The London Riots: a lamentation

I've been trying to work out the lyrics to this track for a workshop I'm doing next week in Leicester. I'm nearly there but would value your help!

Here Mr Prime Minister, would you mind if I got a couple of minutes of your time?

Why the fuck did you attack our wages when you never done a days work in your life?

And what the fuck d’you know of our business? I can wait till the day that all of you die!

And it’s funny how you keep your distance but send the police to fight the life of crime.

Were you travelling on London transport the day that the bombs went off?

How about you try an’ pay rent to the landlords earning shit money doing a labouring job?

Why we livin’ like shit in this country while you’ve got your feet up livin’ nice and comfy?

Well we got where the problem is, people acknowledge this stand up to the politics!

Chorus from the original track by Muse:

They will not force us,

They will stop degrading us,

They will not control us,

We will be victorious,

So Come on.

They put cameras up ‘cause they’re mad at us and they still wanna blame it on terrorism.

Newspapers talk shit don’t believe anything that you see on the television.

And the thing is that people don’t listen they take away your rights and stick you in prison.

Well I’ll never forgive ‘em, their tax has risen, for fuck sake check […]

Well I say we turn on ‘em now; let’s stick together and stank our ground; go outside and rip cameras down. Let the pricks no that we ain’t fuckin’ around.

Let’s reclaim the United Kingdom ‘cause I don’t wanna be a face in the distance. 

(Fuck it) listen to my words of wisdom ‘cause all they do is feed ‘em with fiction. 

They will not force us…

I wanna get my hands on David Cameron and when I finish with ‘im he won’t have any legs to stand on.

I’ll grab a knife and stick it in the pussy like a tampon.

And if you’re in a packed out tube and there’s never any room to breathe:

Pray to Allah out loud, people will scatter and then there’ll be plenty of seats.

Drive an RPG into all MPs in the houses of parliament.

I’ll make […] proud when I wipe every last single one of ‘em.

Fuck the government, I’ve had enough of ‘em especially now the beer price is doublin’.

Sacrificing the lives of soldiers […] never before.

They will not force us…

More Media Mulching of St Paul's Spot Light

Perhaps Rowan Williams is right and the Church takes the vicarious role of having the ethical dilemmas on behalf of wider society. We all are part of the system, one way or another, a system that both traps and treats us.

But Ken Costa is not the Church he is representative of the way the 1% dictate the theology of the Church by bankrolling the notorious Alpha Course - a course which conservative evangelicals use to steam roller their nonsense into people's heads. The Guardian send him up brilliantly here.

Far better to listen to the debate on Radio 4, where the middle classes play out the ethical dilemma for us. I flag this up mainly because Jonathan Bartley is on and he's always got something to say that's worth hearing. So click here to listen to that.

Meanwhile, instead of getting people to play out the debate while we watch perhaps the rest of us should think about our own ethical dilemmas and comforting God-talk. Maybe we need to stop looking at the 14 carat gold speck in Ken Costa's eye and take a look at the plank in our own? Um.... Nah!

St Paul's Cathedral hires patronising free-marketeer

The apparent 'U-turn' in policy from St Paul's, headed up by the bishop of London is nothing of the kind. They have brought in retired city-banker and conservative alpha-male Christian Ken Costa to deliver an ethical framework for a free-market economy.

On 28 October 2011, three days before his appointment by St Paul's, Costa wrote in the Financial Times. He called discussions among those camped out 'naive' and their protest 'of little consequence'. He defends the free market as having done nothing more than to have 'drifted' from its moral foundations.

We shouldn't be surprised by this appointment. Bishop Richard (London) has already denied that he wanted violence while refusing to rule out its use so why not claim to take the protesters seriously while simultaneously appointing an adviser who doesn't.

I have a feeling decisions from those with the most unwittingly wed to the ideology of the powerful will continue to lead policy at St Paul's by the nose, into one disastrous decision after another.

Ultimately it is the wedding of Church and State that has made it impossible for the Anglican Church leaders to properly understand the signs of the times and take seriously the hopes of the marginalised. These people were trained to ignore injustice and appointed because they don't rock the boat. These are not the people to come up with any useful solutions. Not now or ever.

Visions of tomorrow: This is what democracy looks like

Those involved in permaculture know that it's on the boundary between environments (e.g. hedge meets the meadow) that the most productive signs of life are found.

So creating boundary places and stepping back is often enough.

The OLSX camp at St Paul's Square is doing just that and those people on the boundaries (established church, activists, bankers) can't help but be drawn into it. It catches them off guard to be drawn into the real world in this way.

But it's not just boundaries. It's bridges as well. Activists over the last couple of decades have been rediscovering the 'internationale' of radical politics. A soldier, in uniform, stood outside St Paul's and declared the soldiers as 'the 99%' being exploited in wars that only benefit the wealthy. What a source of truth!

And the OLSX began as an act of solidarity with the Adbusters call to Occupy Wall Street. UK government policy is often little more than an arm of US foreign policy so the demands of Occupy Wall Street to 'take the money out of politics' as concrete and direct implications for UK political life.

As with all big social changes a combination of unavoidable factors and social pressure create great changes. Slavery was abolished in Britain because of a change in economics as well as social pressure. Women got suffrage because of the Suffragettes but the reality of it became unavoidable when after the war women found they had been skilled up to do paid work and extending women's right became near impossible to avoid.

The US is losing it's super-power status bit by bit. We saw it in the decision by UNESCO to invite in Palestine against US/Israeli wishes. We see it in the economic changes that are taking place around the world. There is no better time to demand global and local change.

Luke Bretherton, writer on Christianity and politics and a participant in London Citizens, offers a wonderful and simple analysis of what is at play in St Paul's Square.

If you've had to face down the irritating "they don't even know what they're protesting about" bollocks that some people are parroting from the mass media then this might be helpful document to turn to for a less than straightforward but an extremely helpful response. 

I don't want to summarise it because it's worth reading in full. So have a look here. 

Giles Fraser makes a stand

Giles Fraser is - sorry 'was' - the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Today he resigned, with regret.

I don't know what a canon chancellor is so to that extent. Pffft! But I know who Giles Fraser is, he's one of the Anglican Priests willing to publicly engage with the politics of the gospel. And I know what St Paul's Cathedral is: it's a den of thieves that charges people to enter a place of worship built on the backs of the poor by the rich so they can celebrate their God given right to screw us all over. It's beautiful too.

 Photograph: Alex Diaz/PA: Giles Fraser: when the protest arrived
he sent the police on their way. No he's being forced to do the same. 

He resigned because the clergy and laity who run the show, including Bp of London Richard Chatres and high-powered finance folk, are plotting to remove peaceful protests by violence from St Paul's Square. Giles Fraser quite rightly sees what  a mockery and self-parodying nonsense the Church becomes when it makes such decisions. He wants no part of it. In his own words here.

So we don't know when but we know that violence will be used and the Church of England will get it's hands dirty for a change instead of letting the state do its dirty work. The Church of England imagines itself a neutral or benign power in matters of politics so often. And happily blesses the violence of others (as many clergy will do next month on 11 November) without getting the blood on its own cassock.

The protesters arrived thinking they would camp at Paternoster Square and expose the violence of Capital as it is expressed by bankers. That didn't know that another imperious power would be exposed in the process.

Perhaps its time the Church made up her mind: God or Caesar? What belongs to God is all creation. What belongs to Caesar are the empty promises of capital. So why does the church give everything to Caesar and only empty promises to God?

Meanwhile Giles Fraser might need some help this week. He needs to pack, he needs to figure out what to do next. God bless him as he discerns his calling in a church he loves but not more than he loves the image of God in his neighbour.

A line from the Paternoster prayer might be a good conclusion: give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Amen.

But if you want a better and funnier conclusion there's always the wonderful newsthump!

What's your message?

Mainstream media outlets and commentators are complaining that the Occupy Movement has no message: "They don't know what they want", they cry. Of course this is not true and if there was a single simple change they'd probably be dismissed as naive and simplistic.

I wonder if the media in Jesus' time complained that he lacked a coherent message. Certainly 2,000 years later people are still unclear as to what exactly the Kingdom of God is about or where it is.

Jesus was interested in the questions, the parables, the dilemmas of his age and in presenting them to the 99% so that they could discover their own solutions.

Just before our last General Election I was invited, along with the other deacons, to a dinner at the Bishop's house. As we ate he casually turned to me and said, "So I hear you're telling people not to vote." This was a wonderful way to light the blue touch paper and watch the fireworks go off!

Among the comments and questions from those around the table I was asked what I would replace the current system with. I suppose I could have said a Swiss cantonement, a federation, Total localism, or any other thing that took power from the elite to the people. But I resisted that totalitarian urge within me. Because I know I don't have the answer.

The answer to the question 'If not this, what else?' lies in the space between I and Thou. It will emerge from our situations not from our text books. I don't want a blue print for a better world. I want to turn my mind to a parable, as the psalmist says. I don't want to be the answer but I want to be part of a generation that is willing to live the questions.

I also want corporations to stop buying politicians. ;-) 

Sheffield Social Centre

David Cameron would be proud. The Sheffield Social Centre are running a really free Free School event with a broad curriculum for spiritual activists, anarchists, and anyone with the imagination and curiosity to learn and create learning.

Their first day of term was Saturday 15 October. A one day event. I hope there are more to come and in future will post them here in advance. Follow this link to find out more.