The Labour Party and Catholicism KEVIN MEAGHER
Left-footed
Next Saturday, the winning candidate of the Labour leadership contest will be announced. But whoever wins, says a party activist and former government special adviser, Labour needs to rethink its negative attitude towards the very people who are its most loyal supporters – Catholics
T
he Labour Party and the Catholic Church have a lot in common. They walk in tandem on economic and social justice. They abhor war and
starvation, and share concerns about the nat- ural environment. But relations between the two institutions have traditionally rested on a delicate modus vivendi. For although they share much in common, there are fundamen- tal differences too. They go their separate ways on huge issues such as abortion, birth control, gay rights, euthanasia and the import - ance of marriage. Politically, the smart thing to do would be
to avoid confrontation that dredges up the full extent of these differences and instead focus on the significant areas of agreement. But it’s not easy. Labour’s 13 years in office saw one flashpoint after another. Sometimes on big issues: abortion adverts, quotas for faith schools and adoption by same-sex cou- ples. But sometimes on smaller issues too, such as the British Secular Society’s splenetic call for hospital chaplains to be cut – which, sadly, saw no Labour health minister willing to take to the airwaves to denounce such mean-spirited nonsense. Of course, there have always have been dis- agreements and tensions between Catholics and secular socialists. But Catholics have often been willing to see the bigger picture. And it’s a good job for Labour that we do. Let’s put it this way: if the rest of the elec- torate voted Labour in similar proportions to Catholics, the party would be in office in perpetuity. In 1997, 2001 and 2005, Catholic voters rallied to Labour’s standard. According to the polling organisation, Ipsos MORI, a staggering 60 per cent of Catholics supported Labour compared with 19 per cent supporting the Tories at the 2001 general election. Researchers from the British Religion in
Numbers project at Manchester University say that Labour was still well ahead among Catholic voters at May’s general election: “The Labour share of the vote … stood at 43 per cent for Catholics, compared with 30 per cent for the electorate as a whole.” But it is in underlying attitudes that Catholic
support for Labour shines through. Ipsos MORI found that while fewer than a quarter (22 per cent) of the public generally describe
themselves as “Old Labour”, more than a third (34 per cent) of Catholics say that term best describes their political view. Quite simply, Labour would never have won three election victories in a row without its rock-solid Catholic support. The challenge for Labour’s next leader is
to better understand the party’s Catholic tribe. Of the five leadership contenders only one, Andy Burnham, is a Catholic. Ed Balls and Diane Abbott have Christian backgrounds, while David and Ed Miliband are atheists. Questioned recently by the New Statesman magazine about “what God means to you”, Ed Miliband replied: “Something that some people believe in, and I don’t.” His brother David, the former Foreign Secretary, was slightly more gracious, saying God was “some- thing that gives other people enormous strength”. Ever the diplomat. This matters because the Christian socialist
strain in the party, which once led Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, to note that Labour “owed more to Methodism than to Marx”, is not much in evidence these days.
The electoral consequences for Labour of antagonising Catholics are clear. Mostly the party is canny enough to see that
Tony Blair, despite his own personal beliefs, failed to stop the increasing tendency towards leaving God out of the Labour picture. As his spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, once put it: “We don’t do God.” Indeed, Blair noted on leaving office that people “think you are a nut- ter” if you talk about religion in politics today. You will not find many on the Left who wear their Catholicism on their sleeve these days. When I was running for a parliamentary seat myself a few years ago, I found out why. “I suppose you will be taking your orders from the Pope?” I was asked, more than once, by party members. “Of course,” I replied. “These days, though, he’ll probably just text.” Unfortunately, many Catholics on the Left – and there are many of us – are not often robust
enough in ensuring their faith is respected. We should not be so timorous. The electoral consequences for Labour of antagonising Catholics are clear. Mostly, the party is canny enough to see that. But there are exceptions. Take London Labour MEP Mary Honeyball. In a piece for The Guardian a couple of years ago, she asked: “Should devout Catholics such as [Ruth] Kelly, [Des] Browne and [Paul] Murphy be allowed on the government front bench in the light of their predilection to favour the Pope’s word above the Government’s?” It is examples like this that give ground to the view that anti-Catholic bigotry is the new anti-Semitism of the Left. As Labour Party members like me seek to rebuild as a party from May’s election defeat, our next leader needs to ask what damage these accu- mulated policy disagreements, niggles and snide remarks have made and whether it is time to treat Britain’s five million Catholics with more respect and gratitude. In the meantime, we Catholics plough on. Doubtless it will be Catholic charities that will be on the front line of opposing the coali- tion’s arbitrary cuts, as well as coping with the fallout. Catholics provided the backbone for the Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History campaigns. We speak up for asylum seekers when no one else will. Our aid agency, Cafod, is at the forefront of helping flood vic- tims in Pakistan. And I imagine that many branches of Unite Against Fascism or the Stop the War coalition have a local priest and some of his congregation involved. My message to the secularists within my
party is that Labour must remain – if you will forgive the pun – a broad church. There must be room for people in the pews who may hold strongly differing views on moral issues. As a party, we Labour members must relearn the art of agreeing to disagree. Any loss of Catholic support will leave Labour with a big hole in its electoral bucket. My appeal to so- called rationalists on the Left is simple: be rational about how Labour wins elections. Otherwise it may well require divine inter- vention for Labour to win a general election.
■Kevin Meagher was special adviser to the Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the Rt Hon. Shaun Woodward MP.
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