Are there more things the church should say about riots?
by Andrew Carey. Church of England Newspaper:
In my memory there have been riots and unrest on a near-decadal basis since the 1981 riots in Brixton. They are not new and they often arise at times of recession. They are often linked to scapegoating of recent immigrants. And they are always shocking and distressing but they should not lead us to conclusions that we are on the verge of civil war.
Public Inquiries are an overused tool in the government’s handbook proving expensive and lengthy, but surely a shorter exercise can be done to assess these latest riots– their underlying causes; the accusations of two tier policing and so on.
I, for one, do not believe that we are in any danger of falling prey to overwhelming far-right forces. The very fact that there are no successful right-wing nationalist parties, unlike virtually every other part of Europe, is a consolation that our electoral system and our settled state as a culture tends to preclude extremism of either variety.
However, the scenes of violence were indeed horrendous and in particular there was an horrific incident where rioters were happy to set fire to a hotel trapping people inside. The riots could have been so much worse, and the police rose to the challenge with kettling tactics which have long been in their armoury but have sadly not been used against other protests such as those in favour of Black Lives Matter or the middle class activists of Extinction Rebellion.
The Archbishop and other church leaders have used their considerable media profiles to condemn the protesters and to thoroughly break any link between the church and the adoption of Christian symbols by the ultra-white protesters, claiming, for example, that they want to return to a Christian nation.
Any white Christian, for example, will properly feel revulsion that the faith of love and compassion is misused and will also feel distressed that those who are of a different ethnicity have been feeling uncertain and fearful after the violence.
Yet, it must be constantly pointed out that those causing unrest are always a tiny minority. Young men have always been prone to taking part in these sorts of patterns of unrest throughout history.
What can church leaders usefully say in addition to the predictable words of condemnation that everyone is using?
Firstly, surely the church has something to say about the family. Many young men in the riots are often from broken homes, without strong marriages and father figures. The church’s message on that has been lost. Apart from Michael Nazir-Ali, sadly departed from theCof E to the Roman Catholic Church, where have been the church voices addressing the need for a confident community to integrate immigrants and move beyond the failed multiculturalism of recent decades?
In fact, there are few Christian voices at all, like the late Frank Field who are prepared now to raise the issue of mass immigration on behalf of working class communities who feel that their neighbourhoods have changed all too quickly. Sadly, all communities are under-resourced and impoverished and surely this is a place to start in seeking some kind of community solidarity across ethnic divisions? Investment is needed but so are initiatives which support marriage as an essential part of community-building and policies which slow down the rate of immigration so that communities can welcome newcomers and integrate them properly.
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