Postcard from Moscow
- 2016-05-26
- By ReimaginingEurope
- Posted in Postcard from...
The migration into the UK is observed here in Moscow from a pan-European perspective ‘outside’ Europe. The influx of non-Christians (without prejudice and perhaps partially balanced by Catholics from Eastern Europe) is seen as a challenge as it further dilutes the already huge decline of Christians in the UK.
The liberal human rights legislation in European court, e.g. defending the rights of convicted violent foreign criminals to stay in UK is of concern. In Russia there is the opposite approach. We are not saying that in Russia ‘all is well’ but in the EU it seems to have gone to the other extreme. There is a strong feeling that this issue will not be solved by staying in the EU.
The Russian Christians in our church said that Britain is already ‘apart’ from Europe anyway. We are an Island. We do not have the same currency. We have a world class financial centre, and a mature legal and parliamentary system. Why be in the EU ? On the other hand, from a former Soviet perspective, to leave is an uneasy step because sooner or later isolation leads to degradation.
A leadership quote from our Russian friends offers food for thought. ‘We hope the painter knows where the head and where the feet of the subject are’. We were also reminded of our history when Henry VIII ‘perfectly reasonably’ said’ No’ to the Pope and Europe, and now we have the Church of England. He stood up to power and domination by doing a ‘Romexit’.
Thomas Aquinas in his ‘Summa Theologica’ proposed a democracy where the monarch would be kept in check by a group of elected individuals who were put into and out of power by a polity of the masses. A parliamentary approach adopted by Oliver Cromwell . This is a far cry from the EU Council of Ministers who hold the power which is undemocratic from a British perspective.
A view to conclude was expressed as ‘Any decision made about the future, or about our personal future, is an act of faith.’
About the author
Clive Fairclough has had multiple careers. His first career was as a professional soldier serving in the Artillery in the British Army. His second career was as a professional fundraiser. He was ordained priest in 2004 in Salisbury Cathedral. He is happily married to Jo. He is currently serving as Chaplain to St Andrew’s Anglican Church and the British Embassy in Moscow. He is also the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Apokrisarios to Patriarch Kirill.
We must take care. Even if a criticism sounds plausible, the general conclusion may not follow.
The dilution of British Christian belief is a home-grown problem. It is not the fault of immigrants. There are more Christian immigrants coming to the UK than Moslems.
Human rights are lost at the margin. In the UK, the margin is whether the risk of torture should delay a deportation. This case was eventually resolved. In some countries in Europe, the margin is whether the regime should murder its opponents. If we abandoned Europe’s shared commitment to human rights, what signal would we give them?
My grandfather’s and my father’s generations discovered that it is not possible to stand apart from Europe. And American isolationism between 1920 and 1940, was a disaster.
Did Henry VIII stand up to power? Or did his selfish dynastic ambition lead him to seize the power to break his marriage vows?
Power in the EU is limited by the treaties which were concluded by the elected governments of the Member States according to national democratic procedures. These limits can be tested in the courts. It is exercised by the elected European Parliament and the Council of Ministers that consists entirely of ministers from the elected governments of the Member States. Its decisions are not undemocratic. But of course, they involve compromise and faithfully putting the compromise into effect. As in a marriage, being willing to seek out valid compromise is a virtue. Being unwilling to face the pain of working towards shared compromise is the vice.
Faith is not blind. Those prepared to look will find signs. But it needs to be carefully nurtured and tended.
Mr White
‘If we abandoned Europe’s shared commitment to human rights, what signal would we give them?’
Britain has already done so by failing to obey the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights for giving some prisoners the right to vote (mind you they’ve received I-pads unlike poor children in schools). That is a breach of the rule of law. Same tactics as Adolf?
‘Power in the EU is limited by the treaties which were concluded by the elected governments of the Member States according to national democratic procedures.’
Where in the Lisbon Treaty is it limited? What is the nature of its limitations – please do tell the hapless British voter. Could it be that Britain and Poland ‘opted’ out of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms? Could it be that the EU’s European Court of justice through its jurisprudence is pouring into British criminal and civil law its decisions?
‘Limited’? What with a freight-train load of new Directives waiting for the minute the British vote to remain? Which will be interpreted as ‘the British want more Europe!’
If the British vote to remain (‘Give us more Europe!’) then you will have to ‘invite’ refugees in from Macedonia (waiting in the freezing rains outside the razor wire, truncheons and snarling guard dogs) can you tell us how many council tower-blocks you have allocated? Extra GPs? Extra schools and teachers? For each classroom another 27 interpreters? How many more magistrates will you appoint to manage the criminal law casework? Increase the legal aid budget? Appoint more lawyers? How many more police men? What budgets for social, civil, criminal and economic infrastructures have you set aside given that you don’t know the numbers and are therefore unable to plan for the incoming boats and trains? Are you planning to use the increasing number of empty Church of England buildings as warehouses for Franz Fanon’s ‘The Wretched of the Earth’?
‘These limits can be tested in the courts. It is exercised by the elected European Parliament and the Council of Ministers that consists entirely of ministers from the elected governments of the Member States. Its decisions are not undemocratic.’
Given that a nation can only have one supreme court (for to say otherwise would be oxymoronic) which of Britain’s three supreme courts do you intend to file cases in to test your ‘limits’? The UK’s Supreme Court? The European Court of Human Rights? The European Union’s Court of Justice? All three are Britain’s supreme courts.
Ah! The European Parliament! When I was child I thought like a child. I used to have a toy soldier called an ‘Action Man’ and when you pulled its cord it spoke!
Ah! The Council of Ministers appointed by Member States not voters! They’re too troublesome to bother about, eh? Given that is the case how can their decisions be democratic? Aren’t you forgetting your Greek learning from public school? ‘Democracy’ consists of the ‘demos’ the people and the ‘kratos’ the bureaucracy.
Indeed you are right; the EU is all very consensual. The EU doesn’t rule by force. But where is this consent leading us?
Hugh Gaitskill in 1962 was sure it would lead to the end of a thousand years of British history. Tony Benn was sure it would be leading us through a ‘slow motion coup d’etat’.
The one part of the EU that was designed from the outset to be impervious to the uncertainties of democracy is the Commission. Only the unelected Commission can propose laws or change an existing one by proposing a new one. The EU Parliament is at best an amending chamber; it is not a House of Commons - surely the point of this Referendum campaign: how and by whom Britain is governed. The Council of Ministers could exist without the EU.
Henry VIII and Cromwell were involved in arguments over who rules England: the Papacy at the time was a supra-national body that could and did influence the politics of countries. Shared compromise is one thing; pooled sovereignty is another altogether. Ask Britain’s fishermen what compromise they were offered by Heath in his desire to get Britain into the EEC. Heath - a democratically-elected prime minster - wrote all 22,000 of them and their livelihoods off as politically insignificant.
It’s not possible to stand apart from Europe? No-one on the Leave side is proposing that Britain isolates herself. When establishment figures say this what they really mean by isolation is not being part of the ongoing movement towards a European superstate. If only Britain had been isolated from Europe in 1914.
The only religiously-inspired sign that I can detect in Britain’s (or more accurately, England’s) ‘isolation’ from Europe is Jean of Arc’s ejecting England from territorial entanglements on the continent. It was this that allowed Henry VIII to follow up with political independence. What I say is, God bless the Maid!
I’m surprised that someone hasn’t alleged, as we sometimes hear in this Referendum campaign from establishment figures, that the reminder from our Russian friends that Britain is already in a de-facto Brexit, and has been for 400 years, is a cunning plan - a sinister plot to make it ‘payday for Putin’, as Britain’s defence minister would say.
Yes the EU is totally undemocratic.
Who voted for a single EU Commissioner?
How can they be voted out of office?
We do have a world class financial centre, at present.
But for how much longer?
The EEC has planned to have a central financial centre, in Frankfurt, so we will lose much of the revenue raised by the City.
We have always been separate to continental Europe, but traded with it for centuries.
We can do so in the future, without surrendering our democracy & heritage to it.
Let us be like Lot, and leave this modern day Sodom.
David White makes much of compromise and uses an analogy.
Marriage needs a lot more than compromise to survive, however vital it may be for the two parties. Decision-making between 28 parties ends up being only compromise and the consequent joyless, sterile bureaucracy we associate with the EU. They have confused true internationalism with an ugly supranationalism. The bitter fruits of undermining the God-given nation state, God- given like marriage and the family, are only now too obvious. Vote Leave & help to save Europe from the EU.
I love my Savour and will not stand by to see Him crucified a second time
To live in fear of hiding my faith not celebrating His birth thousands of christens are being murdered all the time
We are for the most part a loving caring insightful people very tolerant to wards others faith ,but we are not left in peace our children are told not to whear crosses in school as it might offend , Darbeshire where my eldest daughter lives is awful , they are not free I’m out
Sir
‘We are an Island. We do not have the same currency. We have a world class financial centre, and a mature legal and parliamentary system. Why be in the EU ?’
An excellent question.
Each prime minister has said No! To the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. No! To the Schengen free movement area. No! To the EU’s currency the euro.
It’s like watching England’s centre-forward Wayne Rooney turn up at an England football training ground and say: No! To the manager’s new tactics! No! To any player who demands to wear the captain’s armband! No! To passing the ball to a player in a better position to score a goal! No! To the press who wish to ask questions!
In such a situation the rational mind is driven to ask: why does each successive prime minister and England captain refuse to play as asked?
No wonder (and quite rightly) the Russians are bemused by Britain’s antics.
On a more serious note there is a growing minority in Britain that the EU’s expansion eastwards has led to the entirely expected result of war in the Ukraine. We understand Russian insecurities (on the basis of history) unfortunately the Eurocrats don’t.
As to ‘security’ concerns let me make this perfectly clear; Britain will never share the intelligence she receives from our American cousins with EU agencies. There is a simple reason for that. The former Soviet countries who have joined the EU have people in influential positions who are ‘sympathetic’ to the Russians. If the US ever thinks that intelligence is likely to be shared, it will be severed in ‘the twinkling of an eye’.
In that respect if the British vote to remain then their future and eyes are with their new allies the EU - and not the USA. Cooperation will clearly cease while the British sleep-walk into the United States of Europe.
In such a situation it is predicted that EU politicians will challenge the hegemony of the US and then the risk of tensions on two fronts for the EU will arise: the Western and Eastern fronts.
Sir
Why have my posts been removed? Any justification? Any breach of comments policy?
Strange that our Russians friends think that Britain, being an island, is apart from Europe. They seem to have been affected by the Remain side’s use of the term ‘Europe’ as one that is interchangeable with the EU. As if the EU had somehow patented Europe as it’s own.
Russia is geographically and culturally part of Europe. Turkey is only in a small piece geographically part of Europe; culturally not a part at all. So why isn’t Mr Cameron desirous for Russia to join the EU rather than Turkey (apart from the fact that he’s cheerleading US foreign policy to ‘anchor’ Turkey to Europe - by which he means, like Obama, the EU of course; let’s not get confused).
I’m bemused that there could be a Christian position on the EU. As if Christ had a ‘position’ on the Roman Empire (other than, My kingdom is not of this world). And bear in mind that it was a former president of the Commission who described the EU as the first non-dynastic empire; one that the EU’s Commissioner on Financial and Monetary Affairs recently confirmed in an interview in Le Figaro as not being Christian.
But this empire (EEC/EC/EU) is one that was founded on and advanced though lies and deceit. What’s Christian about that? Especially when it is remembered that Christ’s character is described as one without guile. A truth deficit; one that is chronic. Can old wine be put safely in old wineskins; or a patch of unshrunk cloth stitched to an old garment?
‘I’m bemused that there could be a Christian position on the EU.’
There is a Christian position on the power that all States exercise: Give to God what belongs to God and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.
For the Christian it will always be God first and Caesar subordinate to that.