I was at the Labour Women’s Network political conference on Saturday, which was a wholly wonderful experience – it is so unusual to have so many fabulous women speaking and engaging about Labour politics, but one point was raised which I found quite difficult to agree with.
Part of politics is compromise, and engaging with people who you do not agree with all the time. This is something that politicians need to do with faith groups – it is important to have a relationship with people from all areas of the community that you represent, and to be respected by them, but there has to be a line.
We could use the analogy of making a new friend – you begin by finding the things that you agree on, and build up respect. As your relationship grows, you find areas where you disagree, but because you respect that person, you accept them as a friend despite these views. This all applies to Labour politicians and building relationships with faith groups, and were expressed at the LWN conference as something that it is important to do as a means to reach people who traditional campaigning would not reach, and share many moral values with the party.
The question for me is, would I be a friend with someone who thinks my sexuality, or right to access to contraception or abortion is inherently wrong. I would not. Why are making these exceptions seen as not a problem when we deal with faith groups? There is a significant difference between disagreeing with someone on how to provide support for homeless people, and being accepting of someone’s sexuality.
I fully accept, that not all faith groups are for example anti-choice or homophobic, but some are, and it is a worry that we are too willing to forgive these views for the fear of the conversation being difficult or awkward.
The Labour party is rightly proud of our record on equality, should we be so willing to ignore the flaws of religious groups because we agree so much on social justice? By all means work together on fighting social injustices, but we have a duty to speak up for our values on equality – women are not second class citizens, nor is homosexuality abhorrent.
We should not be using venues which host ‘gay cure’ events like the Emmanuel Centre. We should not be posing for photographs with church leaders who agree with us on social justice, but spend the rest of their time telling the media that marriage equality would cause a plague of locusts. Labour have to stop being afraid of standing up for our beliefs on equality.
Of course we need to have relationships with religious groups and organisations, but the fear to challenge out-dated or disgusting views has to go. Perhaps an extreme example – I agree with Nick Griffin that school food needs to be improved, but you don’t see me joining him in a campaign for it. The issue obviously become more complex with less divisive organisations than the BNP – should Labour be considering The Salvation Army as a friend, since they provide some vital services to people who need them irrespective of who they are, but membership is not allowed to ‘practising’ homosexuals?
We cannot shy away from the difficult discussions, because taking the easy path is just cheating ourselves. It is easy to work with your local mosque on coordinating support for local homeless people – it is not so easy to stand up for your beliefs on equality.
Religious organisations are depending more and more on politicians for airtime and an audience. This is partly due to the collapse in religious attendance, which has seen self-appointed religious leaders fighting amongst themselves to be seen to have a finger on the pulse of the issues of the day.
Whilst the main churches are tearing themselves apart over women bishops and gay clerics (CofE) and child abuse (RC), this has left a gap for smaller groups and the so-called ‘charismatic’ churches, which are growing in influence because of vocal campaigns on poverty.
There is a (frankly racist) belief among some of our politicians that the route to ethnic minority voters runs straight through religious buildings. These are the very organisations which are most likely to have self-appointed leaders and least likely to be properly scrutinised in the way they seek to exercise their influence. This is incredibly dangerous: if anything, an increasingly secular UK should be helping its citizens to live life free of the influence of patriarchal religious hierarchies, not entrenching religious privilege in minority communities.
There is nothing wrong with encouraging churches to run foodbanks if they wish, but it is ridiculous to pretend that they are the only organisations capable of doing so. Your central thesis here is correct: let’s encourage religious groups to be kind and responsible corporate citizens, by all means, but let’s not give them any expectation of preferment in return. With Cameron’s determination to run down other sources of welfare and Gove’s wish to hand over children’s education to fringe religious denominations, the Labour Party must stand up for rights which will be at risk if religious influence is permitted to grow unchecked.
The Labour party is right to want to engage with people who believe in religion, but this should not be achieved by glossing over bigotry. If our politics mean anything, then we MUST stand up for what is right even when the religionists seek to shout us down.
Where anyone with whom we engage promotes intolerance or seeks to cow women into accepting a second-class citizenship, then we have an absolute duty to challenge their prejudice.
We have seen recently in Ireland what happens when people put religion above their duty to preserve a woman’s life. The Labour Party should be at the forefront of the battle to ensure that this can never happen in our country.
We must speak for those without a voice, for if we do not, then who will?
Re Faith and the Labour Party.
I agree with you. I think there is a big generational gap in the Party and therein lies some of the problem. The party has become so hungry in recent years for new members that there are no checks and balances about members committment to the parties founding principles or indeed its developed policies. Some of the issues you name are not just faith issues but are also generational issues. I joined the Labour Party in 1963 when I was 17 and have also been an active trade unionist. I often struggle with the bigotry of some of my generation within the Party and despair sometimes at the lack of common ground I experience with many of them especially when it comes tou our equal opportunities policies.
I am not fully recovered from recent major surgery but I would love to have the opportunity to debate these issues in the first instance with people that I feel some common ground with and then to try and have a national debate.
My selfdefinition is; I am a working class Irish Lesbian and my abiding political passion is the Eqality Policies and practice. Without them we are all doomed
So continuing this line of thought from Twitter… (@ReemaSPatel)
I asked you to imagine you were a member of a faith group, which comprised a large part of your identity, which happened to just be homophobic – and you are yourself LGBT. Often what will happen is that people will come to a sticking point and make a decision;
Do I continue with, and keep my identity as a member of this faith/cultural group;
or do I leave it behind entirely? I think that the latter is very rare – what will happen is that people will be gay and continue to belong to faith groups that are homophobic. After all, leaving all of that behind means leaving behind more than just a faith – it’s often your entire way of life that you have to leave behind.
I’ve often thought that being a Labour Party member, and working with communities puts you in a very similar position. Part of belonging to the Labour Party isn’t just that it is committed to equality, and to social justice – which I think are more or less the same thing; but also that it is a grassroots movement that began in the communities and with significant community support. It is incredibly rare to go into partnership with an organisation that has exactly the same values and beliefs as you do but sometimes you need to do that to achieve your own intended social-political outcomes.
If the Labour Party is to really achieve its outcomes (intended) on social justice – it has to work with communities, including communities where some of its views are not the views of the Labour Party. For a start, a number of the members of those communities are the people it is democratically accountable to in various areas.
It can choose not to, and to disengage, but the question is – what will appear in its place? And would that necessarily be a better thing?
I’m a firm believer in the power of dialogue and the importance of being a critical friend in partnership to change cultures from the inside. The fact that the Labour Party works with and alongside a community group on certain issues does not mean the Labour Party endorses everything that the group believes. In fact, the Party may be able to influence and exercise more political change by working with community groups and having a clear stance through the party leadership – than by directly confronting community groups.
I don’t think that there are any easy answers – but if the Labour Party is genuinely to be a party of the people (and I really mean – diverse peoples) it will often work with groups it doesn’t entirely agree with on everything in order to achieve constructive, specific outcomes. However I agree with you that a line needs to be drawn somewhere especially with homophobia.
In my view homophobia is generally taken less seriously than racism. So I suppose one suggested test for where the line is to be drawn is; ‘would I be comfortable working with this group if they made a similar claim or assertion about a different race group’?
Thoughts welcome.
Perhaps I wasn’t being clear enough about how I see the situation – obviously we need dialogue, and to work together, but we can’t use our similarities as an excuse to not talk about the difficult issues that separate us. Critical relationships are vital.
Although this is a wonderful view of how life in the Labour Party should be, a trip to any CLP meeting or couple of hours canvassing (outside of London, perhaps) should soon make it obvious that it is an unrealistic ideal.
Many of the people we want to vote for us, to gain a progressive majority in Parliament, do not hold perfect views. They might think gay marriage is a step too far, they might think that abortion is wrong, they might send their children to a faith school or even a public school. Nonetheless if they think that Labour is the right choice for the country even if we are going to take decisions, such as on equal marriage, that they disagree with then we should welcome their votes and anything more they want to do. To do otherwise condemns us to opposition.
There are MPs in the party, even in the shadow ministerial team, who hold views closer to some of the groups you might feel nervous about, but if we can work with them where we agree and not be afraid to vote where we disagree, we should be able to build these relationships and networks.
I don’t want us to not talk to or work with groups who disagree with us on certain things, but there is a balance between saying what people who don’t always agree with us want to hear and not being afraid to stand up for what we believe in. Else we are not a Labour party, rather a vote seeking machine.
This is not about the ‘person on the street’, it is about how we engage with religious organisations – I will not be part of an organisation that abhors my sexuality. As a Labour party, we should be taking an active role in ensuring that organisations with homophobic or sexist views are aware that we disagree and why.
It is pragmatic to lead debates not to just follow, were we to just do this, then we are not a Labour party, and there is no difference in our views and those of other parties. Just because some of our MPs and supporters are homophobic or sexist does not make it acceptable, or not important enough to challenge, just because it could lose votes.
The issue is not so much whether the Labour Party should engage with people of faith, but whether, on the ground, the local Labour Party has anything really to say to the faith communities. I am an office holder in my local Labour Party, and also a member of one of the local churches in my town, the Baptist Church. My local CLP could only dream of holding a meeting with the attendance we have on a Sunday morning (>250), and there are 4 other churches of similar size in the town centre.
Yes, our churches, like our political parties, are on a journey – and at times seem to move frustratingly slowly. Yes, I am in favour of equal marriage and believe that gender and sexuality should not be an issue when appointing clergy, and I know that many of my fellow Christians are not in agreement with me yet; but if I want to look in my community to see who is making a real impact in people’s lives, it is the faith groups, not the political parties, and we in the parties need to be humble enough to learn as well as lecture.
I think this is actually quite an important issue. But the difficulty I encountered when I worked in policy was more the issue where government organisations or political parties work with a community group to provide for or lobby for improved housing, care, or mental health outreach (or any of the above). This will allow for greater outreach and impact in hard to reach communities, which is the point Tim is making; but it also means that the Labour Party may be working with a group with potentially prejudiced views about say, LGBT people – who may well be in need of different treatment with respect to care, housing, MH outreach and so on.
Kirstin I think is saying that we need to be in a position where we broach those difficult topics and have a position on provision for everyone regardless of difference. If that’s what she’s saying – I agree.
There is much to be said for an inclusive approach by the Labour Party when it comes to allocating resources or campaigning in an area. And we have to make sure that a person who happens to be different doesn’t just draw the short straw just because that person is de facto in the minority in that local area.
Who said politics was easy?