The 'enemy within' has a new face

With official opposition to the government’s policies virtually non-existent, the only significant criticism of the Coalition is coming from areas of the establishment usually seen as traditional supporters.

People like the leader of the Church of England and institutions like Oxford and Cambridge have taken up the cudgels against unbridled market capitalism while Labour leader Ed Miliband is happy to attack the poor who depend on state benefits.

When the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, as a guest editor of the New Statesman, wrote that “with remarkable speed we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted” and that “at the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context”, the government had to respond quickly and with all guns blazing.

The archbishop did more than expose the cruelty of a few cuts; he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the government and with it the charade of bourgeois democracy. And the holy man went on to declare that the big society was viewed with “widespread suspicion”, that the coalition was facing “bafflement” and “indignation” over its plans to reform the health service and education, and so on.

This is a challenge to the fundamentals that underpin the system itself and is not so easily brushed off. A further instance of government policies stirring up its own people to rebellion took place at Oxford University where academics and tutors voted for a motion of no confidence in the higher education minister David Willetts by a landslide majority (283-5).

At the meeting they lined up to attack plans to instigate a market in universities. Willetts, in his annual speech to vice chancellors ten days before, had said the government’s ambition was to make the new higher education framework “as de-regulatory as we can”, with the emphasis on increasing competition.

Bernard Sufrin, computing scientist, conjured up “the spectre of the private, for-profit university” at the Oxford gathering. Professor of English David Norbrook argued that academics were being forced to speak a language “that we all know doesn’t honestly represent what we do and what we believe in but which we speak because it is the price of funding”.

Adbel Takriti, a tutor at St Edmund Hall, called the plans “ill-articulated and incoherent”. The unity between academics and students (who were demonstrating outside) was evident when David Barclay, president of the student union, said that “the marketised core of the government’s plans is rotten, and will turn our successors into those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Other university academics will hold their own meetings, and they are not likely to be much different. Thousands are signing the no-confidence web-sites

What is most remarkable about this revolt-from-within is the emphasis on the “loss of community” and “collective life” that the commercialisation/privatisation plans imply. A growing opposition turning everything into a commodity for sale is becoming more articulate, more focused on the ideas behind the policies.

Even more scary for the government is the fact this opposition does not come from within Parliament or from the trade unions. Ministers are forced to turn and face a growing number of jabs in the back from unexpected quarters, from people who would normally refrain from direct criticism, from those who do not respect the rules of the parliamentary game.

In a newspaper article, Barclay and two academics wrote: “The model of organising resistance to this degradation of collective life can already be seen, honeycombed throughout the country”. Indeed it can, amongst doctors, teachers, nurses, civil servants and many other groups of professional workers facing cuts, job losses and the destruction of services.

The creation of People’s Assemblies, to bring together all sections of the community into united opposition to government plans, is a natural next step. Building a network of assemblies around a strategy of transferring political and economic power into the hands of the majority would offer a real alternative to the status quo.

Peter Arkell

Drive the merchants from the temple

When the Archbishops of Canterbury and York weigh in against what they see as the excesses of market capitalism and financial speculators, something is definitely up. The most senior figures in the Church of England haven’t suddenly become revolutionaries, however, but reflect a growing sense in society that the economy is going to hell and that ordinary people are the principal victims.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, condemned the financial traders who made millions by driving down the share price of leading banks as "bank robbers and asset strippers". Speaking to City bankers on the effects of the credit crisis, he damned the "Alice in Wonderland" world of global finance where speculators profited by laying bets that shares in HBOS would fall in price.

Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned that modern devotion to the free market is a form of idolatry and that Karl Marx was right in his analysis of the power of "unbridled capitalism". In an article for The Spectator magazine, Dr Williams said the current crisis had exposed the "basic unreality" of the long-standing global trade in debts, in which "almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders".

Sentamu and Williams make some good points but like many others, fail to relate the financial crisis to the essential nature of the capitalist system. The inner drive for the continuing expansion of capital is the source of the fantasy finance world the archbishops describe. Their demands for regulation and reining in of the speculators will not only fall on deaf ears but are as far removed from reality as the financial system they denounce.

In the United States, for example, the Bush administration is taking desperate measures to try and keep the financial system going by spending $700 billion to buy up useless assets that the market is unwilling to put a price to. Bush is bludgeoning Congress into approving the deal, warning that failure would lead to “financial panic” and a “long and painful recession”. The Financial Times has doubts whether the package will make a difference, saying today: “The plan has some serious flaws. In particular, there is no reason why public sector buyers should be better at pricing these assets than private bidders. This could, potentially, lead to significant losses.”


The archbishops would like to return to a more benign form of capitalism of the 1960s, before the globalisation genie was let out of the bottle. Those of a mature age like myself would love to go back 40 years, which shows how the imagination can run riot. It is far easier to conceive of a future based on co-operation expressed through common ownership and democratic control of the resources of the global economy.

Of course, the Church of England cannot help in this respect. Since the Reformation, it has provided the theological justification for capitalism. Money-lending and the accumulation of individual wealth through land grabbing, slavery and colonial possessions were generally blessed and approved of by the church, which is an integral part of the British state. Rather than limiting ourselves to Sentamu’s and Williams’ criticisms, the action of Jesus in driving the merchants and money-lenders out of the temple would be a far better starting point!

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Crucifying the Archbishop

A World to Win’s editors are not for any religion or the supremacy of one “belief system” over another. But we can see how those who want to find a peg on which to hang all their prejudices have chosen the Archbishop of Canterbury’s thoughts about the rights of minorities. Rowan Williams has become a punch bag for reactionaries and fake liberals of all kinds following his considered remarks about sharia law and minority communities.

Few people challenge the alienating power of the state which, as a result, assumes some quasi-religious divine right to rule. So it’s a paradox that the most senior figure in the established church has done so. Williams rightly attacked the notion – which has been advanced by New Labour with its “citizenship” propaganda for example - “that to be a citizen is essentially and simply to be under the rule of the uniform law of a sovereign state”. His insistence that there is a “distinction between the rights of citizens overall and the duties of individuals under their religion” and that peoples right to practice what their consciences dictate is equally important.

No wonder that the Brown government immediately joined the lynch mob after the tabloid media spiced up Williams’ address to lawyers last week, declaring that there could only be “British law that reflected British values” and that the archbishop was mistaken. The fact that multiculturalism in Britain has not been entirely successful doesn’t mean that the idea that different peoples can live in harmony should be abandoned. Nor should it mean that all minorities – religious or secular - should be compelled to integrate or face social exclusion. This has been the thrust of Williams’ arguments and the reaction it aroused shows all too clear the intolerance that New Labour and people like Trevor Phillips has helped foster with their attacks on multiculturalism.

Johann Hari and Yasmin Alibhai Brown, both Independent columnists, have shown the true colours behind their supposed free-thinking, liberal stances. They both suggest that Williams has endorsed the abuse of women that occurs in countries under the justification that it is sharia law, which is something that he has not done. Hari, like the Bishop of Rochester, attacked the notion that different peoples, religions and cultures could live together in the UK without being intolerant of each other’s beliefs. Strutting about as a liberal, Hari – who infamously backed the invasion of Iraq – somehow denies that there are minorities like Muslims who have been singled out for punishment and ostracised, taking the place of persecuted Jews, Catholics, Afro-Caribbeans and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Williams did not for one moment suggest that sharia or any other religious-based law should overrule British law. He merely tried to advocate greater understanding of history and customs of another cultures and faiths and to raise whether communities could have some forms of self-regulation in the sphere of civil law. All of the archbishop’s detractors chose to ignore his main message – which is an attack on one-dimensional dogmas of all kinds. In particular, he warned against allowing governments “a monopoly in terms of defining public and political identity”.

A strong, confident state that enjoys the general support of the people would, of course, not over-react the way it has over the Williams’ speech. But the institutions of the state do not enjoy such a privileged position. The Church of England, which is an integral part of the British establishment, is itself in some crisis. Reactionaries within the church who joined in the attack on Williams would prefer oblivion to any sort of radical change. They are part of the growing authoritarianism in Britain that is intended to intimidate those who favour open debate.


Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary