The Wardman Wire

The Guardian has a piece by Nicholas Watt, about his last interview with Michael Foot:

As he entered his final years, Michael Foot took comfort that he had finally been vindicated.

The famous 1983 Labour election, known as the “longest suicide note in history”, called for greater state control over banks – exactly what happened during the financial crisis of 2008.

I interviewed Foot in October 2008 about the way in which New Labour, which trashed the party of his era, was enacting one of the main planks of his famous manifesto.

Foot was clearly frail and it was obvious that I could not detain him for long when I telephoned him at an agreed time. But his mind was sparkling as he recalled 1983 in what was probably one of his last interviews.

This is from the comments by HackneyIllustrator:

I grew up seeing Michael Foot walking his dog across the heath. I was a ten year old when I was told who he was. He would stop where I was fishing and ask how things were going. Then the television would be on at home and there he would be making one of his impassioned speeches with his wild Max Wall haircut and pebble glasses. He was never going to make Prime Minister, he was too much of a Utopian.

These days someone would have complained, and he would have been treated as a probable paedophile for doing that.

Like Michael Foot – such incidents are just a memory now, at least until we have removed this particular paranoia from our culture and government.

This is a cross-post from Ekklesia, by Jonathan Bartley.

Cranmer has drawn attention to allegations (from an original story by Conservative Councillor Miles Windsor) about ex-Labour Councillor George Reynolds, who has been “deselected as a candidate in the forthcoming local elections not because he objected to canvassing on the Sabbath on grounds of religious conscience, but because, as a pastor of his church, he is obliged to tend for his flock on Sundays”.

Cranmer concludes from this:

“Siobhain McDonagh is the immanent incarnation of the imminent persecution of all believers.”

“This is one of the most outrageous anti-Christian manifestations of this appallingly oppressive and illiberal Labour Government.”

“In the pursuit of her rabid secularisation agenda desperate attempt to be re-elected, it is the traditional Christian Sabbath which has to be defiled; it is Christian devotion which is subsumed; it is Christian ministry which is considered expendable.”

A friend has just spoken to George Reynolds, the councillor concerned, and reports:

“Although he was a Methodist lay pastor and a local preacher, he has recently been ordained as a minister of the AME Church of Zion and no longer holds any office with the Methodist Church. In his opinion this is why he was deselected – he refuses to canvas at all on a Sunday – but no one has directly told him that this is the reason.”

So he is not a Methodist any longer. His situation has changed, and there seems to be a lot of speculation going on.

But putting aside whether the story as Cranmer reports it is true or not, does the idea that Siobhain McDonagh is on some kind of anti-Christian campaign square up with Siobhain McDonagh’s record?

Siobhain McDonagh is a Catholic. She has been a longstanding member of the Christian Socialist Movement (which she links to from her website describing it as a “site for Labour supporters who are also Christians, believing that Christian teaching should be reflected in social laws and institutions”.

She has employed former Roman Catholic Priest, and Director of the Christian Social Movement, David Cairns (now an MP) in her own office.

Before becoming an MP, she worked for Battersea Churches Housing Trust from 1988-97.

Jane Savill, Religious Education Adviser at the Diocese of London, has described Siobhain’s faith on the website of the Christian Evidence Society in the following terms:

“Siobhain was elected to represent Mitcham and Morden in 1997. Siobhain grew up in the area and has always lived in the Constituency. Siobhain is a practising Catholic. Her faith and politics are both very important to her.

“For Siobhain, being a Christian is looking outwards on a personal level. She believes that Christianity explains the reason for our very existence and gives us the opportunity to realise that there is something beyond our own selves.”

“Siobhain hopes that through her daily life as well as in her work as a politician she can serve the community in which she lives and help society in the way that Jesus taught.”

But perhaps the most interesting thing is that she has actively pursued the removal of legal discrimination against Christians. She introduced the Clergy Disqualification Ten Minute Rule Bill seeking to remove prohibitions on clergy standing for Parliament. In her speech she urged the Government to “tidy up blatantly discriminatory measures in its ancient law” which discriminated against priests and clergy. The law was subsequently changed.

The facts about Siobhain McDonagh speak for themselves.

Michael Foot was a romantic idealist whose admirable commitment to causes won him Labour’s leadership when those causes suited others’ aims. But those same commitments led to wrong policy choices in the 1980s which disbarred him from forming a government. His real achievements as a minister deserve respect, his speaking talent admiration, and his ability and achievement as a writer amply deserve both. This certainly amounts to greatness of a kind, and greatness in the service of excellent humanitarian aims: peace, justice, knowledge, a better world. Those who knew him also speak uniformly of his kindness, warmth and generosity – that can be no accident. For once, then, there is no trace or irony when we say Michael Foot was both a great and a good man.

Paul Waugh writes that Geoff Hoon has announced that he will not be contesting the next Election. He has bailed out one day before a special meeting called following his failed plot with Patricia Hewitt against the leadership of Gordon Brown.

I am not neutral on this particular contest. Good riddance !

It is still probable that Labour will retain this seat, and the removal of Geoff Hoon with his holding back of supplies, multiple properties, large house in horse-country 20 miles from the ex-mining Constituency, and non-supply of essential equipment to British troops, may help them.

The majority is around 10,000, but it has also gone down at the rate of 10 percentage points at each of the last two General Elections.