Archbishop of Canterbury criticizes Coalition policies

[LeftishBrit]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13706710

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that the government is committing Britain to "radical, long-term policies for which no-one voted".

....


In a wide-ranging attack, he accused the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of creating "anxiety and anger" in the country by introducing reforms without sufficient debate.

Dr Williams was critical of Prime Minister David Cameron's flagship Big Society initiative, which aims to shrink the state and hand more control of services to volunteer groups, describing it as a "stale" slogan, viewed as an "opportunistic" cover for spending cuts.

The archbishop's article also said there was concern that the government would abandon its responsibility for tackling child poverty, illiteracy and poor access to the best schools.

(And more at link!)


(I often post my concerns about religious right-wing influences on government, so here's an example in the other direction!)

[xchrom]

1. I am sometimes frustrated w/ Rowan - but not this time. Nt

[Jim__]

2. To my American ears, the archbishop's letter doesn't read like a "wide-ranging attack" ...

but rather like a polite request for debate. An excerpt from his letter

I don't think that the government's commitment to localism and devolved power is simply a cynical walking-away from the problem. But I do think that there is confusion about the means that have to be willed in order to achieve the end. If civil society organisations are going to have to pick up
responsibilities shed by government, the crucial questions are these. First, what services must have cast-iron guarantees of nationwide standards, parity and continuity? (Look at what is happening to youth services, surely a strategic priority.) Second, how, therefore, does national government underwrite these strategic "absolutes" so as to make sure that, even in a straitened financial climate, there is a continuing investment in the long term, a continuing response to what most would see as root issues: child poverty, poor literacy, the deficit in access to educational excellence, sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities (rural as well as urban), and so on? What is too important to be left to even the most resourceful localism?

Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present. It isn't enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, "This is the last government's legacy," and, "We'd like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit." To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But not to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse. Equally, the task of opposition is not to collude in it, either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for that to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie.

The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation. The old syndicalist and co-operative traditions cannot be reinvented overnight and, in some areas, they have to be invented for the first time.

This is not helped by a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, nor by the steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system. If what is in view - as Iain Duncan Smith argues passionately on page 18 - is real empowerment for communities of marginal people, we need better communication about strategic imperatives, more positive messages about what cannot and will not be left to chance and - surely one of the most important things of all - a long-term education policy at every level that will deliver the critical tools for democratic involvement, not simply skills that serve the economy.