were huge problems, three and a half thousand people had perished
in 3 decades, but at the same time we’d gone a long way towards it.
So I did go away in 1999, to the other job as Secretary of State for Wales,
with a certain sense of fulfilment, that I had done my bit towards the
Agreement. But most importantly that the political parties in Northern
Ireland, the people of Northern Ireland had themselves created this Agreement
which was for them and which produced the goods. People aren’t killed
in the way that they were years ago, the death is nothing like it was.
It is a more prosperous place, there has been devolved government, tourism
is on the increase, and unemployment is down because people want to come
here by way of economic development. There have been changes in people’s
lives. You can go out into the city centre like I did earlier today, to
buy a CD at HMV. You couldn’t do that in 1994 without bumping into
policemen and being searched and all the rest of it. Those days are gone,
thank God, so there has been improvement because of the Agreement.
I was very satisfied with that. I was worn out as well in 1999 because it had been a stressful two years, fascinating and very challenging. It was also good to go back to my own country and to help devolution develop there too.
When you came
back in 2002 it was also a very difficult time…
It was very unexpected. MacMillan was once asked what was the most important
thing in politics, “Events, dear boy, events.” And it is events,
and in this case it was the cabinet reshuffle.
I was very pleased to come back. I had done three years as Welsh Secretary and enjoyed that, but the challenge here was enormous. I came back to lots of friends who I had made over the two years, people had been extremely friendly and hospitable and I was very, very pleased to be able to come back. But you are right in saying that it was a difficult time, I suppose I would have preferred a time when the Assembly was up and running and the executive was running – but that wasn’t the case - so the challenge was that much greater. And one which I hope we will be able to meet in the next few weeks.
So now, as Secretary
of State, what are your hopes at this stage for Northern Ireland?
Well, firstly that we get a restoration of our institutions and that is
based on the restoration of trust and confidence amongst the political
parties. A lot of what we have been doing over the last number of months
is to try and improve that and it is very difficult. We know what happened,
in terms of the continuing problems of paramilitary activity, on the part
of the IRA as much as on any other. The ceasefire has not broken down
but there has still been activity and that activity has meant a complete
collapse of trust and confidence. That, in turn, meant the collapse of
our institutions, or the suspension of them. So what I want is the restoration
of both those things and the parties to start trusting each other again.
They are never going to be political friends because they come from different
political dimensions, but that doesn’t mean to say that they can’t
trust each other.
Secondly, that devolution is restored; that I can hand over everything I do under Direct Rule at the moment. Education and health, roads and transport and planning and the arts etc. all goes back to the 10 Ministers who did it, and the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, and I’ll carry on with my job as Secretary of State here dealing with issues that I have to deal with such as security and the politics of the place. My hope is that they get trust restored and the institutions restored and that I can divest myself of running the show because it is for local politicians to do it, not me. It’s not the same: I represent a South Wales Valley constituency, I don’t represent a Northern Ireland one. I want Northern Ireland people to look after their own affairs.
I hope above all else, that the process continues to go forward rather than backwards and that the way things were for thirty years, that is the end of them. That we go forward to peace, to prosperity and political stability. I hope I can play my small part in that.
Some people think
faith should be kept out of politics and point to Northern Ireland as
an example of what happens when it isn’t. How would you respond to
that?
Well, I think people who have done things over the years in Northern Ireland
on the basis of saying that they did it because of their faith are misguided
and that is a distortion of Christianity. In the same way that terrorists
on the international scale who invoke the name of Allah to embark upon
terrorist activities is a distortion of Islam. Our faith, Christian faith,
is one of love. It is one of ‘love thy neighbour’ and it certainly
isn’t one of being violent to each other. I’ve always maintained
that the issues in Northern Ireland aren’t essentially based on religion.
The differences are based on identity and history, and all sorts of other
reasons too.
I think the Christian faith of our church leaders in Northern Ireland actually pulls people together rather than the other way round. You know, I meet on a regular basis the main church leaders. They played an enormously important role in the Peace Process in pushing people all the time to go forward rather than to stay where they were.
There is still a job of work to be done on sectarianism; no question about that. It is still very bad in some parts of Northern Ireland but in overall terms I think that this place is much, much better today that it was 10 or 20 years ago in terms of people understanding each other, from whichever part of the Christian church they come.
As to whether you keep faith out of politics, I don’t think you can divorce your religion, your faith, and put it in a compartment and say, “That is my Sunday faith, there. As to the rest of the week - don’t worry about it.” You can’t do that because the most important thing to a person who does have faith in Christianity is that that is actually the most important thing in their lives. It has to be otherwise there’s no point in having it. And it must guide you in what you do; I hope it does with me.
You can’t of course impose your own beliefs on other people. That’s another thing altogether. No one is wanting to evangelise in a political sense. You’ve just got to be honest with yourself, that the decisions you take, I hope, are based on Christian principles. That includes the Christian principles of tolerance and understanding towards each other and understanding different people’s point of view.
Is there a role
for churches to speak publicly on political issues or are there times
when they should keep silent?
I don’t think they should ever keep silent. Again, you can’t
divorce your religion from your general sense of what socially and economically
should happen. It would be very bad indeed if religious leaders said nothing
about the major issues of the day because they generally, in some way
or other, impinge upon morality of some sort. The argument about war on
Iraq, for example, whatever way you want to look at it, you know there
is a moral argument for, and there is a moral argument against, but they
are moral arguments. No one wants war. People want to see peace but there
may be different ways of getting there.
People are going to have to speak out against social injustice or deprivation, that’s just as important a part of the Christian message as anything else. It is one thing being political; it is another thing being party political. Some clergymen are party political, that’s up to them. But I’m talking in the sense of being non-partisan, but nevertheless talking about issues which affect men, women and children here in Northern Ireland and really it’s very difficult to get out of it.
I also think they have a role to play, for example, in joining together in prayer to make Northern Ireland a better place and to ensure that there is peace, stability and prosperity in Northern Ireland. Whatever your politics are you can pray together for that as well. And indeed, the churches in Northern Ireland over the last number of months have been engaging in joint prayer, where they will pray, in their own churches, together for peace and prosperity in this place and for justice. And of course we get some differences in what that is but at the end of the day if you want a peaceful society in Northern Ireland I think you can pray together whatever the background is.
Do you think the
churches are good at addressing political issues?
They, like everyone else, even the political parties, vary in the expertise
they might have. But my experience of Northern Ireland church leaders
is that they are very well equipped to be able to comment on the political
issues of the day, avoiding the party politics of it. I have heard nothing
but sense from the church leaders when I have met them, in terms of how,
for example, to combat sectarianism. It is a big issue, which is a difficult
one for them, bearing in mind the history of this place, but one that
they have to address. More often than not, sectarianism isn’t in
any way based on religion; it is based on prejudice and bigotry.
There is a place there for mutual understanding; there is also a place there for helping poorer people, deprived people in Northern Ireland, right across the political spectrum.
What do you have
to say to the churches and to Christians in Northern Ireland, not just
the church leaders but to the local church down the street? What can they
do?
Well, I think the first thing is working together constructively to combat
social deprivation and combat unemployment together. Although Northern
Ireland’s unemployment rate, for example, has dropped dramatically
and it is probably one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing region
in the United Kingdom, there are still pockets of severe deprivation in
both catholic and protestant communities which need to be addressed. You
can do that together.
Secondly, there is a big message on sectarianism, which the churches can address perhaps more effectively than anybody else. You get Methodists and Presbyterians and Anglicans and Baptists and Catholics working together against bigotry and sectarianism, recognising and in many ways understanding much more deeply each others’ points of view and traditions. Doing that is so important to set an example to the rest of Northern Ireland, particularly those areas where we are still seeing sectarianism and bigotry which is very wrongly and very wickedly using Christ’s name. I think the sectarianism side is important, they can combat that together, difficult as it is.
Churches can combat the social evils of the day in Northern Ireland without entering the political arena. They can also persuade people to go forward. Go forwards rather than backwards, all the time.
The views of church leaders are taken much more into account in Northern Ireland than any other part of the United Kingdom, partly because there is a much higher church membership and church attendance here than there is in any other part, including Wales. People do actually listen, so there is a huge role I think for church leaders. But not just the leaders, because the point the leaders made when I talked to them is that most of this is also coming up from the base. The real work is done at your local level, at your parishes and your churches and your vestries. So at the basic level, where people join together to worship God, there is the point at which you put the message. The leaders of course have to lead, because that is their job, that’s why they are put there. But the message has to come thataway [from the bottom up].
I think in the years I have been in Northern Ireland, right across from the Church of Ireland to Non-Conformist to Catholic churches, the change that we’ve seen - first of all in churches working together - but secondly, in the greater tolerance towards each other in a place which was distinctly intolerant. Over the decade there has been remarkably good change which I welcome considerably. I enjoy working with church leaders and praying with church leaders in Northern Ireland for the betterment of this place.
What would you
say to people of faith who have turned their backs on politics, either
out of frustration or because they think politics is tainted or corrupted
and therefore best avoided?
Well, democratic politics is the least worst of political systems: the
alternative is dictatorship. At the end of the day, we have to remember
that a few years ago when people in South Africa were queuing up to vote
that they had been denied democratic politics all their lives because
of apartheid and the wickedness of the regime there. Sometimes when I
talk to people, not just here, but right over the United Kingdom who just
don’t want to vote, I remind them that no matter who you vote for,
even if you don’t vote for me, please go out and vote because it’s
something we’ve fought for and people have actually died for. I think
it is important that people take the business of politics seriously. There
is no real alternative to it. The people in Northern Ireland are entering
a new political era which is completely different from anything we have
seen before. They should grab the opportunity, and I think they will,
and be part of this great adventure that we are embarking on in Northern
Ireland where politics had gone to sleep for thirty years, effectively,
because of what happened here. And it’s better politics, which actually
embraces every community in Northern Ireland and they ought to take advantage
of that, difficult as it might be. More people need to be engaged in the
business of politics in Northern Ireland, that is to say dealing with
those issues which affect people’s lives.
For over 30 years there has been one issue in Northern Ireland and that is the constitutional one. Now people have the chance to influence people’s quality of life by talking about the things that are dealt with in the Assembly. People shouldn’t turn their back on it. Far from it - they should grab the opportunity with both hands and play their part in one way or another. There is a huge amount of talent out there which simply wasn’t used in the political arena for 30 years. There are 108 seats in the Assembly, and seats on local authorities. There are opportunities which weren’t there before.
RT HON PAUL MURPHY MP was interviewed by Alwyn Thomson and Anna Rankin in Castle Buildings, Stormont on 25th March 2003.
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