Brexit and Christian Identity: A Challenge for Political Theology

The turmoil in UK politics continues. Our country is split down the middle over Brexit, and the ongoing controversy is eroding many people’s faith in democracy and destabilising our current political order. Since the 2016 EU referendum two thirds of all voters say our democratic politics is ‘broken’ and a third of the voters in the 2019 European Parliament elections supported the Brexit Party, which gained seats from the other main political Parties.

Nigel Farage has explicitly included “traditional Christian values” in his future vision for Britain, and other supporters of a ‘clean break’ Brexit have similarly integrated Christian values into their political message. Leaders of Britain First have quoted the Lord’s Prayer as if it were a battle cry. Michael Gove has talked of the spirit of Protestantism as the inspiration for Britain to go it alone and leave the EU. And the far-right campaigner Tommy Robinson (real name Steven Yaxley-Lennon) has appealed to ‘British traditional Christian cultural identity’ to justify anti-Muslim prejudice.

As Christians we should be aware of the cost of promoting these particular interpretations of our religious values. The use of our collective Christian identity to justify a nationalist agenda, with its mixture of economic neo liberalism and social conservatism, is empirically contestable and ethically dubious. It also has worrying implications for a coherent and principled political theology.

The facts about Christian identity.

British Christian identity is neither monochrome or monolithic. There is no set of ‘Christian values’ to which all or most of us assent, but rather a plurality of attitudes. The changes in the lives of Christians over the last few decades have been demonstrated in the results of the annual British Social Attitudes Survey and by the work of contemporary sociologists of religion. This provides a complex picture of Christians in Britain, what we see as our core values, and our views of the place of faith in the public realm. What is clear is that the changes that have happened are a result of an interaction with demographic and cultural changes in British society over the past few decades.

Women are in the workplace in Britain in double the numbers of the previous generations which fundamentally changes the dynamics of home life for many. Relatives are attending the marriages of gay sons and lesbian nieces, looking after the children of bisexual friends and neighbours and learning about trans and non-binary gender identities.

Carers are looking after relatives and friends at home despite less and less practical and financial support from the state. Many people live far away from relatives and from the places where they were born and brought up and are unable to access longstanding networks of family or neighbours.

A new identity that goes beyond borders is also being forged. More of us work for firms in sectors dominated by multinational companies and where trans-national financial ventures are the norm. In many faith communities immigrants are the cornerstone of church life, and despite the rise in hate rhetoric and violence there is evidence of an overall ‘softening’ of attitudes to immigration in Britain as a whole.

Faith, and its relationship to identity, is becoming more diffuse. Studies including those by Linda Woodhead show that the attitudes on ‘personal morality’ of Christian churchgoers are the same as that of the non- churchgoing population (with two standout exceptions, that of the older generation, and those in conservative evangelical communities). The attitudes to issues of social morality such as poverty and immigration, are actually more progressive amongst faith groups than the general population.

Stephen Bullivant has shown the fact that the vast majority of ‘cultural Catholics’ do not have any contact with Church life, and may define themselves as having no faith identity, and this is having an effect on current religious practises.

Christianity, belonging and communal values

The assertion that promoting social solidarity in our ‘broken Britain’ is dependent on a particular understanding of traditional Christian values is not just questionable because of the facts of demography and cultural change for individuals that have been described above. It is also contestable if we take account of the changes in our communities and their relationship to the social and political order. This is manifest in the experiences of groups on the margins, or with multiple identities.

Our experience of community life is changing and this affects those Christians who participate in social action. Traditional and acknowledged structures of civil society and their place in our national political life have been much reduced. There has been a transformation in the patterns of voluntary activity and the relationship of faith-based and other third sector organisations to the political order.

The effects of neo liberal economic policies on our working lives, and consequentially on home life and our lives in our communities, cannot be underestimated. People are often working longer hours often for less money. Many are in insecure employment or barely getting enough guaranteed work hours, and hence income, to provide for a decent home life. We have endured, since 2010, the largest cuts to public funding, locally, regionally and nationally since 1930s.  

Local authorities have had their grants from national Government cut by up to 60% (mainly in poorer areas) and the national average spending on public services is down 26%. Current state social provision cannot support the frailest and most vulnerable in our society. Further cuts and the introduction of Universal Credit on top of years of cruel benefit sanctions regime undermines any realistic conception of ‘social security’.

The Transparency of Lobbying Act 2014, commonly known as the Gagging Act, means less opportunity for the voluntary sector to input into national political debate. With local authorities unable to support services in the community, underfunded and besieged as they are, charities and other third sector organisations are bowing to a corporate agenda, often out of financial necessity.

The view from the margins is telling. Groups of people who are not in the majority culture may not easily fit with established understandings of British Christian belonging. Though sharing similar signifiers with other Christians, newly established immigrant communities have their own cultural experience of belonging, often both as members of an ethnic minority and as immigrants. And the experience of second-generation black immigrants of persisting racism despite their British citizenship is corrosive of social cohesion.

Further, those who have mixed identities, especially those at the ‘cutting edge’ may well have a very different experience of belonging. This can often be negative. Members of faith communities who transgress the boundaries of acceptable behaviour, particularly women or those with LGBT+ identities face a hard choice – stay in and conform or risk being excluded.

The political theology of Christian identity and belonging

We are faced with contemporary and urgent challenges within our faith communities on key issues of social change, on matters of family and gender relations, gender identity and sexuality and of economic and social justice. We need discernment to recognise new ways, and to question what old ways keep us from reading the signs of the times.

The theologian Edward Schillebeeckx maintained that the history of human beings, indeed the social life of human beings, is the place where the cause of salvation or disaster is decided. He asserted that salvation from God comes about first of all in the secular reality of history and not primarily in the consciousness of believers who are aware of it. A healing historical praxis is how the nature of God is confirmed.

“Holiness” Schillebeeckx says, “is always contextual: it does not take place in a social vacuum.” As Christians we are called to give concrete social and political commitments and it is through this that the field of ‘political holiness’ is opened up to us. Our love of humanity, that is our disinterested commitment for our fellow human beings, is a hallmark of the truth of our love of God.  

Human experiences of injustice and innocent suffering and meaninglessness were, for Schillebeeckx, of a priori revelatory significance. Our immediate future challenges of injustice and innocent suffering are focused on economic inequality, climate change and mass immigration; all matters that need global solutions. The ethical action we are called to today cannot be limited to the nation state in our increasingly interconnected world.

Contemporary experiences of meaninglessness are often focused on matters of identity and belonging. But in political debates on these issues we are usually offered a binary model; either free market individualism or conservative communitarianism. False oppositions are made between personal freedom and community commitment, between individual autonomy and a more equal social order, between rights and mutual obligations.

We have to get beyond a binary model of either personal self- expression or the rich interdependence of the relational. Our individual human need for belonging and identity can only be met through community involvement, but allowing space for freely chosen interdependencies is how we can remake our communities anew.

Schillebeeckx’s ecclesiological model went beyond liberal pluralism whilst accepting in practice the opportunities of operating within it. He described the church’s role as an ‘action in solidarity’ over the threats to our humanity. This is a vision which is still faithful to the fundamentals of Christian doctrine but has a political dimension. 

The post Brexit narrative: concealment or exposure

In the post Brexit political world there is a danger that the language of our faith tradition could be co-opted for an agenda more closed than open. As well as the appeal to ‘traditional Christian cultural identity’ from political activists on the Brexiteer right, some significant forces on the left have embraced national-populism to argue a red-brown case against liberal globalisation. These include several who have argued for a stronger role for faith communities in our national life.

The Blue Labour co-founder Maurice Glassman is a supporter of ‘The Full Brexit’ group and other key Blue Labour thinkers including Jonathan Rutherford have argued for the importance of national sovereignty to restore people’s faith in politics. Jon Cruddas joined other Labour MPs, including Lisa Nandy, in calling for Jeremy Corbyn to reject a second referendum and back a Brexit deal. They argue that this strategy is necessary to meet the appeal of the far right in Labour heartlands.

But does this an accommodation to a post Brexit narrative hide more than it reveals? Indeed, support for Brexit from those on the left appears contradictory for there was a clear right-wing ideology underlying the Leave campaign. Nigel Farage and the Brexiteer wing of the Conservative Party wish to turbo charge the free market neo liberal economics of the UK. This is the very ‘market fundamentalism’ that has riven the social fabric of our communities, and been rightly criticised by Christians on the left.

It is over a decade since the Financial crash yet the income of the majority of UK population has not returned to pre- 2008 levels. There is greater discontent with the economic order and its ability to deliver, and a greater understanding of the range and effects of poverty and inequality on sections of our society.

Brexiteers may appear as political disruptors but their aim is to override this economic discontent and achieve a new level of political consensus that entrenches the market fundamentalist status quo at a time when it is being questioned. In this context national-populism can be seen as a useful distraction, and accommodation to it a political mistake.

Nationalist-populism of the right and the left uses certain nostalgic cultural values, including a reactionary interpretation of Christian identity and values, and is counterposed to the socially progressive changes of the last few decades on women’s, black, LGBT+ and disabled people’s rights. This has the function of opening up a cultural front which gives cover for the further development of economic neo liberalism, precisely because it is not ‘liberal’.  Christian thinkers, including those who consider themselves ‘post liberal’ or ‘post secular’, should worry about the way ‘Christian identity’ and ‘Christian values’ are used in this discourse.

We as Christians are presented with a choice. We can promote faith communities that are exclusive, based on a static conception of tradition, that co-exist with an increasingly socially illiberal political agenda. Or we can value internal diversity within our communities and remain open to the demographic and cultural changes in the contemporary experiences of the faithful. We have an opportunity for witness at this challenging political time.

 Dr Maria Exall is a Research Fellow in Catholic Social Thought and Practice with the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice and the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. She has a PhD in Philosophical Theology from King’s College London. Maria is a national trade union representative and political activist.

Articles and links

www.britsocat.com

www.natcen.ac.uk/our-research/research/british-social-attitudes

Institute for Fiscal Studies, ‘A Time of Revolution’ British Local Government Finance in the 2010’s www.ifs.org.uk

Linda Woodhead, ‘The Rise of “No Religion” Towards an Explanation’ Sociology of Religion 2017 78:3

Stephen Bullivant, ‘Europe’s Young Adults And Religion’: www.stmarys.ac.uk/centre/benedict-xvi/europes-young-adults-and-religion.aspx

Edward Schillebeeckx, ‘Jesus in Our Western Culture’ SCM Press 1987

www.thefullbrexit.com

Jonathan Rutherford ‘Why sovereignty matters for national unity: a warning’ at www.briefingsforbrexit.com 10/12/18

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk/uk-politics-48694223 Labour MPs urge Corbyn not to go ‘Full Remain’ 19/06/19

Brexit, Workers' Rights and the Common Good

Now that Theresa May is seeking a consensus across Party political divides the issue of the worker’s rights is, at last, on the Brexit agenda. It is clear that the preservation of jobs and prosperity, together with guarantees on employment rights and environmental standards, are central to any possible Brexit deal acceptable to the Labour Party.

But the issue of workers’ rights is not only a possible piece in the jigsaw of a future solution, it is also key to understanding how we got into this Brexit conundrum in the first place.

Why Brexit?

There has been much debate within the Labour Party and the wider labour movement since 2016 to try and comprehend why the Remain campaign so conspicuously failed to persuade those who had the most to lose economically from Brexit to vote against. For while those from higher socio-economic groups, Conservative voters, and older people, were the mainstay of the Leave vote, the support of many working class voters tipped the balance. Though the majority of trade union members (60%) and Labour voters (67%) supported Remain a significant section of Leave support came from working class communities.

These communities have been called ‘left behind’, but ‘done over’ would be a more appropriate description. They are the victims of our failing economic system. In general, working class Leave voters were from areas of the country where regional development organisations were abolished by the Coalition Government in 2010, in the name of ‘austerity’, and where EU money is at present one of the few sources of regional funding for local jobs and infrastructure.

Some, including Blue Labour thinkers such as Adrian Pabst, Jonathan Rutherford and Maurice Glasman, have explained this Brexit contradiction as a result of the failure of the Labour Party to speak out on matters of cultural identity and belonging, and they believe that the values of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) provide a basis to for the Party to do this. But this appeal is to a particular interpretation of CST that is a nostalgic and backward looking, a social conservatism of ‘family, flag and faith’.

This is a dangerous and ultimately ineffective strategy. It risks flirting with reactionary and socially divisive nationalist forces, and it misses the main point. The social alienation that drove the working class Leave vote arose from  experiences of injustice in the workplace and in working class communities. It is this that needs addressing.

There are major challenges of social justice in the modern world of work and there is an aspect of the CST tradition that can deal directly with these, and provide a coherent critique of the neo liberal economics which have wreaked havoc on working class communities.

Papal Encyclicals from Rerum Novarum onwards have recognised the importance of dignity at work to human flourishing. This was highlighted in the statement agreed at the most recent Vatican hosted meeting for international trade unionists in 2018 which called for the right for all to decent work with universal labour standards.  It this element of the CST tradition which is the best way to address current working class social alienation.

A fairer economic settlement, a recognition by employers of their wider social responsibilities, and social policies that prioritise workers’ rights, are now urgent in the UK.  These demands are the classic preoccupations of the Labour Party, but what is at stake is far beyond conventional adversarial Party politics.

The effects of ongoing austerity economics is shredding our social fabric with the explosion of zero hour contracts, increasing in-work and child poverty and a housing and homelessness crisis. If these issues are unaddressed at this unsettled time we may experience a decisive shift of support of sections of the working class to the far right.

There is hope. Within the labour movement there is new creative thinking on how to deal with key problems in the world of work; persisting economic inequality, work life balance and well being, the growth of ‘precarious’ work, as well as meeting the challenges of the fourth technological revolution in a globalising world and on a planet with finite resources.

It’s the economy stupid

The predominance of market fundamentalist economic dogmas in the UK for over four decades has massively increased the economic inequality between the few at the top and the majority of working people. Put simply most people are working harder and longer for less and many are remaining poor and some are getting poorer.

The ideological dominance of neo liberal principles in the private sector, in public services and even in the voluntary and charity sector, has pushed down wages and salaries for those in the middle and bottom sections of the workforce and eroded respect and dignity in workplaces across the UK.

Market fundamentalist economics applied at the micro workplace level has resulted in the phenomenon that theorists call ‘work intensification’. This work intensification has been directed through the use of models of performance management with instrumentalist assumptions that employees are units of production, and explicitly deny personal autonomy.

The result is a lack of control over working hours and day-to-day pressure and stress. This is the case whether you are a professional or a ‘blue collar’ worker, whether you work on a manufacturing production line, in sales and marketing, in public service or for a global corporation.

Rather than participating in meaningful activity that can contribute to human flourishing, many of us are exploited as cheap labour to meet accelerating targets. Instead of taking pride in a job well done, and the satisfaction of the delivery a good service, work for many has becomes soul less and soul destroying.

Wellbeing and work

Performance management, accompanied by increased surveillance of work activity aided by increasing digitalisation, has encouraged bullying cultures which are a significant factor in the epidemic of mental health issues in the workplace. The treatment of those with disabilities at work (both mental and physical) often as a result of aging, has become the cutting edge of the struggle for dignity at work.

An aging workforce is just one way the character of the UK workforce has changed.  We need an overhaul of the 1950’s style assumption that a ‘worker’ is a straight, white, male, able bodied breadwinner between the ages of 16 and 60. It is certainly not typical now, and was arguably never really accurate anyway. It is not possible to turn back the clock – and would we want to anyway?

The structural change in the nature of the workforce has shifted the focus of rights at work. Issues of flexibility, including demands for increased rights to maternity and paternity, parental and carers leave, are higher up the Unions bargaining agenda. So, in an increasingly diverse workforce, is resisting discrimination and prejudice at work. Women are in the workplace in double the numbers of the previous generation. This means that expectations change, shown up most recently in the #metoo anti sexual harassment campaign.  The walkout by Google workers against sexism in tech was a small snapshot of the future.

The growth of ‘precarious’ work

There has been a sharp rise in insecure ‘precarious’ work where people have few rights and no guaranteed hours or income. The TUC estimates that casualisation through outsourcing, zero-hour contracts, and the widespread use of agency and fixed term contract labour now affects up to 3 million workers in the UK. It doesn’t just affect those who are trapped in the ‘gig’ economy. Casualisation exerts a downward pressure on wages and terms and conditions for those in secure employment in all the sectors where it is prevalent.

Some have argued that ‘precarious’ work is a new phenomenon, but those who know their labour movement history are aware that the new practices expected of the ‘precariat’ are actually very old. Piece work, bogus self-employment, and lack of access to basic rights such as sick pay and holiday pay are what happens when workers are unprotected by employment laws, or by collective agreements that can be enforced by strong trade unions. There are however seeds of hope such as the GMB Union’s recent deal with Hermes which give a degree of security to workers that can be developed further.

Responding to the fourth industrial revolution

The use of digital platforms in advertising (Facebook) and delivery services (Amazon) have made the new generation of ultra-capitalists such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos mega billionaires. Promises that the new digital platform economy would democratise work and other flights of fancy promoted by ‘post capitalists’ have, unsurprisingly, failed to materialise. The rise of ‘networked individuals’ has not led to greater empowerment for the majority of ordinary workers.

Similarly, the warnings that we are heading for a workless future seems way off beam. It has been a perennial claim, made whenever there is a change of technological paradigms, that work will disappear. But the lessons of previous eras are that new technologies bring big changes to the nature and structure rather than the quantity of employment.

The real contemporary challenge is how the increased profitability from the use of new technologies in myriad sectors of the economy will be shared between owners and employees, not just in pay but also in working time, work-life balance and flexibility. The call for a four-day week made by the Frances O’Grady the General Secretary of the TUC at the 2018 Congress is an important demand.

Social security?

Fears of a workless future appear to be exaggerated, but new ideas are necessary to reform the current benefits system. The call for a Universal Basic Income, whilst worth considering in some form, is not a silver bullet. UBI has a mixed heritage, having been adopted in the past by those on the right who wished to have a minimalist welfare system– including Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon. Recently the idea has been taken and by those on the progressive left.

But what is at stake in any proposed reform of welfare is our future social cohesion. Because of the current inhuman and discredited benefits sanction regime, and the introduction of Universal Credit, we are on the cusp of giving up on the aspiration for an effective social safety net in our country at all. Social security based on contributory principle with effective mechanisms against poverty and practical support for those most in need is essential for a civilised society.   We need to restore to those demonised as ‘scroungers’ a sense of entitlement. They have contributed to our society and now deserve support from the rest of us. We need social solidarity between those in work and those out of work. We need dignity and respect at work and dignity and respect when circumstances force you out of work.

Workers’ rights in a global age and on a finite planet

Even where workers are organised in Unions it has been difficult to reverse damaging structural decisions, often made by corporate management of multinational companies. An increasingly global economy needs a joined up global labour movement response. The international trade union movement has had some success in gaining victories for workers in global supply chains but a lot more pan national coordination is needed. Unfortunately, Brexit seems likely to take us in another direction.

Decisions to change energy and resource use in our society and to invest in sustainable technologies are most effective when supported by both Unions and business. A Government serious about tackling climate change would include a worker’s perspective in any future Green Deal.  

Towards a new collectivism

Despite, or perhaps because of, the continuing rise in inequalities at work, popular support for collective organisation in the workplace is at its highest for decades, including among young workers. There is an opportunity now, more than ten years on from the excesses of the market system evidenced by the Financial Crash, to turn away from the failed experiment of austerity economics, to challenge low pay and the wider social injustices that have their origins in workplace inequalities.

We need positive labour market regulation, an abolition of the anti-trade union laws that stop working people taking effective industrial action, expansion of collective bargaining and rights for all workers from day one, whatever their employment ‘status’.

We do not need to go back to old ways or ‘tribal’ politics to rebuild a collective sense of workers’ dignity in 21st century. Nostalgia for how things have been does not help us move on.  We need a new consensus to apply the human values of CST to the areas of our lives where these values seem to have been banned – at work.  We need to create a more moral economy which meets the challenges of inequality, sustainability, diversity and globalisation.

We are all social animals who need to be connected with others, and to that which is outside of our selves. Productive activity is essential not just for our economic prosperity but to our sense of being and future flourishing.

Books and Articles

Adrian Pabst ‘The Politics of the Void’ New Statesman 22nd August 2018

Jonathan Rutherford ‘Why Blue Labour is still revenant under Corbyn’ Labourlist 2nd April 2019

Statement on “Work and Worker Organisations” agreed at the meeting of trade union organisations convened by the Dicastery for promoting integral human development https://www.ituc-csi.org/work -and-worker-organisations-at

Imran Ahmed & Angela Eagle The New Serfdom Biteback Publishing 2018

Will Stronge ‘Work and Free Time’ Open Democracy 21st March 2019

Paul Mason Post Capitalism Allen Lane 2015

David Powell ‘Rebooting the Green New Deal’ NEF 25th January 2019

 K D Ewing, John Hendy & Carolyn Jones (ed) Rolling Out the Manifesto for Labour Law IER 2018

Dr Maria Exall is a Research Fellow in Catholic Social Thought and Practice with the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice and the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. She has a PhD in Philosophical Theology from King’s College London. Maria is a national trade union representative and political activist.

Working for a Better Future: What demands does Catholic Social Teaching make on government, employers and employees?

Oliver Twist was published in 1837 – the period which marked the end of the first Industrial Revolution. In the following fifty years, Britain underwent enormous social change and innovation. The country saw the growth of huge disparities between the riches of a small elite and the mass destitution of the working classes. By 1889, the London Dockers were on strike for their tanner: Cardinal Manning went on to successfully mediate in the dispute.

Just two years later, in 1891, Rerum Novarum was published. Pope Leo XIII wrote, “working [people] have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition…a small number of [the] very rich have been able to lay upon the teaming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself” (1).

In this way, Catholic Social Teaching makes some quite specific demands on government, employers and employees. At its simplest it requires them to act in the best interests of each other to avoid excessive greed and to look out for the well being of the people. It seeks dignity for all and the self-respect of those concerned.

The right to work

Former Vice-President of the USA, Joe Biden, is not alone when he notes his father’s advice that, “a job is about more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in your community”. According to the Mental Health Foundation ,“being in work is important for everyone’s health and well-being; it gives us a purpose…, promotes independence, allows us to develop social contacts, and is a factor in preventing both physical and mental health problems” (2).  Clearly, the right to work has many important aspects. Work can improve self-esteem and confidence, reducing depression and psychological distress.

Most of the obligations on employers flow from the rights of their workers. Employers should look on their workers as in a relationship with them of mutual need and support, not simply as commodities in themselves, as a slave master would.

The role of the State

Throughout Catholic Social Teaching, the Church is very clear on the need for a strong state with the ability to intervene to maintain justice. It is also clear that the State should not overstep the mark and interfere wrongly in family, property and other aspects of life.

In the UK, legislation has been introduced regulating working hours, the age of child employment and the right to paid time off, as well as maternity and paternity leave. In addition to National Minimum Wage, we have pay and gender equality laws and wide-ranging employment and health and safety legislation. There is also some regulation over the markets and businesses. But what we don’t have is any regulation covering zero hours contracts, which are widely regarded as being grossly unfair to the employee in favour of the employer. Moreover, there is tension around free trade deals, free movement of labour and market deregulation. If UK employers are free to bring in workers who are able to under-cut the terms and conditions of the existing workforce, then I consider that is also in direct contravention of Rerum Novarum and its successor encyclicals, and harms both the existing workers and those coming to take the jobs.

Note 1 – Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, 3 (1891)

Note 2 – Mental Health Foundation, ‘Employment is vital for maintaining good mental health’ (2012)

Rob Flello is a political consultant, former Labour Member of Parliament for Stoke South and former shadow Justice Minister. This blog post is a shorter version of a speech given at ‘Working for a Better Future’, at the Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester, on 1 May 2018.

The opinions and positions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Catholic Social Thought and Practice.