The Wardman Wire

For all too many people in Britain, politics appears to be a form of organised bickering and special pleading that intrudes in unwelcome or un-engaging ways on everyday life, but just has to be accepted – like road humps and rain clouds. For another, much smaller class of persons, it is a fascinating and all-absorbing occupation, seeping into every corner of human activity, demanding careful attention and observation.

The former demographic is, one can be sure, far closer to the heart of the Ministry of Justice, currently charged with finding ways of encouraging participation among the large number of people registered to vote who rarely participate in general elections and almost never in local ones – roughly 40 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively.

On the other hand, the professional political class, policy researchers, the commentariat and readers of worthy websites such as this one (who together probably make up less than 5 per cent of the population) are bound to be the ones salivating at the launch of Iain Dale’s new, all-encompassing print publication and online resource, Total Politics, which comes yelping at us like an excitable, over-informed puppy.

According to a famous Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, everyone who is born into the world is either a little liberal or a little conservative. I’ve never believed that, but I have been tempted to think that they are, from an early age, either interested in politics or not. I was, my father was, my grandfather was. My mother and grandmother were not. (There may well have been a gender factor in this, of course).

Then again, it depends on what you mean by politics and who does it. The sparring of political parties is one thing. The processes by which we are involved (or not) in governance and service delivery are another. The practical question about the meaning of power and how it is used and abused is yet a wider definition. And the quest for fairness and sustainability both locally and globally offers a different perspective altogether.

Politics and beyond

What alienates many people from ‘the political’, in my observation, is three things. First, the experience that it is something conducted on our behalf by a select group of people who – despite the odd ballot – are beyond our control and ken. Second, the notion that it operates according to ‘insider trading’ rules and an alien culture all of its own. Third, the feeling that “what I think or do makes no real difference.”

It is unlikely that ‘Total Politics’, whatever its many virtues (it’s an impressive, well-funded venture) will do much to correct any of those impressions. Indeed, it likely to reinforce rather than challenge the professionalisation inherent in an all-encompassing politicisation of public life, which many see as the root of the problem. In the title of a book published in 1985, the Dutch theologian Harry M. Kuitert put it well. What we need to realise, he said, was that while “everything is politics, politics is not everything”.

There is, in short, no area of life that remains immune to the realities of power: the ability of A to influence or coerce what B does in a way which may be similar, different or asymmetric to the ability of B (or C or D) to do likewise. That said, the issues caught up in the matrices of power, both in formal and informal ways (it is the formal ones that get most readily defined as ‘politics’), are not just about ‘the political’ understood in these terms. They are about a whole host of other concerns: the aesthetic, the ethical, the personal, the relational and the spiritual, to mention just five.

What needs to happen, he and others have suggested, is that political processes should be made more accountable to these other basic human needs and priorities – and to a vision of human flourishing which goes well beyond the ability of one group of people to get another group of people to do what they want. A sense of the human (and theological) limits of ‘the political’ is essential to its proper deployment, in other words.

Alternatives in public life

For this to be the case, we need two things. Well, many more than two; but let’s start with a couple. First of all, groups of people who are able to act as ‘moral communities’ - interpersonal, social organisms bound by a basic, catechetical sense of purpose and possibility that does not constantly have to be regulated by elections or other mechanisms of bargaining, re-negotiation and re-contracting among strangers.

This is what, among other things, ‘church’ is supposed to be about – community created by an act of divine grace which, while it is sustained by a certain grammar (doctrine) and a certain active order (ministry), does not finally reside in these things, but in the qualities of forgiveness, service, advocacy and hopeful expectancy (prayer) that keep people in relationship without making coercion, an inevitable corollary of power, the defining reality.

In practice, however, as the current bitter arguments within world Anglicanism make plain, something quite different obtains. Churches as configurations of conviction have learned, within the aura of Christendom (the concordat with governing authority) to mirror and ape general political processes. So instead of discernment and consensus – the sensus fidelium – that guides the best attempts to shape the nature and purpose of Christian community, big ecclesiastical organisations now operate with synods, debates and the full panoply of confrontational political manoeuvring that you would find in pretty much any other organisation.

To point this out is not to appeal for a return to a lost world of innocence or to pretend that power play will not intrude into the spiritual life. It is to point out, nonetheless, that something important is being lost both within the life of the church (which handles its arguments in ways that often make its message look deeply unattractive) and within the wider realm of society (which desperately needs alternative models of making decisions, reaching conclusions, deploying resources, deciding priorities and arbitrating the right and just). Quakers are among those who, rather visibly, seek these alternatives in their public life, not just as private virtues.

A second thing that is needed in order to establish hopeful boundaries to ‘the political’ is the existence of figures who can embody and symbolise a vision beyond that of bargaining, victory and self-interest. One such, these days, is Nelson Mandela – not because he is a saint (he can be pinpointed for all kinds of mistakes during his presidential term in South Africa, not least his failure to get to grips with the AIDS pandemic) but because of his ability to unite people of different persuasions, to show that grace as well as power is needed to triumph over injustice, and to hold on to the vulnerable dream that a different world is possible.

Wrapping up: naked humanity

During Mandela’s 90th birthday celebrations in London and elsewhere, many people shared moments of encounter with him that made a lasting impact on them. I will conclude with mine. Ten years ago I was in Harare, Zimbabwe, attending the 9th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Two figures were mandatory for the occasion, conducted in a large assembly hall holding five thousand people. One was a speech by the president and the other was a visit by Madiba, as Mr Mandela is affectionately known by his people.

Mugabe arrived with a phalanx of armoured vehicles, and an air of great self-importance as he marched to the front. He was greeted with restrained applause (polite, verging on the cold) and proceeded to give a lengthy, humourless, haranguing speech. It went down badly and neatly summarised the demagogic tragedy that was already well and truly enfolding Zimbabwe.

Nelson Mandela arrived, at the beginning of the session, with a couple of modest bodyguards. He chatted and greeted people informally as he walked down the aisle and was received with a standing ovation, whoops of joy and spontaneous singing. He spoke for around 15 minutes, but somehow made everyone there feel that they were being personally addressed. He said that he was grateful to his missionary educators for instilling a sense of justice in him and to the WCC for its strong commitment against apartheid. He would, he said, have come to give these thanks earlier, “but, as you will understand, I was unavoidably detained” – a reference to 27 years on Robben Island.

“When I came out of prison”, he said (I am quoting from memory, rather than from a text), “an attractive young woman came up and threw her arms around me. Then she stood back and looked hard at me. ‘Madiba’, she said. ‘You used to be young and handsome. Now you are old and not so attractive!’ … I imagine that you may well be thinking something like this too, as I stand before you many years after I had wished to. But I am sure you will be a bit more polite, and not express your feelings so directly!”

It was a delightfully self-deprecating (but also rather knowing) moment. The journalist sitting next to me, who could not usually be accused of lacking cynicism, leaned over and observed, “If more leaders could have just a fraction of this naked humanity, politics might feel very different.” Quite.