The Bishop of Blackburn attacks bankers

The Bishop of Blackburn’s Christmas sermon concerned the economic situation at this time and how people can fight back against the downturn and the cuts in services. I’ve looked on the Diocese’s website and that of the Cathedral, and neither has posted the text of Bishop Reade’s sermon, unfortunately.

I am very sympathetic to Bishop Reade’s message. Some background may assist non-UK people in understanding exactly what is going on.

In England and Wales, most funding for local government (that is, on the town, city, and county levels) comes from central government grants, not from local taxes. So the cuts in grants must be made up by either local tax rises or by local savings. The central government has capped the amount that the local tax (referred to as “council tax” here. It is a household tax based upon the value of the property in which you live, not limited to owners.) can rise, and it has the power to roll back rises that it feels are too high. So the localities are caught between that metaphorical rock and the hard place.

There is no doubt that many local councils have featherbedded many jobs. The chief executives (think “city manager” in US terms) are often paid 6-figure sums (said to be needed to attract the best candidates) and yet the services that the councils provide have been slashed and slashed again. The bins in front of St. Matthew’s Court (16 dwellings in the apartment block) were not emptied last week and the post-Christmas trash is now overflowing the area. I expect they will not be emptied this week, as Monday and Tuesday are Bank Holidays here to make up for the fact that Christmas was on Saturday and Boxing Day on Sunday. The mess will be monumental.

Services for children are also the responsibility of local councils. These services are labour-intensive and thus ripe for “economies”—slashing the number of personnel. This will end up being devastating for children who are in danger in their homes and will result in injuries and (sadly) in deaths. These will make the front pages of the tabloids and will force the Government to think again, but too late.

Housing is also a local council responsibility. The weather here has been perishingly cold for the past month (it hasn’t gone above 4 degrees C [around 39 degrees F] and has often been below 0 C) and there are a number of homeless people on the streets. Emergency shelter is easier around Christmas, but after New Year’s some of the providers disappear from the scene and people are left to freeze on the streets. The local council has the legal responsibility to house people, but has few open houses and even less funding to do it.

On the funding side, the banks have been preparing record bonuses for their employees and executives, waving their wads of cash in the Government and the populace’s faces and bleating that if they do not pay high bonuses, they will not be able to attract and retain the best bankers. Of course, the best bankers are the ones who got us into the mess we’re in now.

London is a world centre of finance and banking. You simply have to walk in the square mile of the City of London on a weekend to discover that it is deserted at times when no money is being made. The Government is scared witless that international banks will abandon London if they are forced to pare down bonuses and salaries.

I believe that the banks are playing a game of chicken with the Government. If bonuses are taxed away at 90%, even so the bankers who are here will be loth to move to, say, Dubai (where their champagne lunches will be few) or to Singapore (where there is little to do after-hours and where the weather is hotter than most of them will enjoy and where it’s a long haul flight to anywhere to ski) or to Shanghai (where no one understands their language and where doing business is problematic because of the system of government).

The social gospel (a.k.a. South Bank Religion, exemplified by Bp. John Robinson, Bp. Mervyn Stockwood, Dean Colin Slee) has withered to a great extent. The causes of this are rooted in the long period of Labour Government, where money was extolled, valued, and promoted. The poor were told that they had only to try harder and they would be carried along to prosperity on the tide of business upturns. Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, proclaimed the “end of the boom and bust economy”. If only.

Thus the Church as well as the State were ill-prepared for the next bust. The poor have become poorer, while the rich have escaped the worst of the cuts. What to do?

Protest in the streets will not be productive in the long run. The recent student protests have put Parliament into “siege mode”, where they feel that they are being coerced into reversing their course. That never works with government.

The Church has a duty to inform its worshipers and the general public about the moral and ethical aspects to the current financial crisis. Without this background, protests will soon descend into a simple striking out at the police who are monitoring the demonstration, rather then intelligently planning for mass action to show the depth of public anger about the financial situation today. The current government is not responsible for the financial crisis, of course. Most of the devastating incidents happened before it took power. What it is responsible for is how we climb out of it, and how we ensure that services are provided to people who need them.

Will the Bishop’s message penetrate to where it is most needed? Southwark’s own Bishop-elect, Christopher Chessun, is the Bishops’ Spokesman for Urban Life, and perhaps he might take up the challenge of persuading the bankers to behave more responsibly as well as encouraging people to vote, and vote in an informed manner. In the end, only votes matter to politicians in Western democracies.

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